Backwards Elmar

[Dez]

Something I have always wondered, but not enough to actually put any work into finding out..................
Why are the Leitz Elmar 3.5 focusing scales so obviously backwards? All the other lenses used a fixed index and moving scale, but the Elmar (and presumably the Hektor 50, I don't recall) went the inconvenient other way round. And they kept doing it for thirty years, until the last year or so of production when the design was finaly sorted out in the rarish red dial Elmar, which was then promptly dropped in favour of the 2.8 version, which is mechanically quite different.

Did Prof Barnack just happen to do it that way, and nobody was impertinent enough to point out the error???

 

[ZorkiKat]

Practical reasons? No need to revamp a design which apparently worked at that time. Besides, when the Elmar came out, it was the first of its kind (no one set the design parameters yet on how a 50mm lens should look to be on a 35mm camera), so its design was based on what the designers felt at the time to be right. Only later did the "more" convenient layout become more evident.

 

[John Shriver]

Same way on 35/3.5 Elmar and 28/6.3 Hektor lenses.

The numbers can be bigger (easier to read) when on the mount. Since the design started when the Leica was a scale-focus camera, that counted for something.

 

[Rico]

Same way on the early 'cron 90 (SEOOM). Oddly, the even earlier SOOZI has the usual fixed index. Strange happenings!