Has anyone ever “hacked” a Barnack Leica into an SLR?

Ambro51

Ambro51

Collector/Photographer
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It seems possible to me, given a mixup of Olympus OM pieces, recreated inner core and a top plate with rangefinder gone and incorporating a pentaprism. I can visualize holding it.
 
As View Range has said, the first Zenit was basically that, a Russian Barnack made into an SLR.. The Nikon F also springs to mind, though the S was more a Contax with Leica shutter.
 
View Range said:
Zenit, introduced in 1952. The lens thread is 39mm x 26tpi, but the registration is different.
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As an aside a few days ago I realized after speaking to my "camera guy" that a lens I bought a few months ago (a Schneider Kreuznach) was intended for a Zenit camera. I had been struggling to find what it went on for months and had tried various combinations of lens adapter, but had not really considered Zenit.

After all why would a top German maker back in the day, make a lens for a relatively cheaper Russian camera? I found that hard to believe. But then I came to the realization that the lens had probably been adapted after it came out of the factory by shortening its lens barrel slightly to give it a different flange length - a realization that came about because the mount now on it was very well executed but was not identical in form to pictures I had seen of otherwise identical Schneider lens on the internet. It looked as if it could have been modified by a skilled technician.

The penny really dropped when I realized that the lens flange distance on this specific example was (virtually) identical to M42 though the actual mount used was L39 (or something so close it did not matter). And this is what a Zenit has - though the early spec has a flange distance about 3/10ths of a millimetre different to the M42. I bought a 39mm-42mm spacer ring (not an adapter as we know them as it does not change the flange distance, but rather it just screws onto the L39 threads to give it the same physical diameter as M42 mount threads) and it worked - the lens now mounts on an M42 to NEX adapter perfectly and focuses correctly (or as near as dammit correctly) when mounted on that adapter. In any event it is now perfectly usable (on a mirrorless camera at least) and I am pleased and relieved to at last have an answer. And a new toy to play with.

The short version of all of the above is this. No I have not hacked a Barnack into an SLR but I do own a lens that apparently has itself been hacked to go on a Russian SLR hack of Barnack type cameras.
 
Peter, the MTO 500mm mirror lens sold for M42 was actually a Zenit lens with the adapter you mention attached. Zenit lens threads are the same as LTM lens threads - 39mm x 26 tpi.
 
Visoflex?
As we liked to say in the Navy, sounds like doing dental work by going through the anus. 😉
Might be a fun project to do just because but it doesn't actually solve any problem, which is usually why these projects are undertaken.
Phil Forrest
 
Ambro51 said:
It seems possible to me, given a mixup of Olympus OM pieces...
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I've been waiting for this one for a long time. please anyone don't tell me this is a troll, I will be so disappointed!

Do you mean, like re'avataring a Pen F into an OM??

OP, don't stop now, please explain!! Just how would you go about doing this?? To me this smacks of trying to turn apples into pineapples, even if I've harbored a secret wish for decades to rebuild one of my Rolleiflexes into a Hasselblad.

Maybe a crowdfunding on the way...

peterm1 said:
As an aside a few days ago I realized after speaking to my "camera guy" that a lens I bought a few months ago (a Schneider Kreuznach) was intended for a Zenit camera. I had been struggling to find what it went on for months and had tried various combinations of lens adapter, but had not really considered Zenit. (...) The short version of all of the above is this. No I have not hacked a Barnack into an SLR but I do own a lens that apparently has itself been hacked to go on a Russian SLR hack of Barnack type cameras.
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Peter (with apologies for editing your interesting but lengthy post to its start and end) as I'm sure you know, adapting a lens to fit another camera/other cameras is a fairly easy procedure. Think Sigma, Tamron, Vivitar in the '70s and '80s. It involves only removing and replacing the mount. Nothing complicated like stripping down and rebuilding one type of camera (rangefinder or SLR) to another (SLR to rangefinder).

For all this your post is the most interesting so far, in that you provided ample and good detail to put flesh on what the OP seems to have posted as a whim.

My latest thoughts on the matter are somewhat simpler. Why sacrifice and destroy a valuable collector's camera (the Barnack) into a rather commonplace SLR which basically is very much like all the SLRs of its period?

Now I'm off to my drawing board to do the first plans for my latest (thought up a few minutes ago) project - turning one of my clapped-out Rolleiflex bodies into a 6x6 View Master camera. Now here is a potential sale market. I mean, it has these two lenses, and...
 
View Range said:
Peter, the MTO 500mm mirror lens sold for M42 was actually a Zenit lens with the adapter you mention attached. Zenit lens threads are the same as LTM lens threads - 39mm x 26 tpi.
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Thanks View Range that is good to know. (I am not really up on the Zenit system and know very little about it probably as it has never tempted me.) I am also not familiar with MTO but if it is Russian built it does not surprise me as I seem to remember that back in the day when mirror lenses were popular (talking the 1970's /early 1980's) quite a few Russian ones were being marketed. So the marketing of an adapted Zenit one would be logical.
 
Tower 22/Asahiflex IIa body is very much like a Barnack. A little wider than a IIIG, about the same thickness (not at the less mount) and actually a little shorter.


Shawn
 
shawn said:
Tower 22/Asahiflex IIa body is very much like a Barnack. A little wider than a IIIG, about the same thickness (not at the less mount) and actually a little shorter.


Shawn
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That’s the one that I thought of too... The critical difference between the Asahiflex line and what the OP is talking about though is the lack of prism (Asahiflex has a mirror and a waist-level finder). Add a prism and eye level finder and you’re back to having a bog standard 35mm SLR.
 
The hack idea reminds me of those curious threads about sequentially shooting B&W images through color filters and combining them to create a final color image in a tedious, time consuming process.


The point of the exercise escapes me.
 
f.hayek said:
The hack idea reminds me of those curious threads about sequentially shooting B&W images through color filters and combining them to create a final color image in a tedious, time consuming process.


The point of the exercise escapes me.
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It made sense until the mid to late 1930's, meaning before colour film existed. And it continued to make sense as an easy way of making colour separations for printers.

Nowadays people do it out of curiosity to recreate some of the colour photo's of the 19th century and so on. It's a useful demo if you are teaching or explaining things; not that anyone takes science seriously these days.

A lot do it after seeing Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky's early photo's, which are now over a century old. Article:- https://www.thejournal.ie/colour-photography-russia-1910-2204391-Jul2015/


Regards, David
 
I present to you, exhibit A:

The Corfield Periflex
Periflex_camera.jpg
 
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