Category Archives: Leica Screwmount

Modern Advertising for a Modern Camera

Leica advertising has always been stylish. Here’s two in particular that I admire. The first, above, is an early ’50s Modernist advert. Angular orientation with embedded triangles, sans serif typefaces coupled with old school italic script typeface…and the Piccadilly Circus Eros Statute. Eros is one of the primordial gods that emerged from Chaos when the world began, and is the driving force behind the unions of the primordial gods that initiated creation. Subtle. Well done. Someone was familiar with classic Greek mythology who expected his target audience to be so as well.

As for the camera, this “automatic focusing” Leica is an IIIa with a 50mm Summar. Beautiful.

Sixty years later and this ad for the M Monochrom. Monochrome (as in black and white) design can easily appear dull. But it’s perfect here (it is a Monochrom camera after all). This one cleverly uses font-weight to bold certain letters and make them stand out against the monochrome design. The bold camera and letters give a point of focus, while the small text does two things: It draws the reader in and helps align the bolded text. It’s “edgy”. It works.

In between these two are any number of inspired advertising designs. Here are a few more I like, all of them graphically simple while drawing your eye to where it needs to go:

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With the exception of the Monochrom ad (a nice throw back to the glory days), the advertising wonks at Leitz who designed these are long gone, replaced by a new, hip generation of 20 something Parsons Design grads who have no conception of the incredibly rich history of Leitz they could draw on. Who’ve been educated, not with the Greek classics, but via Facebook and social media.

So we get the argument from authority sublimated via the cult of personality: famous people achieving their photographic vision with their newest Leica, Lenny Kravitz stalking his prey in the East Village while rocking his rosta hat and a camera designed by Jackson Pollock.

Photo by Lenny Kravitz. Leica gave This Guy a Show at a NYC Gallery. This was the Photo they Used to Advertise It. Seriously.

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Erik van Straten. Exceptional.

Meanwhile, there are more than a few Leica users quietly producing stunning work. Look hard enough on the net and you’ll find them – not, mind you in some curated corner where money is looking to be made, or amongst the beautiful people of NYC or some self-appointed expert shill man looking to make a buck off the low-hanging Leicaphile fruit – but everyday people who’ve been using Leicas forever, producing bodies of work that should humble the “Leica Photographers” producing the banal shit above. Leica needs to start recognizing them, because they’re why Leica is famous. Leica should think about returning the favor.

Dragan Novakovac. Just a Guy With a Leica.

The Photography of Jacques-Henri Lartigue

I’ve always had a soft spot for Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s amateur photographic work. For me, his childhood output constitutes one of the highlights of early 20th-century photography. Born in Courbevoie, near Paris in France in 1894, Lartigue took his first photographs at age 8. For him, photography was a revelation that would inspire him throughout his life: “It was a superhuman invention. I got it all! Colors! The sounds!”

Lartigue’s early vision – private memory as photographic subject – constitutes an authentic autobiographical diary of his family life in pre-WW1 France. His images are of an affectionate and happy family environment: parents, brother Zissou, grandfather Alfred (who was one of the inventors of the monorail system and also a playwright), uncles, aunts, cousins all handsome and well dressed. From the images we know that the Lartigues were well off socially – we are shown nannies, chauffeurs, loved pets.

As he became more familiar with his camera, Lartigue’s subjects and frames changed to reflect the moment: his subjects became car races in Auvergne, the bathers in Deauville and Biarritz, airplanes in Issy-les-Moulineaux and Buc, winter pastimes in Switzerland.

Grand Prix de l’ACF, Delage automobile, Dieppe Circuit 26 June 1912

In 1915 Lartique attended the Académie Jullian to study painting, which would become his lifelong profession. Photography, however, remained his great love. The expressive knowledge he learned via painting – but also his use of the various cameras over the years, in particular their technical limits – were the means he used to create his unique photographic style. Lartigue’s vision is of the Belle Époque, the bliss of happiness of French life before the First World War, an era also characterized by the Impressionists who painted in parallel with the innovation of the photographic medium. It was an aesthetic that gave a privileged view of bourgeois life in France in the early 1900s.

Véra et Arlette, Cannes, May 1927

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It was only in the 1960s, when he was almost 70, that his larger photographic archive became known to the general public via an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1963 entitled “The Photographs of Jacque Henri Lartigue” curated by John Szarkowski, director of the Museum’s Department of Photography. Lartigue was “discovered” as if he were a child who had miraculously captured a passing world while documenting the beginnings of the new. It wasn’t a large show, 45 early photographs from the very beginning of Lartigue’s career, now iconic. Szarkowski described Lartigue’s photography as “the precursor of every interesting and lively creation made during the twentieth century”. Richard Avedon, after viewing Lartigue’s work at the MoMA in 1963 wrote to him that “It was one of the most moving and powerful experiences of my life. They are photographs that echo. I will never forget them. Seeing them was for me like reading Proust for the first time ”.

Lartigue remained no mere naive kid with a camera. If the 1963 MoMA photos are beautiful evocations of a lost world, the photographs that Lartigue took in the six decades of his working life constitute his enduring legacy. Kevin Moore’s monograph, Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist (2004), argues for the sophistication and enduring quality of Lartigue’s mature work. According to Moore, Lartigue, with his ability to freeze the enduring moment in time, made the snapshot a work of art. That he did is a measure of his enduring worth as a photographer.

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In 1974, French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing commissioned Lartigue to produce his official portrait. In 1975 the Muséè des arts Décoratifs in Paris presented a large review of his photography, ‘Lartigue 8 x 80’, and in 1980 the Grand Palais in Paris exhibited a retrospective entitled ‘Bonjour Monsieur Lartigue‘ .

In 1979 Lartigue donated his entire work – negatives, original albums, diaries, cameras – to the French government which established the Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue, today called Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue, with the supervision of the Ministry of Culture. The function of the Donation is to promote Lartigue’s work.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue continued to photograph, paint and write until his death in September 1986, at the age of 92. He left over 100,000 photographs, 7,000 diary pages and 1,500 paintings.

The Leica as An Investment

A Two Page 1973 Leica Advertisement

I ran across this 1973 ad for the Leica M5 and the Leicaflex SL and started thinking about the relative value of Leicas over time and how that value manifests itself today. Many of us consider our Leicas as ‘investments’ in the sense that it’s a pretty safe place to park some cash with the understanding that you’ll be able to get most, or all, or even more, out of it when you sell it. It’s a way I justify buying Leicas to my wife: we could either park an extra 3 grand in our bank account, serving no practical purpose except collecting chicken scratch for interest, or we could ‘invest’ it in the purchase of a Leica, a thing I’ll use and handle and admire and get some practical satisfaction from. I’ll take photos with it and it will inspire me to write about it on the blog. I’ll either like it or I won’t, but I’ll have the experience of having owned it, used it, better understood and appreciated it. And then, if we need the money again, I’ll sell it to a Leicaphilia reader and usually break even. Voila! Money put to good use. And a reader gets a decent deal on a decent camera that they know they can trust. What’s not to like? Of course, Leica could help me circumvent this process by sending me a camera or two to test, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen. Who knows? Surprise me, Leica. I promise you an honest review.

