jonathan_stark

Ohmigosh....... about the time I was born. If this was my clan, I would have been no more than a 1-year old. You're makin' ME feel lost in time, man!

Before WWII Leitz sold a 73mm f1.9 Hektor lens as a portrait lens. I wouldn't say it's rare, but it's not particularly common either. There's one for sale at the www.kevincameras.com site if you want to see a picture, it's on the 4th page of Leica SM lenses.

 

Currently Cosina sells a Voigtlander 75mm f2.5 "Color Heliar" lens in Leica screw mount.

 

Died in the wool Leicaphiles probably know of others. There was a zillion 3rd party lenses made in Leica screw mount over the years.

Don't spend more than $10 on a lens, either. A couple of years ago I got a freebie LTM Jupiter 8, the seller threw it in with something I'd purchased, probably thinking she couldn't get anything for it. It's beat up on the outside, and has webs of very fine scratches on both the front and back elements. It makes surprisingly sharp pictures. I've been ignoring its condition and shooting with it, and haven't regretted it.

Jon- mostly I'm interested in Asahi-made M42 stuff. I have a pair of Spotmatics, which are my "new" cameras -- what I shoot when I "mean business" and am not playing around with my classics!! (the newer is a Spot F - 32 years old.) I have 20mm, 28mm, 35mm, 150mm, 300mm, and 400mm Takumars, as well as the 50mm and 55mm normals, and have an eye open for an 'affordable' 85mm/1.9 (an oxymoron, I know.) I also have some interesting non-Asahi lenses: a 105/2.0 Komura, and a Vivitar Series 1 35-85 zoom - a very sharp lens that flares like crazy and weighs a ton.

And MY Leica collector fantasy is a funky, mellow black Leica II from the first year (1932) with nickel hardware and heavy brassing. I've got a nicely worn 1931 90mm Elmar I'd like to mate it with.....

Mark, if you're not already familiar with the Analog Photography User Group (<a href="http://www.apug.org">APUG</a>), you might enjoy meeting some folks with sympathetic / complementary points of view.

That's quite sad. Cameras are meant to be used. Used gently and respectfully, but still used. I can proudly say that I don't have a single original box among my whole collection of 31 cameras, nor is there a single camera lacking wear and usage marks (some even put there by me!!)

Coincidentally, the Contaflex I from the new camera auction site arrived last night, and everything seems to work perfectly. Hmmmmm. I think Zeiss won that round!

 

The Marital Unit made rude noises when she saw the Contaflex last night.

 

Me- "But honeeyyyyyyyy, it was only $31!!"

 

She- "All those $31 add up you know."

 

Me- "Well, I can always sell some of them...."

 

Surprisingly, she fell for that line of BS. She should know I'll be selling them about the time I see pigs flying by..... But I gotta be cool for a while, because I need a film scanner and I want to get the darkroom running again, which means $$$ for some plumbing connections in the basement.

 

Jon- I saw your Reflex III. I'm heavily into M42, LTM, and Exakta systems, and don't want to start on Kodak S-mount also. (But who am I kidding? I'll sucumb to collector-itis eventually!) I've got a Retina IIIc (021) and thought the original Reflex would be cool to share the C-mount lens components. I was looking at Chris Sherlock's site yesterday. I might ask him if he wants the Reflex, either to fix for me, or as a spare parts donor.

You don't have enough cameras, Mike....... I can still see some bare wood in there!!!!

Mike- funny you should mention Contaflexes. I've got a Contaflex I coming on it's way from the new camera-auction.com site. Should arrive today or tomorrow.

Now Kerry Kennedy's gone and done it with his Reflex posting

yesterday...... I've been putting off telling my tale of Retina

Reflex woe and frustration, but no longer!

 

I saw one (type 025) on eBay in June 2003. Advertised as working OK

(from a camera store with 100% pos. feedback!) Silly me, shoulda

known better, but I bought it. Of course, it wasn't working OK - it

would fire only every other time it was wound and cocked. Not much

use in that condition; I try to only collect (yes, I used the "C"

word!) things I can shoot. After casting about a bit, I found a well-

known East Coast camera repair place that worked on Retina Reflexes.

Off it went.

 

Three months later it came back, with a $165 repair bill, all CLA'd

and supposedly ready to go. Loaded it with its first roll - tried to

anyway. Turned out the rewind clutch was disengaged, so the sprocket

drive was free-wheeling. But the rewind clutch button (Retina

Reflexes have these on the bottom next to the advance lever) wasn't

pushed in, and wouldn't push in. Actually the shaft to which the

button connects was pushed in - it was stuck in - and the button was

nearly unscrewed from the shaft, giving it the appearance of being in

it's 'out' position. Puzzling over this, I dry-fired it less than a

dozen times - and the rewind clutch button and a few other parts fell

out of the bottom of the camera!! CLA'd it was, all right! Gathered

up the parts, and back to the repair place it went.

 

Another 3 months passes. Never heard from them. Wrote two letters

(real letters, not e-mail - no answer.) Finally phoned, got the

owner. He asked me, "why is your camera still here?"

Ummmmmmmm...... (you can imagine the ensuing conversation.) He

promises to get it fixed right away. A few weeks later and it's back

(now 7 months after I bought it). No bill this time.

