Exakta Lenses to LTM Bodies

hilltime

hilltime

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I have in my collection a number of Exakta mount lenses ( some exotics like a Enna 85/1.5, black Meyer Domiron 50/2, etc) and am wondering why no one has made any type of lens adapter to use these lenses on LTM bodies?? The only one I have encountered seems to be the very hard to find Novoflex LEIEX, which if anyone knows, is it rangefinder coupled?
It seems with all the different adapters out there ( I have an Exakta to Micro 4/3 ) that there would be enough interest for someone to manufacture, especially if it was RF coupled. This would also allow these lenses to mount on M mounts with the correct Leica adapters.
Any thoughts , comments, or knowledge out there?
 
You are right, but the RF coupling for LTM would be made on the lens adapter which would screw into the body and connect with the cam arrangement.
 
The original Novoflex adapters were part of their macro bellows product line (Novoflex bellows had a LTM thread on front). So no, uncoupled.
 
hilltime said:
You are right, but the RF coupling for LTM would be made on the lens adapter which would screw into the body and connect with the cam arrangement.
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That can only be done for one single focal length on each adapter. And without gears inside the adapter, only for lenses of exactly 51.8mm focal length (which probably don't exist for Exakta, as the Zeiss universe, to which it coarsely belonged, standardized on exactly 50mm).
 
This makes sense about the RF coupling, but I still wonder why there hasn't been a non-RF coupling adapter made? Infinity focus could still be achieved, right?
 
Infinity focus could still be achieved, right?
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Indeed. Still, think about the market: I'd guess that there would be a very limited list of lenses you'd want to zone focus and they'd be mostly wides and ultra-wides. The widest lens I know of for the Exakta was the, admittedly very nice, Flektagon 20mm. How many of those or the equally nice Flektagon 35mm were sold? 35mm finders are easy to find but what about the 20mm, which would be the likeliest lens to be worth making the converter for?

I can't imagine that the market for those adapters is going to reach as far as the hundreds, so I think that they'd be very, very pricey.

Actually, if anyone was going to make such adapters, it would be the East Germans, who had their captive market at the time. It might be worth seeing if anyone in Germany or Eastern Europe has such a device.
 
You make some very good points. Yes I have a 20mm Flektogon, but really would like to mount the 85/1.5 Ennaston SII. I can imagine trying to focus that wide open! I can understand why there hasn't been a great demand now. Thanks for all the insight.
 
hilltime said:
This makes sense about the RF coupling, but I still wonder why there hasn't been a non-RF coupling adapter made? Infinity focus could still be achieved, right?
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Of course. But when both Exakta and LTM still were state of the art, the latter (and its lenses) actually were the cheaper system. So there wasn't really any market for adapting that way, until LTM had been superseded and Exakta was increasingly outdated. That the (IIRC non-infinity) Novoflex adapter exists is only due to the fact that it was needed for mounting Exakta lenses on Exakta cameras when using Novoflex bellows.
 
Not that this significantly increases the likelihood of finding a usable adapter, but Topcon used essentially the same mount as Exakta for their main camera line. They even used a compatible external auto/semi-auto diaphram setup in their early bodies and lenses.

The only change was that they rotated the mount about 120 degrees so that the release would be in a matching location on the normal wind size of the body. Using an Exakta lens on a Topcon body or adapter, or vice versa, works fine although the focusing scale ends up in an inconvenient location.
 
Yes, I have an Exakta lens to Micro 4/3 adapter and was using a Meyer 100mm Trioplan a few weeks ago. Just got me thinking how nice it would be to have an adapter for my Leica IIIg, Leotax FV, Tower45, etc.
Started investigating as to why I couldn't find any available. Didn't really think through the focus coupling of the lens to the adapter as to RF compatibility. The Micro 4/3 adapter works great but don't have many wide-angle Exakta lenses. All the standard 50's and portrait lengths become fairly large tele's.
 
Nokton48 said:
There was a Minolta SRT adapter made for Exakta lenses,
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There actually was a Canon made FL (FD) adapter for Exakta lenses as well - with Exakta the standard mount for microscope attached cameras well into the seventies, many makers whose flange depth allowed it will have made something similar.
 
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