The first thing that struck me was how expensive, in real terms, the M5 was in relation to the Leica models that had come before. If you run the purchase price numbers given by Leica through an inflation calculator, you’ll come up with the equivalent amount of circa 2021 dollars that purchase price represents. So, for example, buying a Leica Model II d in 1939 for $100 was the equivalent of paying $1900 for it in today’s dollar; a IIIg in 1958 for $163 would be the equivalent of paying $1467 for it today ( interestingly enough, the Professional Nikon, the Nikon SP, with a 50mm Nikkor f/1.4, sold in 1958 for today’s equivalent of $3,000); today an M3 would cost new $2373, the M4 $2320. Expensive, but not prohibitively so. The M5 body, were it sold today, would cost $3663. That’s a big increase in price over the iconic M3 and M4. With a decent Leitz 50mm Summilux (the lens it’s wearing in the Leica advert), it’d cost you >$6000 in today’s money. So, Leicas were pricey even back then. And the M5, now the unloved ugly duckling selling at a discount to the M2-M7, commanded a premium price over the iconic M2, M3 and M4.

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Nikon Price Guide From 1976: Click on it to enlarge it and open it up in a new tab

It also gives us some sense of why the M5 might have ‘failed’ in the market [arguable, but that’s a discussion for another time], as opposed to its failure as an evolution of the M system [which it most certainly was not]. In addition to being technically deficient as a pro ‘system’ camera (based on the inherent drawbacks of a rangefinder) in relation to the Nikon F2 and Canon Ftn, it cost a fortune. To compare, a Nikon F2 Photomic with 50mm Nikkor 1.4, then the state-of-the-art, retailed for $600, although in actuality it sold out-the-door for maybe $500. The M5, you paid full price. Throw in $350 for a Summilux. In today’s money, that means buying a new Nikon F2 with 50mm 1.4 Nikkor in 1973 would set you back $3100, while an M5 with a 50mm 1.4 Summilux in 1973 would cost the equivalent of $6070 today. The M5 with lens was essentially double the price of the top shelf Pro Nikon with lens, which was then the professional’s system of choice.

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What do they go for today? You can sell the M5 and Summilux you bought in 1973 today, almost 50 years later, for +/- $3500. It’s probably going to need a going-over by one of the few techs who still work on the M5 – Sherri Krauter, DAG, one or two others, but that’s the buyer’s problem, not yours. Not a bad return for a camera you’ve used for 48 years. An M4 body, purchased in 1969 for $2300 will fetch you $1500-$1800; a single stroke M3 $1300-$1500; a Leica II d you paid $1900 for in 1939, today, you’ll you get +/- $300. Not exactly a prudent “investment” if you’re looking for a return on your money, but certainly excellent resale value of something you’ve used for half to three/quarters of a century. Like most things Leica, what appears crazy can in reality be quite prudent. Taking it all into consideration, buying a Leica is, moneywise, pretty much a smart idea.

Using as Opposed to Collecting

A Like New Black Nikon F: One More Beautiful Thing I Don’t “Need”

If you’ve been reading this blog with any regularity, you’ll know that i’ve been periodically selling off equipment in a professed attempt to de-clutter my photographic life. [More to come shortly.] I woke up one day and realized my collection of ‘must have’ cameras and lenses had grown ridiculously large. I’m not necessarily against owning a collection of cameras, it’s just that, when it comes to photography, I’m not a ‘collector’ but rather fancy myself a user. You’d think that having a lot of cameras and lenses would be beneficial for someone who intended to use them for specific purposes, but in reality it doesn’t work that way. What happens is that the multitude of choices you’ve given yourself make choosing more difficult. Faced with the decision of what to pick up and use, I find myself defaulting, usually grabbing the same camera and the same lens as always, saving myself the trouble of having to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes along with justifying whatever choice I would have otherwise made. And then there’s the emotional component, you know, the fact that I got such and such camera at such and such time and such and such place and did such and such thing with it back in the day, all part of the myriad of irrational factors we consider when we make value judgments about the things we own. Such are the anxieties that come with affluence.

You’ll also know that I tend to lapse into abstract discussions about things as I’m doing here, a habit I’ve possessed since young (my favorite book as a teenager was Nausea by JP Sartre (!)), and have an annoying habit of citing obscure thinkers to make a point. From a psychological perspective, it’s probably overcompensation, something I learned early on as a non-conformist teen with a middle finger up to any authority; when faced with the specious claims of those who claim authority to speak, you can often shut them up by one-upping them with competing claims based upon arcane sources, given that those in positions of authority dread admitting you might know arguments and authorities they don’t. Using this method, many years ago already I had come to the realization that most of those who claim authority over a subject are usually full of shit, their claim to it easily deflated with some critical argument.

One thing I have concluded, with certainty, is that cameras, however beautiful or iconic they might be, are still just things produced and meant to be used. You can put them on a shelf and admire them, but the satisfaction that brings is fleeting because, at bottom, they’re tools to be used, and where they find their meaning is in their use.

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A Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar, disassembled, cleaned and calibrated by Mr. Sweeney himself. Is it a rare, super-cool lens to use with your Leica? Yes. Do I “need” it? No.

But I digress. The reason for this post is to sell some stuff. In this case, really good stuff, the stuff I’ve been holding off selling in the hope I’d find a reason to keep it, because, frankly, I’m getting down to the equipment I have a real emotional attachment to insofar as one can be emotionally attached to things. It doesn’t help that the IRS is sending me letters suggesting I owe them money and hinting at extraordinary measures to collect it if it’s not immediately forthcoming. So much for emotional attachments. The IRS notwithstanding, I’d recently reached the conclusion that my photographic life would benefit from some further downsizing. Specifically, I’ve concluded I “need” the following: 1 film rangefinder camera with 21/35/50 lenses. And 1 digital camera with a lens. That’s it. The rest, nice as it might be to have, is redundant and certainly not required.

