Canon LTM Brand new "Frozen" 50mm f0.95

Canon M39 M39 screw mount bodies/lenses

jeff laitila

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I recently found a new in the box 50mm f0.95 TV lens on Ebay, and after a bloody bidding war I ended up winning it. The winning bid was $1,150, and went this high because the lens was brand new dead stock.

It appears to have been originally purchased by the Military in 1970, but since that time it had been sitting in some warehouse unused and just recently made its way to eBay. It's in absolutely stellar condition, and the box even contains the original packet of desiccant.

I bought it with the intention of having it modified to Leica M mount so i can use it on my R-D1. The only problem is that after that many years sitting on a shelf, the grease seems to have solidified and th focus ring is stuck at 1.5 meters. The aperture ring turns smoothly, with nice tactile clicks at each stop, but the focus ring is frozen.

So now I need a lead on a god camera repair shop where I can have it worked on. (Taken apart and have the old grease removed and new grease added as well as get it modified to M mount.) I'd prefer to send it it just one place to have all the work done.

Does anyone know of a good place to get this kind of work done?

Many thanks.

Jeff
 
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jeff laitila said:
It appears to have been originally purchased by the Military in 1970, but since that time it had been sitting in some warehouse unused and just recently made its way to eBay.

Probably that same warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where they stashed the Ark of the Covenant. Hey, maybe that will be coming up on eBay soon...

...Anyway, this won't be a difficult job because, like all Canon 50s of the same era, the 50/0.95 has a modular design that lets the entire optical section come out of the focusing mount in one piece. The optics can be set aside carefully out of harm's way while the helicoid is cleaned. Again, that's a simple matter of removing a stop and unthreading the two pieces so every trace of the old grease can be removed with a solvent or ultrasonic cleaner. The only trick is noting exactly where the threads came apart so the helicoid can be reassembled with exactly the same starting point, but any good shop should know that.

So, you might want to investigate whether whatever shop does your mount conversion can do the cleaning as well. They'll need to remove the optical section anyway to do a safe job of adapting the back end to the M mount, so that would be a convenient time to clean it.

Unsolicited advice: While you're having the focusing helicoid cleaned and re-lubricated, you might want to have the aperture ring re-lubed as well. I can tell you by unpleasant experience that the lubricant Canon used back then tends to turn into a yellowish glue-like substance these many years later. This stuff can freeze the aperture ring in place even though the actual blades and mechanism are perfect and don't require any attention. Obviously it hasn't happened to yours yet, but it might be worth doing as a preventive measure. The aperture ring is conveniently exposed when the optical section of the lens is removed from the focusing mount.
 
Hello Jeff. I notice another Canon 50mm 0.95 on ebay, and I think it's from the same seller. Item# 150180605332 from seller jenkinsweld94c3. This auction has already ended. Check it out.

I understand you intend to modify your lens mount anyway, for Leica M, but if your lens was advertised as NEW IN BOX, and the focus ring doesn't turn, he should refund your money. It's clearly defective. Not as advertised. It sounds like it should be fine with new lubricant, but I would prefer to start over if I were you.

I purchased a 0.95 TV lens once, and experimented with it on my Canon 7. Ultimately, I resold it to Viktor Chan who reconfigures them for Canon or Leica M.

I now have the same lens in original Canon RF mount. It's a beauty. I just wanted to offer my 2 cents.
 
crawdiddy,

Thanks for the suggestion. I just sent the seller an email seeing what can be done to resolve this issue since the lens was not in NIB condition as the add had stated.

I hope I can work something out with the seller.
 
You're absolutely wrong. If you buy a 45 year old "new old stock" item still in the box, you can't complain about some dried lubricant or other minor, fixable flaw.

This is only common sense. He didn't advertise it as working just as the day it was made.

You got something fairly hard to find in pristine new condition, a real rarity. It's completely wrong to badger a seller because some ancient thing is a little dusty or dried out. It would be different if there was real damage, like water damage or smoke, but this is just some dry grease. Jeez.

He delivered what he promised, NOS, in the box.
 
kevin m said:
Wow! That's the first time I've seen a pic of that lens mounted to an M body. It really is, um, large. 😱

It's huge in real life. After all, the aperture opening is slightly BIGGER than the diagonal of a 35mm frame, so the glass is monstrous. They don't get more low light than this, and I don't know if anyone else ever built a lens below 1:1.2 FOR 35mm.
 
M. Valdemar said:
You're absolutely wrong. If you buy a 45 year old "new old stock" item still in the box, you can't complain about some dried lubricant or other minor, fixable flaw.

This is only common sense. He didn't advertise it as working just as the day it was made.

You got something fairly hard to find in pristine new condition, a real rarity. It's completely wrong to badger a seller because some ancient thing is a little dusty or dried out. It would be different if there was real damage, like water damage or smoke, but this is just some dry grease. Jeez.

He delivered what he promised, NOS, in the box.
I disagree, although I will stop short of saying you are absolutely wrong. The seller advertised the item as NIB. To my way of thinking, that implies the focusing ring on a lens should turn. I wouldn't be surprised for a lens of that vintage to be a little stiff. But frozen? No, that does not fall within the normal range of NIB lenses, IMHO.

If you are an ebay seller, kindly let me, and others, know your ID, so that we can avoid purchasing from you....
 
crawdiddy,

I sent an email to the seller pointing out that the focus ring was frozen, and the seller immediately apologized and offered to exchange the lens. I'm not normally one to complain, but I did bid quote high in order to win the lens, so i ws very happy with their offer to exchange it.

The seller has agreed to send me another 50mm f0.95 that they have (that works properly) so I can exchange it for the frozen one. I'm amazed that they actually had MORE of these monsters. It seems the bought a lot of 5 of them in a government surplus auction.

Thanks for the suggestion!
 
Jeff, that's great news for you, I'm sure. If they bought 5 of the beasts in a lot, I imagine they got a pretty sweet deal on them. If I were you, I would prefer to modify the mount without worrying about re-lubricating, if possible.

As I said, I have the same lens, but in RF mount (s/n 26246). I'm not sure about the relative age of my lens to yours, but it must be fairly close. The focusing on my lens is not what you would call free, or effortless. You're not going to refocus from infinity to 1 meter in a tenth of a second. It requires 180 degrees rotation. And of course it'a a massive lens, so it wouldn't feel right if the focus turned too freely. Sorry to belabor the point, but I mean to say the focus should be smooth, but not too free. The lens weighs 605 grams (about 1 pound 6 ounces). If there was too little resistance in the focus, it would feel "loosey goosey." I hate to rely on American slang to make my point, but this has obviously taxed my communication skills more than expected.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the lens. I've only had mine a couple of months. I've yet to really exploit it's abilities, and I don't have many negatives printed yet. I hope to post some of them soon.

Let us know how you're lens mount modification goes.
 
venchka said:
Noctilux 1.0
Canon EOS 1.0

And Nikkor 50/1.1 for their S-mount rangefinder cameras. This lens predated Canon's, and going by the sample pictures Raid posted some time back, it seems to be quite a nice performer.

Of course, it's now scarce and collector-priced. We're lucky Canon made such a comparatively large number of 50/0.95s.
 
jlw said:
And Nikkor 50/1.1 for their S-mount rangefinder cameras. This lens predated Canon's, and going by the sample pictures Raid posted some time back, it seems to be quite a nice performer.

And let's not forget the Zunow 50mm 1.1 lens which was introduced back in 1953. Apparently this lens was made in both LTM and Nikkor rangefinder mounts.

Jim B.
 
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