vidom

Another one. I'm still fascinated with these tiny little cameras. None of this gear is younger than 50 years. These picturers are as sharp as it gets with APX 100 and Rodinal. My 4th gen. 50 mm Leica 'Cron doesn't do any better. The 21 Biogon alone is worth getting a contax. This is fun!<div></div>

All of these had to be scanned from prints as I don't have a negative scanner.<div></div>

Next one...<div></div>

Another one...<div></div>

More...<div></div>

I couldn't wait to get out and take some test shots. So that's what I did. The next few shots are within walking distance from my home.<div></div>

Finally, my Contaxes are back from repair. Re-united with their lenses

now.<div></div>

Then, again, I hadn't seen the pictures you've posted. There's no "L". I can't say if this is an LTM or a Paxette lens. Put it onto a Leica or LTM camera and try to get sharp pictures with the aperture wide open. If you succeed, your's is an LTM lens.

These lenses were made for LTM and for Braun Super Paxette mount. Both have 39x1 mm thread mounts, but the Paxette's lens registration (=distance from flange to back) is different from the LTM registration, so a Paxette lens can be screwed on a Leica but it won't give you proper rangefinder coupling or correct infinity focus. A few of these lenses were made for LTM, all of which are marked "L-Lineogon". Without the "L", you have a Paxette lens. As someone screwed this into an LTM-M-Adapter, your's should be the LTM version. It is a relatively rare lens, but as there is not much demand this doesn't make it valuable.

This lens exists in LTM AFAIK. As the M mount was patented and Leitz didn't license the M mount to Staeble it is unlikely that an M-mount Staeble lens was a regular item, ever. Either your's is a custom made lens or it has a glued-on LTM-to-M adaptor.

The Super Baldina in my picture does of course not have a Xenon lens, but a Xenar.

And this is the Super Baldina with a Xenon 2,8/50.<div></div>

There was the beautiful Weltini II, made by Welta. This one has a 2.0/50 Xenon lens.<div></div>

Same again - forgot the caption.<div></div>

Please excuse the bad scan quality - as I only have an old flat bed scanner I have to scan the prints. The above pic is sharp from the bottom to the top. It was taken at a distance setting of ca. 6m at f 8.

 

In a recent thread I started some of us discussed the back focus issue when using the 21 Biogon with a Kiev body. I can try to illustrate what this is about. The next picture should have been sharp at infinity; I scale focussed, using the 2m setting at f 5,6-8. Judging from the DOF scale on the lens infinity should be sharp, but it isn't. The grass in the middle ground is already fuzzy; at the front, you can count the grains of the sand dune. I think that due to a back focus difference on the Kiev body you have to scale focus and compensate for the back focus difference. It doesn't matter much when setting the lens to infinity - then infinity seems to be within the lenses DOF range, but with closer distance settings on the lens infinity gets out of the DOF range and is not sharp any more.

Now, this is what I thougth I needed a 21 mm lens for. By the way, this is the very first pic I ever took using a red filter. Maybe a bit too much. Still I like the effect.<div></div>

As my Contaxes are still not back from repair, I fooled around a bit

with my Kiev 4, a 4,5/21 Zeiss Biogon and a red filter. Funny

combination, isn't it?<div></div>

I've seen that. No, my Biogon works perfectly with my original Contax bodies, the lens itself is not flawed. If it is true that Kievs have slightly longer back focus to compensate for production tolerances it is to be expected that the infinity setting is in fact short of infinity - with any lens. For the very reasons Henry states that the 21 Biogon has to be aligned very precisely this will affect a very short WA lens much more then longer lenses. With longer lenses the back focus difference is small compared to the lens movement when focussing, not so with short focus lenses.

According to Kuc's book on post-war Contax the fact that the 35mm old-style Biogon doesn't fit has nothing to do with the thickness of the shutter curtains. When redesigning the Contax body, ZI decreased the size of the body (because Leica SM was so much smaller) so they put some of the shutter mechanics that were in a higher position in pre-war bodies into the chamber between lens and shutter, yet out of the optical path. The only lens that wouldn't fit after the redesign was the 35mm Biogon. At Zeiss Stuttgart, they were developing a new Biogon 35 anyway, so this was an accepted compromise between compatibility with pre-war lenses and the need to reduce bulk.

