Uncommon, Rare, and Collector's Delights.

[boojum]

The unfortunate reality is that explosives and poisons are easy to make and if you do not know how the information is available on the internet. But danger has always been present. So what is needed is a greater sense of responsibility. Can it be 100%? No, but we can reduce the incidence by teaching responsibility. I always have hope.

 

[Coldkennels]

Thermite is a very interesting and very easy to mix in the back room of a junior high chemistry lab. A half-baked form of napalm too.

Polystyrene and petrol will make a passable napalm... I think it was my old chemistry teacher who taught me that. He also told my class basic methods to make plastic explosives and pipe bombs. Frankly, I have no idea how he stayed in that job.

Getting a bit off track, but this is one of the biggest issues with the modern idea of "airport security" - so many every day items can be used to cause mischief or harm. You can't stop someone who's determined to cause trouble. Hell, someone once pointed out to me that while we're restricting liquids to 100ml, 100ml of sarin would still be enough to cause some real problems on a plane (and it's not like terrorists haven't used home-made sarin before), and there's more than enough energy in a fully-charged laptop battery to put a hole in the side of a plane if it was explosively shorted out, but we'd never try to tell businessmen they can't fly with their laptops.

Meanwhile, people are so stressed out about the whole arrangement that people are getting removed from planes for playing with a Hasselblad. The world's gone mad.

 

[rfaspen]

The poor guy was playing with his "new" Rolleiflex. ☹️. I was just on a flight and thinking about that guy....I left my M2 in the bag and resisted the temptation to get photos of scenery below.

I sure do also remember volatile iodide......"pops" another memory of my mom coming home from a shopping trip.... apparently some time after I had whipped up a batch of ""stuff". I must have dropped a few drops on the floor in my haste (um, yeah I mixed it up at the kitchen sink 😮). All I can really remember is hearing my mom come in the front door, walk into the kitchen to put groceries away, and pop, pop, pop! Then I heard my mom call my name in that special way that lets you know..... trouble. Must have been about 12 or 13 years old. So long ago and so many "dangerous" things we used to do. I told my son, when he was in high school, that I would have been suspended, arrested, or expelled if attending his school today. We were never malicious or anything, just kids. I never did get a chance to teach my son how to make his own fireworks. Maybe during his next visit? Thanks guys!

 

[CMur12]

I sure do also remember volatile iodide......"pops" another memory of my mom coming home from a shopping trip.... apparently some time after I had whipped up a batch of ""stuff". I must have dropped a few drops on the floor in my haste (um, yeah I mixed it up at the kitchen sink 😮). All I can really remember is hearing my mom come in the front door, walk into the kitchen to put groceries away, and pop, pop, pop! Then I heard my mom call my name in that special way that lets you know..... trouble. Must have been about 12 or 13 years old. So long ago and so many "dangerous" things we used to do. I told my son, when he was in high school, that I would have been suspended, arrested, or expelled if attending his school today. We were never malicious or anything, just kids. I never did get a chance to teach my son how to make his own fireworks. Maybe during his next visit? Thanks guys!

My friends and I made explosives with calcium carbide, which any kid could buy in a hardware store. We also charged electrolytic capacitors from old radio chassis on a Model T Ford coil and a lantern battery.

I remember other kids making iodine crystals that exploded on impact. One kid made some of these crystals, packed them carefully in cotton, and stashed them in a flat plastic case that he unwisely stowed in his back pocket. On the school bus, someone shoved him backwards, cracking that case on the steel edge of one of the seats, the crystals responded and burned the kid's butt!

Those were the days!😎

- Murray

 

[boojum]

I am always amazed at just how many male children make it to 21. ;o)

 

[SamuraiJack]

Few images of my Canon 85mm 1.5 LTM II. Would love to know more about this lens but there's hardly any information to be found.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

At this point: The Canon 85/1.5 is in very high demand for conversion to a Motion Picture lens.
The Canon 85/1.5 is a double-Gauss design, an unusual 7 element in 4 group design 1-4-2-1. This is the same layout as the Simlar 5cm F1.5, which is reputed to have been computed in 1937. The lens used to get a "Bum-Rap" for being soft. More likely just too difficult for people to focus on screwmount cameras. I found my copy to be a very good performer. Bought it at $400, sold for 6x that amount. Paid for the 50/1 Nokton and the 90/1.5 Mitakon.

Wide-Open on the Leica M9.

 

[SamuraiJack]

Actually I expected worse quality from a sixty year old lens, I´ve had quite some vintage lenses but never of this quality and rarity. All I do is shoot wide open.

Came across those pictures earlier and posted some myself too in street photography. I´m probably keeping it a few weeks longer before I´m selling it.

 

[boojum]

Potassium Chlorate and flares. Bright red light and lots of it.

 

[S.H.]

Had for years this ltm biogon... I finally bought a if/iiif for it. Seems to fit OK. Now shipping off the iiif for a service and new curtains, it sat for decades in a display case. At least the summicron is not scratched.

View attachment 4836754

I have a nice lineup of lenses to go with it. I also have a biometar and an orthometar but the rear of the lens interferes with the rf cam at short distance. I wonder about selling these and buying a less fiddly wide angle.

Well...