What I actually have at this point is this (even though I’ve been gradually selling off things now for the last year or two):

-A mint black Chrome Leica M4 ;
2 Leica M5’s, one black, one chrome, the chrome version needing a new beam-splitter but otherwise quite nice;
a Leica IIIg, in need of a general overhaul;
a Leica IIIf, also in need of maintenance;
A chrome Leicaflex SL body;
A standard prism user black paint Nikon F with a stuck shutter;
A standard prism black paint Nikon F with perfect 50mm f2 Nikkor-H, the nicest Nikon F I’ve ever seen and definitely a collector;
a Nikon S2 in need of a CLA;
A Bessa R2S with Voigtlander 25mm, 35mm and 50mm lenses and a few Nikkor RF lenses as well;
A Nikon F5 with a slew of manual and AF Nikkor lenses;
A Contax G2 with 45mm Planar and data back who ISO button is stuck that I’ve been using to take one picture of myself in the mirror everyday for about 6 years now;
A very nice, seldom used Leica M8;
A Ricoh GXR with M module;
A Ricoh GXR with Ricoh 28mm, 50mm and zoom modules

Frankly, as my wife periodically notes to me, that’s ridiculous.

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Pretty Much “Perfect” Black Chrome Leica M4 # 1381902 (1974). Selling this will hurt.

In deciding what to sell and what to keep (for now), I’ve taken into account what I’d recoup from selling a given item, as an example, the Nikon F5. It may be the most sophisticated, bulletproof film camera ever made: incredibly robust, full of all the features we now expect of DSLRs, it sells for a fraction of its true photographic worth. A quick trip to Ebay sees them selling for $200 and up. That’s nuts. Keep batteries in it and that camera will be working long after I’m dead, plus you get to use the full range of Nikkor lenses, manual focus lenses dating back to the 50’s all the way up to full frame AF Nikkors being produced today. All of that is worth more to me than $250 in my pocket, irrespective of how few times I use the camera. The F5 I keep. Likewise, the cameras that need service. Sell em now for next to nothing or have them serviced and sell them for what they’re worth. So, the Chrome M5, IIIg, IIIf, user Nikon F, the Nikon S2 and the Contax G2 all stay. Next step is to get them serviced, sometime down the road. Which leaves me with a working F5 and tons of optics for it, a Bessa R2S with 25/35/50/85/135, a black M5, a mint black M4, a mint black Nikon F with mint period correct 50mm Nikkor-H that’s apparently been on the camera since new (since it seems as unused as the body and plain prism), a little used M8 and two Ricoh GXRs.

The M5 I keep, as I’ve had it 40 years and is the one camera I’ve always said I’d never sell although it would make sense to sell the M5 and keep the Bessa with its Voigtlander Nikkor mount lenses. Given this, I’ll keep both. As for the digital bodies, I’ll keep one GXR with the 28, 50 and zoom modules. If I can’t meet my photographic needs with

a Nikon F5 and about 20 Nikkors of various size, shape and focal lengths
An M5 with a 21/35/50
A Bessa R2S with a 25/35/50/85/125
A Ricoh GXR with 28 and 50 modules

then clearly my “needs” are driven by something other than what’s necessary.

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Selling this one too. Got the boxes and all the ancillary stuff. Just don’t need it.

How does someone who’s always considered himself above the petit-bourgeois consumerist mindset end up with so much pretty stuff? Good question. It sneaks up on you; while you’re busy chuckling at the lost souls on the photo forums commiserating with other lost souls about which new Fuji body they need to replace last year’s Fuji kit, which 6 months ago replaced the 2015 Fuji, you yourself are engaged in the functional equivalent, buying another camera just because, telling yourself your motives are somehow better, less suspect than the neurotic consumerists who populate the usual sites. You’re not. You’re just another American who’s bought into the idea that happiness comes from stuff, especially really nice stuff like used Leicas.

[ So…., a bunch of things – the M4, the M8, the F, the CZJ Sonnar etc – will be going up for sale on the “For Sale” page of the site. They should be up in a day or two.]

Carl Zeiss Jena LTM 50mm 1.5 Sonnar For Sale….For $5500!?!

Ran across this Ebay listing by Breguet Camera for a Zeiss Jena 50 1.5 Sonnar:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ex-Carl-Zeiss-jena-sonnar-50mm-f-1-5-LTM-for-Leica-screw-mount-L39-Prototype-/311619439379

Asking price $5490.

I’ve written about this lens elsewhere. Wonderful vintage rendering, perfect mate for your film Leica if you’re looking for something other than arid, clinical digital excellence or you just want something unique.

I’m confused why they’re asking so much. Typically these are going for +/- $750 these days. They’re claiming it’s a “prototype,” which can mean anything (my understanding is that most of these were “prototypes” in the sense that they were assembled to various specs and standards depending on what was in the parts bin and what could be scrounged up at any given time i.e. there was never a ‘standard version’ of which an original could be considered the “prototype.”) I’d be interested in hearing from folks in the know (are you out there Brian Sweeney?) why Breguet thinks it’s worth what they’re asking.

UPDATE: This from “Sonnar Guru” Brian Sweeney (that’s what I call him; Mr. Sweeney, who knows more about LTM Sonnars than any other man on the planet, is too modest to claim the guru title for himself):

It looks like a custom conversion, not a factory prototype. I’ve used one of the original Factory Prototype 5cm F1.5 Sonnars in Leica mount- looks nothing like this. I think Zeiss made ~50 prototype lenses in 1932. They are the older style design with no filter ring. The earliest 5cm F1.5 that I converted using a J-3 mount is from 1934, with the newer style machining that is compatible with the Russian lens mounts. As far as pricing- it only matters if someone pays the asking price, the asking price of this lens is ridiculous.I have a 5cm F1.5 Sonnar “T” from the same batch. I converted it to Leica mount. I asked $450 for the last converted Sonnar that I sold, a beautiful Bloom on a 1936 5cm F1.5. Maybe in 50 years someone will call it a prototype…

The Rare Rigid LTM 50mm f2 Summicron, 1960-1963

In 1956, Leitz introduced a rigid version of the 50mm f2 Summicron, the revolutionary lens first offered as a collapsible version in LTM in 1953 and in M mount in 1954. The 1956 rigid version constituted a revised optical design with a harder front element and deeper rear element. A “Dual-Range” M mount rigid version was also introduced at this time. Leitz produced this “second version” rigid Summicron, both normal and dual-range, between 1956 and 1968.

Between 1960 and 1963, Leitz also produced 1160 copies of this rigid second version in LTM, making it one of the rarer and most valuable Summicrons produced. Of course, its rarity soon encouraged the assembling of fakes; the rigid Summicron’s lens head can be unscrewed from the rigid mount, and Leitz complicated matters by supplying rigid mounts in LTM for a few years so that owners of M and LTM bodies wouldn’t have to buy two lenses but could simply swap one lens head between two different lens mounts, M or LTM.

The end result is that it’s a good possibility that the LTM Rigid Summicron you’re being offered for sale is a frankenlens and not a true factory assembled version. The situation becomes further confused in that the true focal length of the rigid Summicrons differed slightly, depending on the version – 51.6, 51.9 or 52.2 – while the LTM rigid mount required a specific 51.9 focal length lens head, and many of these self-assembled lenses contain 51.6 or 52.2 lens heads mated to LTM rigid mounts.

