43 Rumors

Any prospective buyers out there, you did note in the auction description that even though it was made by E. Leitz, this is not a “Leica” lens, meaning it likely was designed for a special purpose and will not produce good results in general photography…? Also, that it is not an M-mount lens, has been adapted to the M3 body included in the sale, and can’t be used on any other body…? So the idea of sticking it on your Micro 4/3 camera with an off-the-shelf adapter is probably out…?

You hear about lots of interesting old, oddball ultra-wide-aperture lenses out there, dating from the old pre-computer era when the only way to record the output of your oscilloscope, fluoroscope, spectrograph, or whatever was to snap a photo of it. Normally these were designed to produce “usable” results (i.e. sharpness didn’t matter much) at only one specific aperture and distance, and a lot of companies made them (Wollensak Oscillo-Raptar, anyone?) It’s got to be a fun project to track these down and it may be possible to make, er, interesting photos or (more likely) videos with them… just don’t go expecting Noktor/Nokton/Noctilux-quality results…