Industary 69 28mm 2.8 lenses

[fuji645]

I'm giving some thought to purchasing one of these for my IIIc. Anybody know anything about this lens? It seems to be very inexpensive (like most FSU lenses). Is this lens rangefinder coupled or is it scale focus only. Appreciate any and all comments.

 

[Brian Legge]

The lens is meant for half frame cameras. It will vignette - heavily - when used with a full frame camera like the IIIc. That said, it could work if you like shooting wide open or want to crop to a square.

 

[farlymac]

Yeah, you can't buy a Chaika II with it's lens anymore because all the dealers stripped them to sell seperately to LTM users. They're asking double the price on the lens than for the camera, so if you want a Chaika II with a lens, it's going to cost you about double what it should.

PF

 

[Dez]

Unfortunately, a lot of the dealers are less than scrupulous, or less than knowledgeable, I guess, and sell this as a wide angle lens for LTM cameras.

I have one of these lenses, and I find it quite useful as a prop to put under the end of my Praktina SLR with a spring motor drive. It's just thick enough to let the camera sit flat on a shelf.

Cheers,
Dez

 

[Nickfed]

Not entirely suitable for a IIIc. As Brian said, it is made for half frame. The real interest is not so much LTM users per se but, more specifically, M4/3 users, the format being much the same. It is scale-focus only but that is hardly the problem for M4/3. The real problem is that it is Leica thread but not for Leica flange-to-film register. The register is about 1.5mm short. This not so much a problem for the M4/3 crowd, they simply machine the difference off the LTM>M4/3 adapter, and get quite a useful lens. A Leica user would have to machine the lens, which is probably a bit harder, and won't get much benefit in the end.

 

[hamish_gill]

I modified one years ago http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66601

If you follow the link to my long dead blog you will find comment from others on the subject too ...
I think it's an intereting lens, produces nice characterful images on cameras up to apsc ... But yeah, it's a bit crap on 35mm ... I ran a film through my r2a with it on the front, the results were pretty aweful even by my low standards!

Just bought my self a nex, so I'm gonna get the lens out when my m mount adapter turns up and do what that chap on my blog says I think ... 🙂

 

[David Murphy]

The Russian Orion-15 might be a better bet for a lower priced 28mm LTM lens. I think it is F6 wide open and seems to produce decent results. The price range is about $150-200.

 

[hamish_gill]

I was just wondering what other options there are for 28mm ltm ... ...

 

[Nickfed]

Not many. When RFs ruled, 28mm lenses for them were always rare, and expensive. Not much has changed since. As technology progressed 28s got cheaper but, by that time, they were being made for SLRs.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

I modified an I-69 a year ago using Brian Sweeney's method, slightly different from Hamish excellent tutorial but works just as well. It's pretty easy if you have the right tools and an easy way to verify the focus.
The lens works well on my Epson R-D1, turning it more-or-less into a point and shoot. There is still some slight vignetting with the R-D1s crop factor. ...of course it only counts as a 40mm f/2.8 then....😉

To be honest I've never tried it on an other LTM camera. Anyone have examples of how bad the vignetting is?