 

As for Kiev/Contax lens compatibility: I had started a thread about the back focus issue affecting the use of the 21mm Biogon on Kiev bodies only recently. I have tried this combination since and I think that there is an effect. I took pictures at f=8 at a distance setting of 2m; normally pictures at this setting must be sharp to infinity due to DOF, but far away subjects were not sharp; I checked this against pics I took with an original Contax IIa. There everything was as expected, so this is not a lens fault. I did get sharp results from all other Zeiss lenses I own - including a 35mm Opton Biogon - on the Kiev.

 

Peter

The body serial number indicates 1954 as year of production, so it's a relatively late one. It should have a self timer. This is, IMHO, the most beautiful SM Leica of all. Yeah, it will slow you down. Consider this an advantage. Look at the shutter cloth; if it looks crinkled the shutter will not be light tight. Listen for the slow speeds. Check the infinity setting of the rangefinder by aiming at a very distant subject. The rangefinder patch must be clean and have good visibility. Is the vulcanite ok? Everything can be repaired, but a shutter overhaul is expensive, and it is nearly impossible to find someone to replace RF mirrors. Although late IIIf are high in demand, more than ? 400-500 US would propably be too much for this combination as a user.

Obviously, you mistook a feature for a bug. Didn't you know that these ingenious German optical engineers added this special coating to enhance sharpness and contrast? It became too expensive for mass production so just a few lenses were upgraded this way. You've got a valuable collectors item!

The Kiev 4 with Jupiter 8 lens must be the best bargain in classic photography - Contax photography at less than 40 $. Nice picture!

This is why I started this thread; the problem has been discussed in the Great Holy Leica Vs. Hexar Compatibility War. The following quote was taken from Dante Stella's Hexar article on his home page:

 

"Film-flange distance issues arise with fast wideangle lenses, generally of 21mm focal length and less. This is due to the fact that at infinity with these lenses, the lens travel front-to-back is much shorter. If the flange-film distance is a tiny bit longer, focus will fall well short of infinity. Problems with fast telephoto lenses close-up, where small changes in distance require large front-to-back lens movements, are more likely the result of rangefinder alignment problems. On any Leica-type rangefinder, whether labeled "Leica," or "Konica," accuracy decreases dramatically inside 1m, to the point where even Leicas do not focus Summilux 75s correctly at 0.7m."

 

Sounds logical to me. Maybe this is really not an issue because the 21 Biogon is not exactly a high speed lens so that any tolerance falls within the depth of focus range. I'll try. Thank you all for your response!

 

Peter

This is what Peter Hennig writes on Stephen Gandy's Cameraquest

HP: "Yet it is possible to detect one functional difference between

the Zeiss Contax II/III and the Kiev copies: Zavod Arsenal

apparently decided not to meet the same high level of Zeiss accuracy

in regards to the lens back focus, the distance between the lens

and the film plane. Kiev cameras practically always have a

slightly longer back focus than original Contax specifications (if

you chose a lower accuracy this will be the best way - as the depth

of field is larger behind the motive, than in front of it)."

 

I couldn't wait any longer for my Contax IIa bodies to return from

repair so I bought a Kiev 4 to have something to use my Zeiss lenses

with in the meantime, but I haven't tried it yet. Will the back

focus difference mentioned above interfere with the use of my Biogon

4,5/21 on the Kiev? It shouldn't matter with lenses of longer focal

lengths as the relative difference is smaller, but I'd expect short

focal lengths to be affected if there really were a back focus

difference. Any first-hand experience on this forum?

 

Thanks all of you, this is a great forum!

 

Peter

Rose way above: Agfa Ambi Silette with 35, 50 and 90 lenses. The poor man's M3 indeed. One-window CRF finder with frames for all the above 3 focal lengths. First quality lenses, small, light-weight, unobtrusive. Flash synch at 1/500 - try this with a brand-new Nikon!

 

Fell far short: I spent a fortune on a well-used but clean 50mm LTM collapsible Summicron which is easily outperformed by my Jupiter 8, my Summitar and my coated 3,5 Elmar as well. Must have been a bad one.

 

Bias? Yeah. My Leica pics have to be lots better then all the rest, considering what I paid for the gear. The glow, you know?