Tell me about the Hektor 5cm

[oldwino]

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Over the years, I’ve built a small collection of Leitz 5cm screwmount lenses, all collapsible models. I use them on my IIIa, my M3 and also on my M240P.

In addition to an uncoated nickel (1932) Elmar, I own a lovely and sharp 1935 Summar (single coated at some point in its life) and a very good copy of the Summicron from 1956. Each lens has its own distinct personality.

I have never been too interested in the Summitar lens, as it seems to me it was a developmental stepping stone to the Summicron, and from what I’ve seen, it’s rendition does seems to fall somewhere in between the Summar and the Summicron. 

I now have been looking at a nice, late copy of the Hektor, which is also single coated. I am of course curious about this lens, Leitz’s early fast lens, but a little unsure of how it renders. Solid information, and photo samples, are a little hard to find. From what I can gather, it sort of is an “ill tempered” Elmar, not quite as precise and with some swirly backgrounds…or perhaps just a slightly less sharp Summar? 

What’s the consensus on the Hektor 5cm? Quite unique and a “must-have”…or a “close, but no cigar” type of lens?

[romanus53]

If you already hve your hands on a good copy grab it and try it out. Hektor is a modiefied triplet, Summar is double-Gauss design, so totaly different. To gain a realistic impression of an old lens' potential it's all about condition as haze or fog lower contrast and sharpness. The Summar has the highest correction potential and points already to Summicron but suffered from lack of coating at that early time. Elmar, Hektor and Sonnar (Cooke triplets)  have all just 6 glas to air surfaces and give acceptable results in contrast, all cemented double-Gauss (e.g. Dagor, Angulon) have less and perform better contrast-wise, splitted lens designs suffer (Summar, Speed-Panchro, Speedic). You can read more of that at Rudolf Kingslake to understand theory and history but better use that lenses to make up your own mind. Have fun with these!

[UliWer]

Here you may see two examples with the 5cm Hektor:

As romanus explained the Hektor’s optical design is not ideal: low overall contrast and nowhere really sharp. It might be called the „worst“ of all Leica lenses. Max Berek who designed it wrote that its depth of focus at f/2.5 was almost the same as for the 5cm Elmar at f/3.5. Of course this is not true in a strict sense though as the Hektor is not really sharp even in the center the difference between „sharpness“ and „unsharpness“ is smaller than for other lenses.

If your example is coated the overall contrast may be better. Most Hektors come with the focussing lever at the 11-o-clock-position. This causes trouble if you want to use an LTM-to-M-adapter: the lever will stick on the adapter‘s edge so you cannot reach infinity. There is no such problem if you have a late version with the lever at the usual 7-o-clock position.  

[SpotmaticSP]

This is the "Leica Collectors & Historica" forum, so I'd suggest you to buy one (and also a Summitar) when you can. It's not an expense but an investment. 😉

I don't have a Hektor yet; I don't come across it very often. But that will surely change some time in the future. And the Summitar is very underrated. I have two of them (1939 and 1949) and I ike them a lot. Just make sure you get the "right" version with the many, round diaphragm blades and not the version with the strange Summar diaphragm.

[romanus53]

coated Hektor at f2.5

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[romanus53]

one more, just dng to jpg and resized

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[oldwino]

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20 minutes ago, romanus53 said:

one more, just dng to jpg and resized

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These are some of the nicest samples I've seen so far!