How can you tell you’re looking at a rare factory assembled example instead of one made up from a replacement focusing mount and a non matching lens head? Fortunately, on the factory assembled models Leitz engraved the serial number of the lens both on the lens head and on the detachable lens mount. If these serials match, you’ve got a legit factory assembled LTM Rigid Summicron; if not, you’ve got a self-assembled frankenlens with potential focal length compatibility issues, one that can’t claim to be among the 1160 produced by Leitz.

A further complication in identifying a real factory produced version is that Leitz apparently produced them in dribs and drabs instead of one sequential run of 1160 consecutive serial numbers. According to Dennis Laney’s Leica Collector’s Guide, accepted serial number ranges for a legit copy are 1,599,XXX, 1,704,XXX, 1,706,XXX, 1,762,XXX, 1,763,XXX and 1,885,XXX, “but, as always with Leitz, the fact that a lens falls outside of this range does not necessarily mean it is not original” [Laney’s words]. The litmus test is the matching serial numbers.

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I was recently contacted by Bill Moretz, the owner of a reputable brick and mortar photo establishment in business since 1988 doing repair and photo lab services and equipment rental – asking me about a rigid Summicron he had in inventory he wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was. I had him send me some pics, did a little research, and then asked him to remove the mount from the lens head to see if the serials matched. They did. His rigid thread mount Summicron is a rare factory assembled original, serial number 1,607,043. According to Bill, everything in great condition optically and mechanically.

Bill has asked that I put the word out through the blog that the lens is for sale, and I told him I’d be happy to do so in order that he might avoid the pitfalls of Ebay and the various ways dishonest buyers devise to scam honest sellers out of collectible items. He’s asking $1950 plus insured shipping charges of $30 within the States. In my opinion, that’s a great deal as I see undocumented versions with various optical issues offered from anywhere between $1700 on the low end to $2800-$3000 on the high end. It comes with the original matching Leitz hood and lens cap.

If you’re interested, contact me at [email protected].

Cartier-Bresson’s LTM Summicron Sold at Auction

HCB’s LTM Summicron

WestLicht Auctions just auctioned off Cartier-Bresson’s 35mm Summicron, shown above.

“Unique lens used by Henri Cartier-Bresson with his black paint IIIg camera: the black paint 8-element lens (with very clean optics) was transformed from the original M-mount lens (0.7m, red plastic dot) on special order by removing the bayonet ring. Also the focus-tab was modified by removing the infinity lock and an extended lever was built-in. The lens has the same index dots made with nail gloss as the famous 2/5cm black paint collapsible Summicron used by HCB. It comes with both caps and a confirmation of authenticity by Lars Netopil from April 2015.”

Final Hammer price: 38,400 euros

Ode to a Barnack Leica

The following is prose, so it really isn’t an ode. But if it could be, it would be …an ode to a Barnack Leica.

To paraphrase something I read in the Forward to the Oxford Book of English Prose: Science moves forward, but stays in constant flux. What is established as true in fact today will be proved wrong tomorrow. (The great brains of Science disagree whether we, or anything at all, really exist……throw that one into the next photo technology dispute you encounter.) What remains constant is the condition of man.

Read any great classical work by Victor Hugo and you will see the truth of it: the same behavior, thoughts, emotions, responses and interpersonal problems that plague the characters in a Hugo story apply to us as we go through our lives even today. As I enter middle, middle age, I sense the bigger payoff, for me, as I head into the last chapters of my life, will reside in Hugo…..and paying attention to the constants of being human.

I do not know, but I suspect that this attitude is, at least in part, responsible for my recent interest in using Barnack Leicas and LTM lenses. The pull is strong; I believe it has more to do with me than the cameras. The cameras have always been there, but I have only recently evolved to the point where I appreciate what they represent. I wish this had happened sooner in my life. I’ve wasted a lot of time and effort being distracted by things that, in the final analysis, matter very little for what is true in life, let alone what’s true in my photography.

It says something that, only hours after receiving my Barnack Leica (that’s it below), I already had loaded it and had taken a number of photos.

Given the fact that optics are always advancing, its an 80 year old camera that will age with me.

This was sent to me by Wayne Pinney of Indiana, who describes himself as a “perennial novice.” He’s written here before. I love how and what Mr. Pinney writes: spare, well-written, to the point, no artifice, and best of all, thoughtful and literate. In other words, everything I’m usually not. If most of what’s been written by me on this blog is a Sony A7, Wayne’s writing would be a simple, elegant Leica M2.

$30 Jupiters On Your $8000 Leica

5cm 1.5 Jupiter-3

Lomo’s recent recreation of the Jupiter-3, the Jupiter 3+ Art lens, is encouraging news for fans of vintage optics. Designed (presumably) for out of the box use on Leica bodies and offered for sale at $649, it’s a reasonable alternative to stratospherically priced Leica offerings, modern Zeiss variations, and numerous Voigtlander 50mm lenses, all of which exhibit varying levels of modern clinical excellence. Some of us like the less resolute character of the vintage Sonnar designs, the Zeiss Optons, Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnars and their progeny – the Nikkor-S and H.C and the soviet made Jupiters. They’ve got what optics fans refer to as “character.” While I wish Lomo all the best and hope they sell a million of them, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that you do not, however, necessarily need to spend $649 for a Jupiter-3 or Jupiter-8. You can pick up a Jupiter-8 (the 5cm f2 variation) on Ebay for next to nothing, with a vintage Jupiter-3 fetching not much more.

A few years ago, succumbing to the lure of the esoteric (and cheap), I picked up a chrome soviet made Jupiter-8 5cm LTM lens on Ebay, to use as a cheap alternative standard lens on my IIIg and M bodies. Having read the usually dismissive internet comments about the Jupiters, I wasn’t expecting much, a novelty lens at best that I’d use occasionally as whims dictated. The seller was Ukrainian, and stated that the lens had been completely dismantled, lubricated and adjusted to “Leica specs”, whatever that meant. I bought it for $30, free shipping. Imagine my surprise, then, when I received a beautiful, clean, incredibly smooth focusing lens that produced beautiful vintage images even wide open and had the tactile feel the equal of any other lens I’d ever owned. A soviet clone of the Zeiss Sonnars first produced in the 1930’s, the Jupiter-8’s appeal is its small size, sharpness, low distortion and excellent flare resistance because of the Sonnar design’s minimal glass surfaces. Plus, it’s cheap, as in, cheaper than a typical lens hood for a Leitz lens.

