5cm 3.5 Tessar : sort of screw mount

I have a small sized 5cm 3.5 Tessar that has a screw mount but it does not fit a Leica. It is not in M-42 mount either.

Did Braun Paxette has a Tessar 5cm 3.5 lens available?

Did Braun Paxette have a Tessar ..

Measure the diameter of the mount in millimeters, then someone can look it up for you. It may also be just the front half of a Tessar that was originally screwed into a shutter.

Patrick,

 

The serial number of the lens is also printed twice at the rear of the lens mount. This is not an adapted lens. It is also not dientical to a Paxette lens I used to have. That other lens would easily mount on a Leica with its 39mm mount. This Tessar is slightly wider. It looks like a 40mm mount.

Is it marked Jena? Perhaps a Contax or Netta? We'd have to see it I think.

It is the lens in the middle.<div></div>

Sorry... the lable should be : middle lens is mystery lens

It may be a lens for the old 40mm mount Praktiflex before it was changed to 42mm.

Raid,

 

You seem to be answering your own question?!? I wasn't aware of a pre-42mm screw mount?

Any one out there with a 40mm Praktiflex?

Exakta VP mount was 39,5 mm diameter 0,5mm pitch latter replaced by 39,8/0,75 mm, but there was no 50 mm lens for

VP Exakta, standard lens was a 75-80 mm one.

 

Praktiflex (40,0/1,0 mm) could be a likely candidate, though.

 

Regards,

 

Miha

Hi Raid<br>

Yes, Braun did do a 5cm Tessar lens but if it was the Braun version it would fit on your Leica but not focus correctly.

Also from the images I have seen of this lens, it has a scalloped focusing ring unlike yours. There were a few odd screw fittings around in the early '50s. The original Pentax (Asahiflex) had a non standard screw mount too.<br>

Steve S

"Any one out there with a 40mm Praktiflex?"

 

Probably not too many. The Praktiflex was released in 1939, shortly before WWII when the german government reduced (or even prohibited) camera manufacturing for the public. It seems as if some 40mm Praktiflexes were manufactured post-war. The front plate of the first 42mm Praktiflex model was interchangeable with the 40mm thread front plate, and some people think that some of the 40mm Praktiflexes were converted to M42 mount. There are some photos of 40mm Praktiflexes around on the web, so at least some items have made their way to the public.

Robot or Korelle Reflex?

It can't be Robot, the mount is only 26 mm diameter. Also 3 3/4 cm Tessars, not 5 cm ones, were employed as standard lenses

 

Korelle Reflex is aalso an unlikely choice, standard lenses were 75 or 80 mm one, although lens mount diameter may be close.

I discovered last night a website in Germany that has a photo of a Praktiflex with this lens. It looks identical to it. He puts a price of EURO250 on the lens. The possibilities seems to be plenty, as seen above, but I am now favoring the possibility that it is for the Praktiflex. I bought three different 50mm Tessars together online, and they are very clean.

The price quoted above was for lens plus camera [i think]

A no.1 Compur shutter has front threads of 40mm with a 0.75 pitch. But since it appears to be a whole lens and not just the front element set, it's probably for that early Praktiflex.

Actually the M40x1 Praktiflexes were made up to Sept 1949, The last year of production (perhaps simply assembly of left-over parts - a common Eastern practice - waste not...) overlaps with the last true Praktiflex* with the first M42x1 lens mount. The earlier Praktiflexes were virtually identical to the pre-war models, even including the spring-loaded, instant return mirror introduced on the first Praktiflex in March of 1939 (just a trifle earlier than the copy of the Praktiflex made after the war by Asahi). Later models lost the instant-return mirror and the shutter release was moved down to the front of the camera on the users right -- the common practice in the Prakticas produced after October 1949.

 

*The Praktiflex of later times was simply a Praktica FX rebadged as a Praktiflex FX for export.

 

Sources:

 

Alexander Schulz, 2002 Praktiflex. Lindemanns Verlag.

 

Richard Hummel, 1995 Spiegelreflexkaameras aus Dresden. Edition Reintzsch, Leipzig.

 

Here's a picture of the M40x1 Tessar on a late model Praktiflex.<div></div>

Addendum

 

In my experience the M40x1 Praktiflexes are much easier to find than the M42 version. I have four different models, all post-war, but have not yet located one of the M42 models (Hummel Nr 080)

 

If anyone has an M42 Praktiflex (NOT the FX model) they want to unload, let me know. It should look the same as the one shown above, except it would be black leatherette.