Uncommon, Rare, and Collector's Delights.

I stumbled across a W-Nikkor 2.5cm f4 LTM lens in a lot I purchased on eBay recently. It also came with the original 2.5cm Nippon Kogaku viewfinder, lens hood, cap, and leather case. I read somewhere that only approximately 950 were made in the screwmount version, but can't say for certain.

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I wonder, does anyone have a Cook &Perkins accessories catalogue from the '50s/'60s?

They made a lot of handy stuff. I used to have the adapter shown above but it went many years ago. I still have a rather poor example of the f3.5 Elmar lens hood that doubles as an aperture ring.. I know they made focus testers for ltn lenses, an Ablon type template and I don't know what else?
Handy stuff indeed, I have a Periflex copy of their LTM focus tester.
 
I saw this on the yahoo Japan auctions. (382) カメラレンズ セット R.LEMASSON BREVETS ... - Yahoo!オークション
A set of Som Berthoit lenses that seemed to have both Leica screw and contax mounts. Probably only rangefinder coupled for the Leica and just scale focus on Contax. I wonder why other manufacturers didn’t try this, would be interesting to try out. Sold for a large amount, must be collectable.
 
I guess this is less about the lens (a Fujinon 50/1.2 in Leica thread mount) and more about ... what people do to such a rare and expensive item.

When I first tried this lens on film, my first impression was: "Gee, the focus shift is TERRIBLE on that one, clearly f/1.2 was too much of a stretch in 1950..." Then I did some more testing with a loaned auto-collimator. I found out yes, there is a bit of focus shift, but more importantly the lens back-focused at f/1.2 already.

Take it apart - look at the shim really closely this time. Yup. Sanding marks on one side of the bespoke brass washer. Uneven (at a slight angle), too. Which is why the focus felt a bit strange - the lens sat slightly askew to its focus mount. Bad words were said. As much as it broke my heart I had to sand the washer more to be even. Then the copper shim you can see on the lens in the first picture I re-manufactured from a junked 85/2.0 Sonnar which had just the right thickness at 0.02mm. Thus the issue was resolved and the lens focuses smoothly and correctly - with the calibration that Fuji's engineers intended - once again!

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However, who in their right mind sands a very expensive and rare lens to make it "work" on their digital camera? Cripes!
 
Pictures of the lens would be great. And since I‘m interested in technical specs could you take some measurements too? I could find no source online mentioning the length or diameter of the Fujinon. I‘m interested in how large the lens appears mounted on a Leica too.
 
I will see what I can do for pictures "from", will have to go through my scans first. For now some specs for @Räuber and @Sonnar Brian.

The lens weighs 406grams. With the majority of the weight being made up by the glass and aperture. It's a little bit taller than the a war-time LTM Sonnar 50/1.5 next to it.
Exactly 42.00mm according to my digital calipers. From the mount base (excluding the part that goes into the camera) to the tip.
The rear lens diameter is 29.40mm and there is no empty space between the retaining ring, the RF cam and the focus mount. The front glass clocks in at a girthy 53.64mm.

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Due to the girth of the lens the infinity lock arrangement is unusual in that you push towards the center of the lens instead of downwards, the focus throw is the usual 170 degrees from infinity to 3 feet. The lens stops down from f/1.2 to f/16 with click stops for 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11 and 16 positions. There is a marked but clickless stop at approximately f/1.8 or 1.9. The spacing of the stops gets narrower as it progresses but not as extreme as on pre-war Sonnars for example.

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Last pictures show it mounted with an L/M ring on a early button-rewind Leica M2. Due to the smartphone wide angle the front of the lens looks larger than it is. One can however put the camera down on a table without the lens touching the table. So there is still 5-7mm clearance to the bottom of the camera, it just does not look like it in these smartphone pictures. There is some and quite a bit more finder obstruction at infinity and 3 feet respectively.

 
The white whale! ❤️

I had a 50/2 Fuji Photo Film Cristar collapsible a while back, not sure which of the two is more rare.

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Zeiss ZX1. Has anyone used one? Does anyone know about them? They showed up in the marketplace and just did not takeoff. Lousy camera or just unlucky?
Perhaps too much tech inside leading to potential problems and a product which was never going to be completely ready for the public?
 
Perhaps too much tech inside leading to potential problems and a product which was never going to be completely ready for the public?

I sure do not know. It showed up with teething problems. Much of what is released with software in it is really just a pretty good beta so no surprise there. But I wonder if the glitches were fixed, if Zeiss cares, if updates appeared and are available and on and on and on.
 
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