Of course, any honest discussion of soviet optics needs to address the real issue of the build quality, which in the Jupiters can be a hit or miss proposition, seemingly dependent on the day of the week the lens was assembled and its relationship to the given vodka ration at that time. You can tell a Jupiter’s assembly year by the serial number – the first two numerals indicating the year of assembly. I assume my particular lens felt so smooth and well put together because of the servicing it had received from the seller. But it appears to be a nicely machined, tightly assembled piece. It has a 64xxxxx serial number, meaning it was produced in 1964, and as a general rule, the 50’s and 60’s era Jupiters are more consistently manufactured and assembled than the later lenses. In any event, even if you get a sloppily assembled one, its usually, easily enough adjusted to spec by a competent lens repairman.

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5cm f2 Jupiter-8 on an IIIf

A larger problem, one that I think has contributed the most to Leicaphiles’ negative perceptions of the Jupiters, is the “focus shift” issue. Chances are your Jupiter-8 will be noticeably out of focus wide open when mounted on your Leica. Most people chalk it up to either the inherent focus shift of the Sonnar design at maximum apertures or the belief that it’s just the nature of a crappy Russian lens. Actually, the Jupiters, when correctly matched to your Leica, are capable of wonderful results, their focus issues mostly down to an inherent incompatibility between the soviet made LTM Jupiters and the design parameters of Leica rangefinder bodies.

Photographers in the 1930’s had a choice of two excellent camera systems – Leica or Contax. These two cameras have different focusing systems. Both are built around 50mm lens but use different assumptions for coupling to the rangefinder system. Leica has a short-base magnifier, which connects to its thread-mount lenses. Every lens has a rangefinder cam, which transmits the focusing distance to the camera, and uses the rate of movement of the focusing helicoid of a 51.6mm lens (the actual focal length). This rate of movement is used to calculate a multiplier, which is then used in calibration of the rangefinder for every lens – a wide angle lens will have a shorter helicoid rate of movement, while a tele will have a longer rate of movement. The multiplier serves to position the rangefinder at the right focusing distance. Contax, which has a 50mm focusing helix, is standardized at a 52.3mm lens as the choice for a 50mm lens. As such, the rate of movement for a Contax standard 50mm is different from Leica’s. To have a lens work properly on either Leica or Contax body, designers use one of the focal lengths assumptions (51.6mm or 52.3mm), exact rate of movement and multiplier, and finally the distance from the back focus of the lens to the film plane. Change one of these and you have a lens that won’t focus correctly. Ergo, Contax standardized lenses, even in LTM, don’t focus exactly on Leica bodies given the differing rangefinder design parameters.

Soviet lenses, “heirs” to the Zeiss Contax way of doing things, perpetuate this incompatibility. The Russians took Zeiss’s designs and machinery as war reparations after the Second World War. They took the specifications for the Contax lenses and used them for the Leica mount lenses they were producing for their own LTM bodies – Zorkis and Feds- most notably the nominal 50mm focal length that the camera’s rangefinder expects as a standard, the Jupiter-3 a clone of the Zeiss 1.5, the Jupiter-8 that of the Zeiss 2.0. This made soviet LTM Jupiter lenses technically incompatible with Leica cameras. In the 50’s through 70’s this wasn’t an issue – soviet photographers didn’t, or couldn’t, use Leicas anyway; the LTM Jupiter lenses were built to be used on Feds and Zorkis with the focal length assumptions of a Contax. And it isn’t evidence of some half-cocked technical shortcoming on the part of the soviet camera industry; Nikon did exactly the same thing with their rangefinder system – which otherwise used the same mount as the Contax rangefinders but with a different rate of movement, so Nikon/Contax rangefinder users face the same problem as the Leica/Fed/Zorki ones – wide angles nominally compatible between the two systems given greater inherent depth of field, faster and longer lenses mis-focusing at close distances and wide open.

The 8.5cm Jupiter-9

The difference between soviet LTM and Leica LTM is real, and while it doesn’t affect most lenses (the various Industar 50mm lenses and the 35mm/2.8 Jupiter-12 are almost totally unaffected, due to their wider depth of field), once you start getting into faster and longer lenses it does become a problem. If you understand the limitations of soviet lenses on a Leica (or Leica spec) body, or if you know how to modify a Jupiter to Leica spec, you can get some rocking good lenses really cheap for your screwmount or M mount Leica.

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If you want to use soviet Jupiters on your Leica, the solution to this incompatibility is to have your Jupiter “shimmed” to Leica spec. Jupiter-3s and 8s can be easily shimmed, but the Jupiter-9 85/2 apparently can not. These Jupiter lenses are all Sonnar type lenses, subject to the focus shift inherent in the Sonnar design. The Jupiter-3 shim fix relies on using the focus shift to allow full focusing capability, while shimming the Jupiter-9 apparently causes further focus shift.

The second option is to ignore the Leica mount altogether and use vintage Contax mount Jupiters on your Leica M with an Amedeo adaptor that negates the need to shim the lens. Contax mount soviet lenses are built to the same specifications as native Zeiss Contax mount optics, so the Amedeo Contax to Leica adapter will ensure correct mounting and focusing when mounted on a Leica M. Of course, you’ll need to pay two hundred dollars for the Amedeo adaptor so that you can use cheap soviet lenses on your M, but you now have a lot of cool vintage lens options for your M: the Helios 103 (a.k.a the Soviet Summicron), a correctly focusing Jupiter-9, a Jupiter-11 that can focus closer than the LTM one, a Jupiter-8m (a shorter Jupiter-8 with click stops) – not to mention the Zeiss Optons and other assorted goodies made by Zeiss in Contax mount, all that you can pick up for a fraction of the cost of a like, or often inferior, quality, vintage Leitz lens.

Or you can go really esoteric and use a Contax mount Jupiter, shimmed for a Nikon, adapted to Leica M mount via an Amedeo Nikkor-S to Leica M adaptor. I’m the lucky owner of a 1958 5cm 1.5 Jupiter-3 in Contax mount, shimmed to Nikon S spec, the Frankensteinian creation of Sonnar guru Brian Sweeney. I can use it on my SP, S2 or S3 without adaptor, or on one of my M bodies with the Amedeo Nikon to Leica adaptor. Is it a little rough around the edges mechanically? Yes. But then again, Brian gave me the damn thing, and, I must admit, it produces some really nice negatives (or files if you prefer).

So, invariably, my $1000 “minty” (!) DR Summicron stays at home mounted on my “minty” M2-R, a collector’s piece, while the M’s that jostle around in my bag mount the Jupiter 8 with a cheap LTM to M adaptor, or a Zeiss CZJ 5cm 1.5 Sonnar shimmed to Leica spec by Mr. Sweeney, or a Nikkor-S 5cm 1.4 with Amedeo adaptor, or a Jupiter-3 5cm 1.5 shimmed to Nikon spec and mounted with the Amedeo Nikon to Leica adaptor. I paid, for all of them combined, less than half of what I paid for the DR Summicron, and, being the admitted optics dilettante I am, I’ll be damned if I can tell enough of a difference to justify the huge price differential. As for the CZJ Sonnar, the daddy to the Jupiter-3, it produces a look all it’s own, one I discussed at length here, a look that, coupled with a nice grainy film, brings you back to the glory days of the iconic B&W photography of Capa and HCB and Frank.

