Bargain Summaron?

BTW, he also has a couple of beater M's and a Nikon adapter to use M39 LTM lenses on Nikon F mount bodies. That sounds interesting. :)
 
ouch. Could you even file that away, or would that make it even worse?

I don't know, by now I trust ePrey descriptions as much as I trust a politician looking out for my best interests. You can find ones in very good condition for an extra $100; do you think you'll probably spend that much fixing the "unknowns"?
 
His instructions about removing the eyes for M cameras newer than the M3 are incorrect. It must be used with the eyes and the 50mm framelines on any M camera in order for it to focus correctly. The misinformation about removing the eyes is widespread. Even Karen Nakamura gets it wrong in her otherwise excellent site http://www.photoethnography.com/.

Also, his return policy is no returns. I would pass on this one.

Richard
 
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Yeah...I generally don't buy things from people who no nothing about camera equipment unless they've got some really nice photos of the stuff. The scanner I'm bidding on now, a Scan Dual III, is an exception: I'm so broke that I have to take the chance. :p So if you see a scanner with a high bid by stephyb0583, do me a large favor and don't bid on it. :p
 
The diaphragm blades look very worn. This one looks a candidate for a major repair in the near future. In Europe I would expect to pay about 125 € for it.
 
I had an item from this seller on my watch list last week. I was just bargain hunting so I did not win or seriously bid on it. I believe I sent him/her an email and was satisfied with the answers.
 
Take a look at this one: a superbly reliable shop.
http://www.fotoautofocus.nl/occframe.htm

I'm tempted myself.... But for our American friends: why don't you shop in Europe. I'm sure there are plenty of RFF members crossing the Atlantic all the time that are willing to drop a lens or body in their camera bag or pocket.

And look at his "klassieken" A roll-call of photgraphic history. I know the shop well.
A very unhealthy place. The concentration of GAS bacteria in the air must be far beyond any public-health norm. :D
 
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richard_l said:
His instructions about removing the eyes for M cameras newer than the M3 are incorrect. It must be used with the eyes and the 50mm framelines on any M camera in order for it to focus correctly. The misinformation about removing the eyes is widespread. Even Karen Nakamura gets it wrong in her otherwise excellent site http://www.photoethnography.com/.

Also, his return policy is no returns. I would pass on this one.

Richard
Click to expand...

Wait, so you're saying that the focussing changes when different framelines are up?

Sorry, but your statement doesn't make sense. The only difference between the Summaron with eyes and the Summaron without eyes is the eyes.
 
thpook said:
Wait, so you're saying that the focussing changes when different framelines are up?
Click to expand...
No, I'm saying that when the eyes are used, the 50mm framelines are the ones which give the correct field of view. I didn't state that very clearly. Sorry.
Sorry, but your statement doesn't make sense. The only difference between the Summaron with eyes and the Summaron without eyes is the eyes.
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There are several different versions of 35mm Summarons and Summicrons. Some were designed with eyes for use with the M3. Others are for use without eyes, either by using built-in 35mm framelines or else an auxilliary viewfinder. Those without eyes and those designed for use with eyes focus differently. If you remove the eyes from an eyed lens, it will not focus correctly on any M camera, which can be verified by actually removing the eyes and trying to take a picture of a nearby object using a fairly large aperture. It will not work. This matter came up on another forum in which several people tried this experiment and got the same results: out of focus images.

The first 35mm lenses used with the M3 were screwmount, and an auxiliary finder was used. The main drawback with this arrangement is that you no longer have automatic parallax adjustment, so the Leitz engineers conceived the idea of using eyes, so that the regular M3 finder could be used and automatic parallax correction would be preserved. This was a formidable task, but they did it and it works perfectly.

Here is my crude understanding of the situation. Maybe a Leica expert will step forward and explain it better and more accurately. Basically, changing the field of view by optically modifying the viewfinder also necessitates optically modifying the rangefinder window in order to make the rangefinder usable (otherwise you would be trying to line up two different sized images in the rangefinder patch). However modifying the windows changes the distance at which the rangefinder indicates correct focus (it's like looking through a telescope backwards, things appear farther away than they are), so the lens itself must be modified in order for the focus to track correctly with the rangefinder.

Richard
 
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