 

I loaded and started shooting. Camera seems fine, everything seems

to work. First roll comes back - every picture taken with a shutter

speed shorter than 1/15 is blank!! I open the back, start dry-

firing, and it's obvious why. This camera was reassembled so that

the Compur shutter opens and shuts before the back shutter ever

opens. Good grief, don't these people TEST anything before they send

it back?

 

After this abortive roll of film, I dry-fired the camera over 2 or so

months maybe a grand total of 100 times. Always gently - I own other

Retinas and I know about the cocking rack. During this 100 or so

cycles, the camera started to fail - the mirror would come down and

the back shutter would close at the end of the advance lever travel,

but they wouldn't catch and hold in place. Finally, the winding

system failed completely - the advance lever moves, but it doesn't

feel connected to anything internally. Perhaps a failure of the

infamous cocking rack.

 

So, I own a Retina Reflex with a beautifully clean lens, and a CLA'd

aperture and Synchro Compur running perfectly on all speeds - with no

means to cock the shutter!! What would you do? Send it back to the

same place for a 3rd time? (I don't want to drag their reputation

through the mud, but this is a well-known facility that specializes

in unusual and hard-to-fix cameras). Is there someplace else that

works on Retina Reflexes? Bald Mountain, maybe?

 

Postscript- I was at a camera show recently. There were 3 Retina

Reflexes (type 025) for sale, and one Reflex IV (type 051). None of

these 4 cameras was 100% functional in their shutter, aperture, and

winding mechanisms.

 

Sometimes I think Retina Reflexes are a lost cause. What would y'all

do?

Another excellent dealer for East Bloc besides Oleg and Cupog is "Fedka" (Yuri Bogulslavsky) who is in NYC.

"What does John Maddox charge for a Cla"

 

In 2003 John charged me $270 for a CLA on a IIIC and a Summaron lens. Money well spent. As I posted above, the camera is now a bit quieter, winding and all controls are silky smooth, and the pictures it takes prove that the shutter speeds and rangefinder are in top adjustment.

 

John's address:

 

L & J Camera Repair,

109 Royal Oak Road,

Greenville, SC 29607

 

(864) 297-6931 - call 4:00-6:00 pm

Can't comment on the winder, but I'll point out that a CLA might help the shutter sound a bit. It did with my IIIC. I recommend John Maddox for a screwmount Leica CLA.

John Morris- Wanamaker's is the 2nd largest pipe organ in the world, reckoned by number of pipes. Atlantic City convention hall is the largest, but is now 90% not working. Most of the Wanamaker's organ is working most of the time. The visible facade of the organ case shown in the picture is a little misleading as to the actual size of the thing.

I often shoot fast lenses wide open. I shoot a lot of nature - outdoors stuff on chromes. Two of my favorite (albeit very different) films are slowish: Kodachrome 64 and Velvia 50. In shade, in the late afternoon half-light, those films mean opening the lens all the way if I need to shoot hand-held. The Spotmatic I've used since 1970 came with a 55/1.8 Takumar lens. I grew up in photography taking shooting at f1.8 for granted because that lens does it very well.

"Cupog" is the eBay user ID of Gejza Dunay in Slovakia. He's a prominent seller on eBay, particularly of classic Eastern Bloc cameras. I haven't bought from him (yet) but he has a very good reputation as an honest dealer. In eBay you can look him up in "advanced search", "items from seller". Most weeks he has 100+ items for sale.

Perhaps Holy Week-Easter holiday? I've noticed he takes a week off around holidays, believe he skipped Christmas week this year too. Perhaps sales are lower than normal then and not worth the listing fees.

I "almost" made it out of the Philly Photorama show on Mar. 6, except for that ding-donged Kodak Tourist that insisted on following me home!

John Chambers- my comment was directed at the relative ease of finding another example of this lens, not it's intrinsic worth. I've been shooting 55/1.8 Takumars for 35 years - obviously I think they're worth using.

Why not just get another example? I think the 55mm f1.8 and f2.0 Takumars are pretty common, even the SMC versions. I've got a couple of 55's sitting around at home with gummed up diaphrams that aren't worth fixing. The last 55 I bought cost $10, and probably that much only because the dealer thought he had to charge at least something.

Dan- I gotta agree with you about those Beaulieu movie cameras. As a teenager seeing the ads in Modern and Popular Photography in the early 70's I thought the Beaulieu 4008 series were the most beautiful machines made by man! I didn't even have any serious interest in movie cams, just thought the Beaulieu's were gorgeous. Man, that brought back memories- heading downtown to the stationer's store at the beginning of every month to pick up the latest photo mags. I read those things cover-to-cover back then. Nowadays I can't abide them.

On my FED 2, a small turn of the screw causes a relatively large deflection in rangefinder alignment. You don't want to turn it much. Also, when adjusting for infinity, pick something that's a LONG way off - not the house across the street. Suprisingly it makes a difference.

Mike - Pacific Rim Camera has a handy summary of all the 127-film Exaktas <a href=" http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/ihagee/vp.htm ">here</a>.

Probably all they know how to do is unplug and plug in circuit boards.

 

 

In the meantime, if you're going to spend money, check out <a href="http://pentaxs.com/index.html">Erick Hendrickson</a>. I haven't used him, but there's a lot of positive buzz around. His site says he repairs the M-series Pentaxes. Might as well pay someone who appreciates the equipment he's working on.