Retina Tele-Xenar 135mm F/4 Filter Thread

[Hcompton79]

I'm looking for a lens hood that will work for the 135mm Retina Tele-Xenar F/4 lens for my Retina IIIS however I'm unable to locate what kind would have originally been used with it.

It is threaded, and it appears to be a 58mm filter thread. However, the manual refers to it as a 60mm thread.

For those of you who have this lens, either for the IIIS or the Reflex S/III/IV, will it take a standard 58mm lens hood?

I should add this is the bell shaped silver early version of this lens which has the rangefinder cam, not the later straight black bodied version for the Instamatic reflex.

 

[Chris Sherlock]

The answer is simple, 60mm would be the size of a push-on filter, 58mm is the size of a screw-in filter. Why Kodak followed this practice, I have no idea. Likewise, the filters for most of the Retina standard lenses were labelled 30, but the thread is 29.5mm. Regards, Chris

 

[Hcompton79]

Thanks for the clarification Chris.

 

[peterm1]

Although I am inclined to agree with Chris' answer above there is a trick you can use if indeed you ever do come across something that has a 60mm screw thread - that is to buy a stepping ring. For example, with a little online hunting you should find it possible to get a 60mm to 62mm step up ring which will allow you to use a 62mm screw hood on the lens. On the other hand, I recently was given a 60mm hood (not sure what it was for) and I managed to find a 58mm to 60mm step up ring which allows me to mount the hood on a lens with a 58mm screw thread. I do this kind of thing a lot. A while back I found some very nice (and cheap) little 43mm hoods from China and decided that given their shape these would be ideal for mounting on a variety of different LTM and Leica M lenses which unfortunately have different diameters. So I bought a variety of stepping rings that matched the lenses' needs: 39-43mm (for most Leica lenses) ; 40-43mm (for Canon lenses); 40.5-43mm (for German lenses); 41-43mm (for Leica Summarit Lens) etc. Works fine.

 

[Bill Jones]

Although I am inclined to agree with Chris' answer above there is a trick you can use if indeed you ever do come across something that has a 60mm screw thread - that is to buy a stepping ring. For example, with a little online hunting you should find it possible to get a 60mm to 62mm step up ring which will allow you to use a 62mm screw hood on the lens. On the other hand, I recently was given a 60mm hood (not sure what it was for) and I managed to find a 58mm to 60mm step up ring which allows me to mount the hood on a lens with a 58mm screw thread. I do this kind of thing a lot. A while back I found some very nice (and cheap) little 43mm hoods from China and decided that given their shape these would be ideal for mounting on a variety of different LTM and Leica M lenses which unfortunately have different diameters. So I bought a variety of stepping rings that matched the lenses' needs: 39-43mm (for most Leica lenses) ; 40-43mm (for Canon lenses); 40.5-43mm (for German lenses); 41-43mm (for Leica Summarit Lens) etc. Works fine.

Peter
Do you leave the stepping rings permanently on the lenses and have standardized lens cap sizes also?

Bill

 

[peterm1]

Peter
Do you leave the stepping rings permanently on the lenses and have standardized lens cap sizes also?

Bill

Mostly the hoods/rings get left on the lenses together for most of the time. If I take the hood off, the ring generally goes with it unless I plan to use the hood on a differently sized lens in which case I will need a different ring. That's my practice anyway, but I can't see why someone could not decide to do otherwise. BTW I should have added that I suggested using a 60-62mm stepping ring because 62mm is a far more common filter size than 60mm and hence 62mm diameter hood is likely to be also. I used 43mm for my little scheme described above as it was of large enough diameter to use with a variety of lenses and it just so happened that I found a 43mm hood style I liked. (43mm was also a reasonably standard diameter filter ring size back in the day so I was also able to use it on one or two such lenses - the Nikon 105mm rangefinder and 135mm rangefinder lenses for example)