Leica Showcase Canikon50mm F1.5 LTM Mount lens.

[Brian]

Many people talk about "Canikon". Some have used Nikon lenses on Canon bodies, a few have even used Canon lenses on Nikon bodies.

Few have used Canikon lenses on a Leica. Maybe me and the friend that I lent this one to for a few months.

This lens is made from optical components of Canon and Nikon Sonnar formula lenses, the front section of a Canon 50mm F1.5, rear section of a Nikkor 5cm F1.4 Nikkor-SC, and focus mount from a third Canon 50/1.5. All in the parts bin. This lens is rangefinder coupled across the full focus range, which "was a trick to pull off".

It is the King of the over-corrected for spherical aberration Bokeh look, Baby.

Wide-Open on the M9.

 

[Brian]

Cherry Blossoms, wide-open.

 

[Brian]

A couple more at F1.5, because it's just boggles my mind that this lens actually works...

 

[Brian]

And... The lens does have an aperture, and it does work, after some trial and error and almost destroying it in an attempt to use a Shim to control the stand-off of the ear group. Would have been nice, but put too much pressure on the aperture mechanism and it stopped working... So, "Plan B" was used, different stand-off with less pressure.

These are at F4, where the behavior of the lens is more normal. But... It's still the King of over-corrected spherical aberration in this house.

 

[Brian]

Some day, someone will do a remake of the X-Files, or another Outer Limits with Space Aliens walking though the woods and trying to capture what the world looks like through their bulbous eyes. Then, they will google hacked lenses, see this thread and want to borrow this lens...

 

[Amin]

Very cool Franken-lens! The over-corrected SA look gets panned as being "bad" bokeh, but the more I use and take note of lens characteristics, the less I think of things in terms of good and bad, and the more I like variety.

 

[Vidar]

Cool project, I like the wild bokeh!

 

[CaptZoom]

Dood...I'm extremely curious to see the actual lens.

 

[Brian]

The front section is typical Canon 50/1.5. It was missing the rear triplet, picked it up in a trade. Getting the Nikkor rear element in was the trick, different size than the original. I wrapped it in Copper tape, which allowed it to be screwed in against the original threads for the retaining ring. After that, used JB Weld to fix into position and pushed foam rubber into the gap to act as anti-reflection. This lens is a real hack. Getting the focal length correct: used the original primary shim, screwed the rear element in until i got "two point calibration", good at infinity and close-up.

 

[CaptZoom]

Very cool Brian.