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A Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar, the Daddy of the Jupiter-3

The bottom line is this: if your interest is optical performance at a price un-inflated by status considerations, a decently put together Jupiter can hold its own against much pricier lenses, judged solely on its optical quality. As for “soviet made,” well, life is full of trade-offs, and what Russian technology lacks in fit and finish it’s often made up for in inexpensive yet robust functionality. Apparently, they’re still pulling soviet WW2 tanks out of bodies of water that, after a hose out, new batteries, a jug of oil and a few gallons of fuel, can more or less be driven away. Just a couple years ago in the Ukraine, there was a war memorial some rebels actually drove off with for further use.

The Ultimate Camera

Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5cm 1.5 for Leica

For a very short period during World War II, the Carl Zeiss Optical Factory at Jena built Sonnar lenses in the M39 lens mount used by their biggest competitors, Ernst Leitz Cameras in Wetzlar. During WW2 trade with Nazi Germany was either restricted or forbidden in most countries. The German government, needing foreign currency for the ongoing war effort, appointed the president of Carl Zeiss to coordinate export of German products, probably because of Zeiss’s established contacts with foreign companies.

Carl Zeiss-made Contax foreign sales, along with Leitz’s, had plummeted during the war. However, German military organizations were commissioning Leica cameras to be used by military photographers and German journalists assigned to the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and the Wehrmacht. To ensure ongoing Zeiss production, the president of the Carl Zeiss Jena plant ordered that Leicas should be fitted with Carl Zeiss lenses. And so Carl Zeiss in Jena retrofitted several Contax mount lenses for the Leica Thread Mount: a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 50mm f2.0, a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 50mm f1.5, a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 85mm f2.0 and a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm f4.0. All were produced and sold, although in quantities limited by the contingencies of war, until the end of WW2.

By the end of the war, the Russians had overrun Jena and appropriated the Zeiss manufacturing plant there. The Soviets ran it under their auspices for some time, continuing to produce Zeiss optics under the Carl Zeiss Jena brand, including the M39 LTM Sonnars. The company that remained, “Carl Zeiss Jena,” was not a “fake” company bearing the name of Carl Zeiss; it was the same company in the same factories where all the pre-WWII lenses were made. The company name remained “Carl Zeiss”, and the location of the company remained marked on the lens as the wartime lenses had been.

The Soviets subsequently dismantled the factory and transplanted it to Charkov in Ukraine. They took with them to Charkov Zeiss designs, machines, stock, and workers forced to relocate to Charkov, where the Zeiss factories were reconstituted by the Russians as restitution for the German’s destruction of the Charkov FED plant during the German invasion of the Ukraine. They left, as a legacy, an unknown quantity of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses in M39 mount. These Zeiss Sonnar lenses are the progenitors of the the Jupiter-3 (50mm f1.5), Jupiter-8 (50mm f2.0), the Jupiter-11 (135mm f4.0) and the Jupiter-9 (85mm f2.0), which would be built to the same design, and often with the same machinery, as the Zeiss optics built in Jena. The Russians even adapted the Contax-mount Biogon 35mm f2.8 to their Jupiter-12 35mm f2.8 in LTM.

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The legitimacy of M39 LTM Leica Mount Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnars are often called into question by web “experts.” The problem is that much of the factory records were plundered or lost during the Soviet occupation, offering fertile ground for all sorts of whacky “Red Scare” theories about the Russians “faking” CZJ lenses. Contrary to what is usually claimed, almost all the M39 lenses that have come onto the modern market are genuine and can be established as such with some critical examination (see below). What seems to confuse collectors is this: many of the CZJ Sonnars are post WW2 Russian Army Of Occupation lenses, which are only different in build date from their WW2 German build counterparts. However, the internal components are the same as the 1941 to 1943 assembled lenses, and they were assembled with Zeiss machinery and know-how. All Jena factory made WW2 CZJ M39 lenses made during the war had “ears” just as their Contax counterparts did (remember, these were retrofitted Contax lenses), while the post-war Russian-made LTM lenses were produced with Jena factory optics, machines and parts, often don’t have “ears”, but are still legitimate “Carl Zeiss Jena” lenses.

Another thing which confuses collectors is that, even before the partition of Germany, there were three organizations with the name of Zeiss. Carl Zeiss Optical, established by Carl Zeiss; after Carl Zeiss’s death sole ownership passed on to his partner Ernse Abbe, who established Carl Zeiss Stiftung which would acquire Carl Zeiss Optical as one of its core divisions. Carl Zeiss Stiftung grew and diversified, in 1926 acquiring four camera manufacturers, merging them to form Zeiss Ikon, its photographic equipment division, based in Dresden. Zeiss Ikon bought lenses from Carl Zeiss Optical for its cameras but Carl Zeiss Optical was free to supply its lenses and other products to other camera makers too. Given all of the above, confusion and misunderstanding seem to trail vintage Zeiss optics at every turn.

Illegitimate CZJ lenses do very infrequently pop up for sale, usually by sellers in the former Eastern Bloc. These are Contax lenses hacked into Russian Jupiter lens mounts, being sold as original Carl Zeiss Jena M39 Sonnars. Or they’re Jupiter-3s with the front lens ring removed and replaced with a fake Carl Zeiss Jena lens ring. Those are the fakes. But it seems to me that there is no practical incentive to try and turn an old Jupiter 3 into a CZJ. The effort and expense of machining a CZJ front ring and replacing it in a early 50’s era Jupiter 3 doesn’t match what little extra money the CZJ would bring over a Jupiter 3 sold as such. So, the bottom line is this: if you’re lucky enough to have found one along the way, your CZJ Sonnar is probably genuine, irrespective of the irrational claims of some self-appointed experts who see fakes everywhere.

If you know what you’re looking for, it’s not difficult to spot a fake. The first step in determining whether its a fake Zeiss lens converted from a KIEV is to look on the lens’ focusing ring. Russian lenses use metric screws while Zeiss used non-metric screws. Additionally, the Zeiss ring has one short and one longer screw; converted KIEV lenses have equal length screws; the Kievs will typically have a big “M” for the focusing scales while real CZJ’s will have a small “m”; and the “T” engraving on the front shield, which should be red, will often be white on the fakes. *

In his book Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses, Marc James Small states: “For the most part, [the wartime] lenses have serial numbers in the 2,6xx,xxx to 2,8xx,xxx range, are ‘T’-coated & marked, & all are inscribed ‘Carl Zeiss Jena.'” The 276 series was the last true wartime series, 279 and up were produced in the Jena plant after the Russians had completely taken over Zeiss plants and production. Thus, my copy, #2,866,450, the one shown in the photos, would have been produced in the Russian run Jena plant post-war using Zeiss optical glass, parts, labor and know-how.

