Leica LTM Leica in a 'attic'

Leica M39 screw mount bodies/lenses
lxmike

lxmike

M2 fan.
Local time
2:38 PM
Joined
Jun 28, 2008
Messages
4,137
On my coffes break I was logged on to RFF when a colleague went past and said, Oh I'm glad someone kept that old camera', 'what I said', 'that old camera that is in a box under the sink back in old theatre two. A bit of background, I'm a charge nurse and we have just moved from an old Victorian hospital to a newly built unit. Cut a long story short he reckons that somehwre up in my old hospital is a box with a LTM Leica body in it....................next week i'm going to pop back and see if its there and then approach the Health Authority I work for and make them an offer for thr camera, but with my luck it will be gone
 
Definately worth a look to see if you can find it.

Might also be worthwhile taking a few pictures of the old Victorian hospital if that's allowed.

John
 
Usually the old thread mount Leica you find in a hospital is some Ic or Standard with microscope attachment tube. Leitz was a long-time market leader in medical microscopes.
 
Sevo you are probably spot on, my unit has a close working relationship with leica, we have 8 Leica microscopes , (£240,000 a pop), used for vascular and neuro surgery, these are mainly ceiling mounted and I've been lucky enough to visit the leica medical devision in both Germany and recently Switzerland. However, my health care trust used other cameras too, in the 50's and 70's used Zeiss cameras and the Nikon F2 with adapter for the microscope.
 
Last edited:
I wish I had an old Hospital to shoot my PinUp gals in................. naughty nurses for days!

Good Luck on that Leica Mike :)

Tom
 
Cheers Tom, I'll let you know how I get on, my Leica IIIC/IIIFBDST has arrived and it is sweet, shutter fine, curtains looks good, chrome good, ragefinder contrasty etc, all good, looks good too, how ever I last used a LTM about 10 years ago and in the interim I have had to start to wear glasses.........................IIIF and glasses are a little bothersome
 
I might pop across over the weekend, I'm planning to pop along any way to shoot a few rolls of the hospital before its knocked down, as 'tesco' has bought the land
 
Property "development", such a lovely thing. Instead of a nice, historical building you'll get a fresh new supermarket that looks exactly like the one twenty minutes down the lane, and stocks the same items to boot! On a more relevant note, hope you get your hands on that camera, it should really belong to someone with a connection to the hospital where it spent it's career.
 
I know, the connection will be special, as I spent a large part of my carrer at that hospital. Not wanting to get off topic, but its ad really everyone loved the old hospital, the atmosphere et and the staff have all been split up and moved to three diffrernt sites, including my new build. Don't get me wrong progress is good, but progrees is not pulling down a well built victorian unit and moving us out to a sub standard modern build
 
While we are on th subject of cameras in hospitals, a friend of mine is a doc in a hospital in a near by city a couple of years ago there was a skip at the back of the medical imaging unit, they were having a clear out, in the skip he found a carboard box containing two Nikon F2, one with motor drive fitted, he was allowed to keep them for nothing, he let me have one of the Nikon and I made a small donation to the local hospice charity. Makes you wonder what the NHS has chucked out over the yers, especially as most hospital mideical imaging departments have now switched over to digital
 
Yesterday I was at our local hospital (kidney stone -- the only previous one was 20 years ago). They're building another extension. The oldest bit, the original hospital, is a 17th century Carmelite nunnery, still in use. Among other things, it houses the computer centre, and the dock for the mobile MRI machine. Additions are (at a guess) 1950s, 1990s and 2010-2011.

As for cameras, yes, stories are rife of Leicas, MPPs, Linhofs and rare stuff such as Alpas and KI Monobars being slung in skips. I've met a few people who've 'won' stuff this way.

Cheers,

R.
 
lxmike said:
my Leica IIIC/IIIFBDST has arrived and it is sweet, shutter fine, curtains looks good, chrome good, ragefinder contrasty etc, all good, looks good too, how ever I last used a LTM about 10 years ago and in the interim I have had to start to wear glasses.........................IIIF and glasses are a little bothersome
Click to expand...

I found the Leitz 50mm SBOOI brightline finder invaluable with my Barnack cameras.

John
 
lxmike said:
LEICA SBOOI are very hard to find at a good price unfortunately
Click to expand...

And they are a most unpleasant excrescence on both screw-mount Leicas and Retinas. Yes, they're much better than the built-in finders, but they substantially destroy the pocketability of either camera, which is why I sold mine.

Cheers,

R.
 
I've always wondered about whether when attached they would catch in a pocket or a bag, so your observation based on experince is very helpfull and insightfull
 
They do make for a bulkier camera, but at least (in my case anyway) I was able to see what I was shooting - which I found to be quite useful!

John
 
progress?

progress?

LXMIKE, I feel your pain at losing the old things. On this side of the pond it's not uncommon to "Update" an old church by installing "New" linoleum over the nasty old marble floor, if you know what I mean. It may be selfish of me but it is after all that kind of short sighted mindset that allows me to collect and USE some wonderful cameras(do they still make film?). Red Robin
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom