Leica LTM B&W Wedding with 1939 Summitar - LOVELY RESULTS

[dfoo]

He said in the first post

The tones were nice with Neopan 1600 and DD-X, and the grain not too bad.

I love Neopan 1600. I've used it in the past with great success. My developer of choice was XTOL 1+1, 7.5 minutes @ 20C. The tones are beautiful, and the grain is great too.

 

[Towermax]

Oops, Turns out I'm talking bull manure about the Summitars with six aperture blades being from just after the war. These first appear in 1950/1951. somewhere around serial number 79xxxxx.

That's interesting--it must have been a slow or intermittent phase-in. My Summitar with serial number 81xxxx still has 10 aperture blades. Maybe someone in the factory found a box of the old aperture leaves after production had started on the six-bladed units?

And Sleepyhead, your photos are superb--your friends must be very happy.

 

[marke]

Chris, I'm sure some of the Leica Connoisseurs here will correct me but from what I understand Leitz lenses after serial 600000 (or 610000), just after World War 2, are all coated, before that time only military lenses were coated.

I find this fascinating, as I have a coated 1946 Summitar myself. Serial #627097. I have a copy of "Leica: Leica & Leicaflex Lenses" by G. Gogliatti. It states that "...after the war there were only six blades forming the hexagonal opening."

From what I've gathered on these board Summitars after this serial number also had hexagonal aperture openings instead of the more rounded ones, because the folks at Leitz used up their supply of old Summar aperture blades. I don't know at what serial number they ran out of Summar blades though.

After the war Leica offered to coat older lenses. And so many were.

This book also states, "Since 11th November 1945 lens No 587601 the lenses were coated...".