Uncommon, Rare, and Collector's Delights.

It does resemble the early Orion a little bit, with the focus helical thread showing around the edges when you turn it to close focus, but there's no focus scale or DOF scale on it, and the part that hits the RF cam is a thicker ring. More like the Cook & Perkins adapter

I'll share a picture of it later, I'm sure Brian would be interested to see it 😉
 
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There was also a (pre)wartime adapter made by the brits. Cook and Perkins I believe. But it says so on the front (instead of a focus scale) so it's not that either I guess. It does fit your description though.

I once saw one one evilBay for about 150 bucks and did not jump on it. Still kicking myself today...
 
I wonder, does anyone have a Cook &Perkins accessories catalogue from the '50s/'60s?

They made a lot of handy stuff. I used to have the adapter shown above but it went many years ago. I still have a rather poor example of the f3.5 Elmar lens hood that doubles as an aperture ring.. I know they made focus testers for ltn lenses, an Ablon type template and I don't know what else?

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I stumbled across a W-Nikkor 2.5cm f4 LTM lens in a lot I purchased on eBay recently. It also came with the original 2.5cm Nippon Kogaku viewfinder, lens hood, cap, and leather case. I read somewhere that only approximately 950 were made in the screwmount version, but can't say for certain.

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Dralowid said:
I wonder, does anyone have a Cook &Perkins accessories catalogue from the '50s/'60s?

They made a lot of handy stuff. I used to have the adapter shown above but it went many years ago. I still have a rather poor example of the f3.5 Elmar lens hood that doubles as an aperture ring.. I know they made focus testers for ltn lenses, an Ablon type template and I don't know what else?
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Handy stuff indeed, I have a Periflex copy of their LTM focus tester.
 
I saw this on the yahoo Japan auctions. (382) カメラレンズ セット R.LEMASSON BREVETS ... - Yahoo!オークション
A set of Som Berthoit lenses that seemed to have both Leica screw and contax mounts. Probably only rangefinder coupled for the Leica and just scale focus on Contax. I wonder why other manufacturers didn’t try this, would be interesting to try out. Sold for a large amount, must be collectable.
 
I guess this is less about the lens (a Fujinon 50/1.2 in Leica thread mount) and more about ... what people do to such a rare and expensive item.

When I first tried this lens on film, my first impression was: "Gee, the focus shift is TERRIBLE on that one, clearly f/1.2 was too much of a stretch in 1950..." Then I did some more testing with a loaned auto-collimator. I found out yes, there is a bit of focus shift, but more importantly the lens back-focused at f/1.2 already.

Take it apart - look at the shim really closely this time. Yup. Sanding marks on one side of the bespoke brass washer. Uneven (at a slight angle), too. Which is why the focus felt a bit strange - the lens sat slightly askew to its focus mount. Bad words were said. As much as it broke my heart I had to sand the washer more to be even. Then the copper shim you can see on the lens in the first picture I re-manufactured from a junked 85/2.0 Sonnar which had just the right thickness at 0.02mm. Thus the issue was resolved and the lens focuses smoothly and correctly - with the calibration that Fuji's engineers intended - once again!

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However, who in their right mind sands a very expensive and rare lens to make it "work" on their digital camera? Cripes!
 
Pictures of the lens would be great. And since I‘m interested in technical specs could you take some measurements too? I could find no source online mentioning the length or diameter of the Fujinon. I‘m interested in how large the lens appears mounted on a Leica too.
 
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