I bought my copy from a guy who was selling camera equipment he had inherited from his father years earlier. It was dirty and unused for probably 30 years before he put it up for sale on Ebay, from Ohio, with some really cheesy photos and a description that clearly indicated he had no idea what it was. In talking to him afterwards, he told me his dad had brought it back with a camera from Germany during the occupation, but that’s about all he knew. The lens, bearing all the marks of being legit, cleaned up nice. I had it disassembled and the tech said it had the internal markings consistent with an original.

Older lenses like the CZJ Sonnar weren’t designed with the same tolerances as today’s computer designed and robotically manufactured optics. They don’t have the same materials and were subject to more impurities. They age and discolour. They often have a single coating rather than being multicoated like modern lenses. The Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar is a cool lens, both as a collectible and as a user, obviously very vintage in character – not very contrasty, not super sharp wide-open but better and better as it’s stopped down. Wide open it has a beautiful soft character with a creamy rendition of out of focus areas, nothing like the clinically harsh and contrasty look of modern Zeiss optics built by Cosina. The photos below are good examples of its character.

I find it a great lens to use on my M8, a way to build some imperfection into a digital image. Or, better yet, pair it with some Double XX pushed a few stops and developed in D76: perfect.

Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar. Photos by Andrew Fishkin.

* I’m definitely not an expert, so please take what I’m saying here with a healthy dose of skepticism; I’m essentially repeating common wisdom with respect to telling the real from a fake. If you have better information, and if some of mine is wrong, please feel free to set me right.

Three Tough Leicas

Three Leicas on display at the Ginza Leica store in Tokyo. From right to left: a Leica II that deflected a bullet and saved the photographer’s life. The middle camera is a Leica II with lenses found in the Hindenburg wreckage. To the left is an SL2 MOT with Motor and 35 mm Summicron that fell 25,000 foot (7600 m) from a Phantom II fighter jet. Battered but in one piece, and deemed repairable by Leica.

Love, Hate, and How I Ended Up With a Zorki

I love the work of the older shooters who used Leicas. Capa, Cartier-Bresson, giants who used what has always been a top of the line camera to make their images. And yet, I really do not like modern photography taken with Leica cameras. I dislike it as passionately as I love the older work. Perhaps more so.

My problem was twofold. First, the look totally changed. For me, the newer images look more sterile, less human, and less desirable. One of the reasons I don’t actually like using digital is it makes the world look like a car commercial. You know the ones: shiny new car rolls down pristine clean streets with perfect green verges on them. Kind of a “City of Tomorrow” vibe to it. There’s nothing wrong with that, except it doesn’t reflect the world as I see it. I thought I was alone in this issue until I read this article on Leicaphilia and realized I was not the only one who had noticed.

The other problem was the outright wankery of Leica users. I’ve never seen a more arrogant and condescending group in my entire life, and I spend a fair amount of time around lawyers. While I could afford a Leica rig, I didn’t want to be associated with that sort of behavior. There may be nice guys using Leicas out there. I just have never met them in person nor dealt with them online.

I still wanted to try a rangefinder other than my tiny Olympus XAs. I love those cameras, but something with interchangeable lenses was desirable. What I really wanted was to be able to create work similar to what I fell in love with. I explored my options and decided to get a Soviet rangefinder. All of the Soviet era range finders are copies of Leicas to some degree or other. I settled on a Zorki-4K. Bright viewfinder, nice and classic looking. It has the standard oddities of Soviet design. You must cock the shutter before changing the speeds or it will seize up. The film advance is a bit peculiar and sounds like a coffee grinder. However, the build quality is actually quite good. I don’t know if it is just my example or not, but it’s nice. The Zorki uses the Leica Thread Mount (M39) which has some very nice lenses available. The Soviet ones are cheaper than the Leica ones, but they give the look I was wanting.

Of course, since it’s my first real range finder, I’m still getting used to the focus and framing, but it gets easier on a daily basis. Other Zorki users have been helpful and forthcoming about problems and how to fix them.

This is the solution I was hoping for, and the beginning of a nice, long relationship.

Andrew MacGregor. Reprinted with permission of Mr. MacGregor. You can find the original post at shootfilmridesteel.com

Resurrecting an Ebay IIIg

Before and After

One of the pleasures of buying old Leicas is that, if you ask, sometimes you’ll get the backstory from the seller about the camera you’re buying. Usually it’ll be regarding an old beater that’s been in a box in the closet for some time, often since the death of the original owner. The seller – a son, daughter, or heir – knows little to nothing about cameras but knows, in some sense, that dad’s old Leica is probably still worth enough to sell it on Ebay.

I recently picked up a IIIg with collapsible Summicron and 135mm Steinheil Munchen Culminar. From the pictures and the description buying the camera was a 50/50 proposition – it might be functional, it might not. The optics might be clear and trouble free, they might be fogged, full of fungus and worthless. Considering the potential risks, I threw in a last minute lowball bid and won.

Imagine my surprise when I received the camera and found it to be in exceptional condition: bright viewfinder, contrasty rangefinder, almost unmarked chrome body, shutter speeds fully functional to 1 second. Other than the vulcanite having dried and flaked off, the body itself almost looked new. The Summicron was immaculate: almost no marks on it, beautiful front coatings, no haze and almost no dust. It just needed a good cleaning. The Steinheil was full of fungus and went directly to the bin. No loss. Wasn’t interested in the lens to begin with.

I emailed the seller to thank him for the camera, told him I would keep it and use it with pleasure and asked him what he knew of its providence. He replied:

I’m glad to know you will take great care of my dad’s camera. He used it a lot when we went to the beach and mostly on vacations to the Caribbean, Hawaii, California, Puerto Rico, Europe, etc. That camera has literally been around the whole world as my parents were people who loved to travel. I mostly remember him setting up the focus, aperture and fiddling around for the longest time with it when taking a picture of my mom and me. My mom would get so mad because we would literally be standing and posing for 5 minutes waiting for him to get the perfect clear shot while listening to his portable radio play the theme song to Dr. Zhivago, the only song he liked to listen too!