The rear element of the biogon has some kind of sleeve (on the right)



It looks like it touches the round RF cam on my IIIf : properly focussing it is impossible... Same thing happens on a wartime IIIc. I don't see myself dismantling the RF cam, and making it thinner. Not sure how the sleeve can be removed either.

On what camera this frigging lens could have been used in 1942? IIIb ? Were some Leica specially adapted for these?

 

[Miles.]

Is the barrel original CZJ, and what is the serial #?

Have seen custom jobs (of the era) that were made to mount but not to be RF coupled? Example attached.

 

[S.H.]

According to the serial this one is original zeiss ltm, coupled. Not a custom job... does not look modified either, and it has been used before obviously.

 

[Räuber]

My last Ebay purchases were all Sonnar 5cm F/1.5 lenses. I have to save some money the next month...

• LEFT = very early black and Nickel Sonnar with aperture scale marked as F8. But this batch is something special. The scale ends on a unlabeled stop of about F9,5. This variation is called f8+ by some.
• MIDDLE = wartime LTM Sonnar 5cm F/1,5 with T coating. This one was sitting on the shelf at Ebay for some years now. I finally made the purchase because it is an authentic Carl Zeiss Jena LTM Sonnar. Those authentic ones are very rare and the asking price is more than justified. I have a second one that was assembled in the FSU and both lenses are as sharp as it gets.
• RIGHT = this is not really a 5cm even if this is what the engraving is claiming. It is a 5,8cm Sonnar. Those usually go for a lot of money but sometimes you might be lucky because the seller is not aware of what he is selling. As far as we know the optics might be created by CZJ but the barrel is made by an unknown (probably black market) manufacturer.

 

[Mos6502]

Soligor 35 (aka Firstflex 35) by Berang Berang, on Flickr

I've spent about 10 years finding a decent example of this unusual camera. Last year I paid a lot of money for one that was advertised as being in great working condition, which turned out to be non-functional. I sent it back. Patience paid off as I ended up finding this example, still with the original box for about half as much money only a few months later. Pure luck, as in the past decade only about five have shown up on ebay. The Firstflex 35 was the first leaf shutter 35mm SLR made in Japan, and was imported to the U.S. by Soligor as the Soligor 35. Imports had barely begun when Soligor struck up a deal with Miranda to import a much better (and more attractive) focal plane shutter SLR, and the Soligor 35 was history.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

My latest addition

US Army Signal Corps PH-629/UF , a.k.a. the Premium Instrument Corporation's "Military Kardon" camera.
This "Cold Camera" from 1949-1954. Only 1654 made.
Featuring a 6-element Kodak 47mm f/2 Ektar lens.

 

[Alpsman]

My latest addition

US Army Signal Corps PH-629/UF , a.k.a. the Premium Instrument Corporation's "Military Kardon" camera.
This "Cold Camera" from 1949-1954. Only 1654 made.
Featuring a 6-element Kodak 47mm f/2 Ektar lens.

Interesting piece of machinery. Never even heard or read about it.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Interesting piece of machinery. Never even heard or read about it.

The story is an interesting one,
Basically during WW2, the US Government asked Leitz N.Y. if they could produce Leica IIIa cameras for the military.
Leitz N.Y. couldn't do it, but Peter Kardon of the Premium Instrument Corp. went to work to create a copy that could be mass-produced.
Unfortunately the war ended and the contract was cut short.
In 1947 Kardon's design was adapted to resist heat and cold temperatures by request of the Goverment, hence the bigger knobs to operated it with gloves.
In 1949 it was accepted and produced until 1954

 

[Mos6502]

There's a lot of myth about the Kardon. How does it really compare to the Japanese and Soviet Leica clones?

 

[Alpsman]

The story is an interesting one,
Basically during WW2, the US Government asked Leitz N.Y. if they could produce Leica IIIa cameras for the military.
Leitz N.Y. couldn't do it, but Peter Kardon of the Premium Instrument Corp. went to work to create a copy that could be mass-produced.
Unfortunately the war ended and the contract was cut short.
In 1947 Kardon's design was adapted to resist heat and cold temperatures by request of the Goverment, hence the bigger knobs to operated it with gloves.
In 1949 it was accepted and produced until 1954

Thanks for your info! Now I'm a little wiser 🙂

 

[JoeV]

My friends and I made explosives with calcium carbide, which any kid could buy in a hardware store. We also charged electrolytic capacitors from old radio chassis on a Model T Ford coil and a lantern battery.

I remember other kids making iodine crystals that exploded on impact. One kid made some of these crystals, packed them carefully in cotton, and stashed them in a flat plastic case that he unwisely stowed in his back pocket. On the school bus, someone shoved him backwards, cracking that case on the steel edge of one of the seats, the crystals responded and burned the kid's butt!

Those were the days!😎

- Murray

Back in the day, the Improvised Munitions Blackbooks, published by Paladin Press and advertised in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine, had an allure to young males such as myself. It turns out that they were reprints of US Army field manuals. Paid for by the taxpayer. Then, post-9/11, they became “terrorist” literature for a few years, with people forgetting their official USG origins. It also makes me wonder how many of those techniques were taught by the US Army School of the Americas to “freedom fighters” in Central America, many of whom are now the military wing of the narco cartels. Learn from the best, be the best!