Leica Showcase A walk with the M240 and a 50mm collapsible Leitz Summicron

rflove

Veteran
I've been playing withe the CL and M lenses and having no joy with the cheap Fotasy adapter, don't buy one. So I started shooting images with the same lens in the adapted CL as well as the M240. Guess what, there's nothing wrong with the lens or either camera so my wasted walk and time shooting with the CL and adapted 50 'Cron was only an education that I should have learn long ago. You get what you pay for in most occasions.
Anyway, I went out today with the M240 and the 'cron and managed to capture some interesting images. I developed them with Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro 2 from the Nik collection (I decided B&W looked nice... Taken in very bright sunlight.
Not bad for an old uncoated lens...


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Very nice results. I couldn't own a collapsible - I know what I'm like, the glass would break under my ownership, I hear they can be very delicate things.

I don't know about them being delicate... Never heard it before. I do try to take care of my lenses though.. It's an amazing lens specially for the price I paid for it..
 
Here are the cold images I took in the Ga Tech campus. It's empty, hardly anyone about. Easy to keep social distance and great for capturing images without dodging people and stuff. La
back through the city and the park.
I did a bit of developing in the shots, some more than others, the sunlight was too bright and I did not bring a cap. Could not see anything in the screen until I got home and downloaded the images to my computer with Lightroom.


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ter I walked



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Very nice- I need to pull my collapsible Summicron out.

Some shots with mine are here-

All of the Summicrons are coated. The later Summitars are coated. It is rare for a Summar to be coated- would have been sent in to a shop to be coated.
 
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Very nice- I need to pull my collapsible Summicron out.

Some shots with mine are here-

All of the Summicrons are coated. The later Summitars are coated. It is rare for a Summar to be coated- would have been sent in to a shop to be coated.

Nice shots! I'm liking my collapsible 'cron a lot today. It's an easy lens to carry on the M240, very light and small. And it looks very cool as well.
 
Apparently the glass and the front part. This won’t be an issue to most Leica owners who are understandably very careful looking after their gear.
... except maybe for that fact that wanting to clean a cherished object can lead to it being damaged - cleaning marks on the front element are the most common problem for these lenses. And that's affecting the coating - as far as I know, the lens stays largely usable, but it doesn't look nice. My Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515/2 has massive cleaning marks on the front element (and so my Industar-61L/D - but on its rear element); nevertheless, the Nettar, a super-cheap folder with a run-off-the-mill triplet lens (a 105mm f/6.3 Novar Anastigmat), still delivers very nice images - if, that is, you're into slightly lower contrast - and shoot B&W, which is all I've used so far. The Industar is quite an interesting performer, too ...

So, if it's not for the aesthetics, I think even a "damaged" collapsible Summicron and Summitar may be very desirable lenses indeed - and the shots in this thread certainly prove that! Nice work!

M.
 
The front glass is soft, and the lens is "soft-coated". Leica used a "drip-coating" process as Zeiss held a patent for vacuum-deposit "hard" coating.

I've seen some Summicrons that were opaque, send one of them to John Van Stelton to be polished and coated. $200, the lens is like new. The one sent was an early "Thorium glass" lens, he cured the yellowing of the glass as well. SN below 105xxxx used Thoriated glass- which is radioactive.
 
I like the early Thorium Summicron lenses. I have a couple.

I have a Russian Dosimeter I bought a few years ago and a lot of lenses I tested are surprisingly radioactive. Some Yashica SLR lenses are very hot.

I have one 1952 Rolex that has a radium dial. That one showing such high levels of radiation it is scary. I won't wear it now.
 
Some radioactive lenses *are* scary as well - I have a couple as well: two Pentacon 80mm Biometars (the older ones, including the most common "zebra" version, uses Thoriated glass), they're moderate, but still a bit too hot for my taste; their Flektogon 50mm sibling is hotter still on its rear element, so it's a bit of a worry to carry on the camera because you basically get gamma while walking ... It's not as if it were dangerous, really, the dosage isn't high enough, but you shouldn't carry it all day, every day for any length of time. FWIW, I own MC versions of both lenses (Biometar 50mm and Flektogon 50mm) that are completely free of radioactive materials.

What I find worse and more of a bother: Both the 38mm f/1.8 and 40mm f/1.4 for the original Olympus Pen use Thoriated glass, and both lenses are quite hot. The good news is that the body seem to stop most of the radiation that's mostly produced by the rear elements again. Still, when measuring the Pen's viewfinder, some of the radiation gets deflected by the mirror; not really dangerous, but still not quite harmless on the long run. Of course, the chances of getting a damaging amounts of radiation by using the camera and lenses as intended are remote. It's just something I wasn't expecting.

M.
 
The early collapsible Summicron is unusual in that the front element is radioactive. I keep a filter on it. It is an "Alpha" emitter, easily shielded. Don't ingest it. The world's most stupid lens cleaning video is of a guy hitting a radioactive Takumar with a sledge hammer. I wonder if that idiot got stomach cancer.
 
The Collapsible Summicron is single coated. Unless your coating has been polished off, why do you think it is uncoated?

I was told that by the person who sold me the lens. I assumed he knew what he was talking about, he's generally a knowledgeable person regarding what stuff he has/had.
 
By the time Leica produced the Summicron they were single coating all their lenses. Soft coating, as Brian says, but coated just the same.

If you're lucky enough to find a collapsible Summicron that was put away with a filter on the front element, it might still be in nice shape. I would say 80% to 90% of the examples I have seen have some sort of front element damage, either fine scratches, "cleaning marks", or the front coating actually worn away.

The f1.5 Xenons were not coated, but the Summicrons were.
 
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