Sadly, my dad suffered a major stroke in 1982, and never recovered from it. He passed away in 1984. So now that I think about it, the last time the camera was ever used was probably 1980 or ’81 when I graduated from H.S. When we went on local trips, they always used my mom’s cheesy Kodak. Only at the beach for some reason he liked to use that Leica.
So as I mentioned, it sat in a box on the shelf all these years. It never got wet, (outside of light rain which I believe is where the staining came from inside the carrying case). It was never abused.The black plastic outside of the camera must have become brittle while it was sitting around on the shelf. The broken pieces were lying inside the case as if they literally fell off as it was sitting. One or two small sections broke away as I was handling and inspecting it. I have never operated that camera a single time as my father wouldn’t let me touch it! My mother never knew how to work it. So I literally know nothing about it. I don’t know what battery power’s it and had no clue how to load the film. I was even afraid to clean it as I didn’t know how sensitive it is. I assume the black plastic on the camera can be replaced and if so you will have a mint 1950s or older camera in great condition. I wish you all the luck with it.

I love stories like this. Clearly, this camera meant something to his father, and it’s nice to know I can give it a second life and respect it in the same way his dad did. I looked up the serial number and found it had been made in the year of my birth, a further happy coincidence.

I’ve since sent of to Cameraleather.com for a tan griptac covering. Morgan sent it to me within the week and I recovered the camera with a minimum of fuss. This one is a keeper.

Actually Using An Old Leica to, You Know, Take Pictures

A sublimely beautiful Black Paint Leica IIIg. You can actually take pictures with it

Call me a poseur, or a hipster, but old screw mount Leicas are really fun. Not just setting them on a shelf and admiring them, or walking around the house while fondling their knurled knobs and beautifully machined parts (as I’m known to do), but actually taking them out and shooting film with them, just like they were meant to do. They’re so ‘retro’ that they’re not, and for those with a philosophical bent, this sort of meta-activity (activity meant to comment on the activity itself) can be immensely satisfying, not to mention the pathetic looks you’ll get from the iphone crowd or, better yet, the conspiratorial nods you’ll sometimes receive from a fellow traveller of advanced age. For me, however, the best part is passing paths with somebody sporting a digital Leica with “Swiss Anti-Fingerprint Coating,” often wearing a beret and taking pictures of people in coffee shops in the touristy parts of town, Billingham or Ono bag conspicuous by its immaculate appearance. These folks, when they notice you – and trust me, they’ll notice you, because for all gearheads the act of being out and about with a camera is all about seeing and being seen – often wear a look of morbid fascination, fixation admixed with potential danger, as if I was carrying a live grenade with the pin removed. I suspect they really want to inquire about it, but don’t quite know what it is or what to make of it, or, if it goes that far, how to use it.

I’m often asked, usually by the iphone crowd, “Does that thing work?” Hell yes it works, because it was built to work seemingly forever, because it’s a sublime fusion of simplicity and function, overbuilt to last for as long as you continue to service it. Keep it in use, and the most you’ll have to do is send it off to a reputable service tech like Youxin Ye every 30 years or so. I have no doubt that my grandkid’s grandkids, if they were of a mind (and could figure out how to load the thing) could be using it in another 100 years. Try that with your M240, or is it an M260 now?

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Of course, some of the earlier screw mount Leicas – the IA, for example – are so outdated that even a hopeless romantic like me finds them impractical to use. In 2000, leica offered the an 0-Series replica, fully functional and sold through Leica dealers, to celebrate the 75th birthday of the 35mm Leica camera. The camera is virtually identical to the 1923 Ur-Leica prototype #104 resident in the Leica Museum. No thanks. I like my nostalgia authentic. In my mind, using one of these is like going to Las Vegas and claiming you’ve seen the Eiffel Tower. If I’m going to use a screw mount Leica, I’m going to use the best, most technologically advanced screw mount Leica ever built – the Leica IIIg, not some cheesy historical replica dedicated to the Sultan Of Brunei [on a side note: how is it that Leica culture could be so schizophrenic as to give us both the sublime IIIg, M2/M3 and M4 and also the “Hello Kitty” M6?].Released in 1957, the IIIg is Leica’s last screw mount camera. Had it been released in 1950 or 1953, it would be have been far more influential in subsequent Leica lore, because it’s a superb camera that’s really fun to use. Leitz had introduced the Leica M3 four years earlier in 1953 as a clean sheet design with a new lens mount and the now iconic M styling. The M3 set a new standard for 35mm rangefinders that lasts to this day.

The IIIg was introduced as the logical last evolutionary step of the old Barnack design series, a last tip of the hat to more conservative Leicaphiles who still preferred the familiarity of the Barnack camera. Its new features were incremental – the same basic ergonomics of the IIIf with a redesigned top cover and a larger and improved viewfinder similar to the M3, including an extra frosted window for the projection of different frame lines into the viewfinder.

Leitz produced and offered the IIIg for only 3 years, 1957-60, years when the M3 was meeting with professional raves and impressive sales. Japanese manufacturers were also offering their updated alternatives to the M3; the IIIg not only had to compete against the better spec’d M3, Canon P and Nikon S3, but after 1958, the Leica M2, itself a runaway success much like the M3. Next to these now iconic cameras, the Leica IIIg was a technological dinosaur, lacking the combined VF/RF assemblies of the M3 and the Canon and Nikon that allowed for a single, much larger eyepiece for simultaneous focusing and composing.

The author’s incredibly cool Leica IIIg

The Leica IIIg was much like the screw mount Leicas that had been produced by Leitz since the 20’s, featuring only incremental changes from the previous Barnack Leica, the IIIf ‘Red Dial:” A larger .7 mag viewfinder with two sets of illuminated, parallax corrected framelines for the 50/90 focal lengths; Shutter speeds calibrated with a modern shutter speed progression – the 2/4/8/15/30/60…. ; Separate flash synch dial replaced with two flash settings at 1/50 and 1/25th on the shutter speed dial; A film reminder dial placed on the back of the body that exceeded ASA 100.

The IIIg is not as common as earlier Barnacks. Consequently, they sell for substantially more than a well cared for IIIc or IIIf, and most of them sit on collector’s shelves or circulate among us Leicaphiles in quixotic buy/sell attempts to finally satiate an obsessive compulsion to find The Perfect Leica.

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Above is a photo I took in a Paris street with my IIIg and a first generation collapsible Summicron. The photo isn’t going to win any photojournalism awards, I’m sure, but I really like it just the same. It reminds me of what I love about the city – an eclectic mix of the profane and the sacred, where the beautiful peeks out at you in the most unexpected places. It also seems appropriate that it was taken with an old Leica, the sort used by HCB for many if his iconic Parisian photos. What’s printed above is a simple scan of the negative with some minor fiddling in Photoshop. But I also have an 10×15 silver print of the same photo, printed by HCB’s own master printer George Fevre, one of my most treasured photographic possessions. How cool is that? My own Parisian “decisive moment,” captured with an iconic Leica film camera and printed by one of the World’s most masterful printers, the same guy who printed HCB’s stuff. That’s what you call “living the dream.”