Barnack pressure plate shape

[Woodallp]

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I opened a 1933 Leica III yesterday and was surprised to find a round pressure plate with an indexing notch in a diagonal “corner” and vertical leaf spring holes. Everything I had seen before had the “normal” shape (not sure how to describe it) and horizontal holes for the springs. I had opened earlier cameras and not seen this but they had all been back to the factory at some point.

I’m sorry if this has been much discussed already but does anyone have an overview of these plates?

[erl]

Maybe post some pics!

[jerzy]

here are some, but not all variants, upper row, middle one is aluminium, grey, rather rare, found in early IA

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[Woodallp]

Thanks Jerzy, and yes I should have posted a pic. I’m used to the one on the bottom right but the one in question is like the bottom left.

I couldn’t understand why an indexing notch was needed for a round plate but I had forgotten that earlier ones would have had a hole that needed to be positioned accurately. I’m a total novice on the very early models.