Uncommon, Rare, and Collector's Delights.

Not as rare as the above, but uncommon- especially outside of Japan.

Beautiful and sharp, Fujinon 5cm F2, and Ultron formula 6/5 design.
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An X-mas gift to myself, is still in the mail....should arrive next week

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Combat Graflex "Gulliver's Contax"....apparently I do want to mess with 70mm film.
 
boojum said:
Crazy cool! Now you just have to get the Navy 4x5 to compliment it.
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Uhm...... it was missing the tag and it was repainted black for the civilian market originally..... I've put a reproduction USMC tag on it, instead of a USN.

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Photo courtesy of my friend, Eric "Kaas" Sluis, Tanks in Town 2023 - Mons
 
FWIW, I did my Army time in a small town an hour south of Paris, d'Huison-Longueville par La Ferté-Alais. Patton went through that area on his drive on Germany. Some locals remembered and some of them were still grateful. They treated us with kindness and patience, often quite a bit more that we deserved. One fellow I served with had come through that town with Patton, and also had the Netherlands Orange Lanyard for exceedingly meritorious service. And he had the orders to prove it. Like almost all folks who had walked through hell he was very quiet about it and never brought it up. Just a quiet, cheerful nice man. U.S. ARMY WWII NETHERLANDS ORANGE LANYARD

So back in the mid 60's the folks in France were remembering and being kind. And they still are.
 
Mr_Flibble said:
Uhm...... it was missing the tag and it was repainted black for the civilian market originally..... I've put a reproduction USMC tag on it, instead of a USN.

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Photo courtesy of my friend, Eric "Kaas" Sluis, Tanks in Town 2023 - Mons
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You dog! I should have known. If you get any more gear you can open up an Army - Navy Surplus store. ;o) Great collection.
 
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boojum said:
You dog! I should have known. If you get any more gear you can open up an Army - Nave Surplus store. ;o) Great collection.
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Hah! Step right up folks! (Well, not really)

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My little Signal Photographic Company display in the Overloon War Museum, December 2024
....also known as "I brought too much sh!t again!"


boojum said:
FWIW, I did my Army time in a small town an hour south of Paris, d'Huison-Longueville par La Ferté-Alais. Patton went through that area on his drive on Germany. Some locals remembered and some of them were still grateful. They treated us with kindness and patience, often quite a bit more that we deserved. One fellow I served with had come through that town with Patton, and also had the Netherlands Orange Lanyard for exceedingly meritorious service. And he had the orders to prove it. Like almost all folks who had walked through hell he was very quiet about it and never brought it up. Just a quiet, cheerful nice man. U.S. ARMY WWII NETHERLANDS ORANGE LANYARD

So back in the mid 60's the folks in France were remembering and being kind. And they still are.
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The folks in The Netherlands still do too. Though the living memory is disappearing. 🙁
 
My 50cm F5 Nikkor in Short mount. Number 647021, 21st lens of approximately 200 made. This is the earliest number recorded. Picture shows the lens as I received it from Puerto Rico where it had been stored unloved in a garage for many years. Fungus and the iris was sprung. The case had been attacked by termites. Second picture shows lens after I disassembled, cleaned, rebuilt the iris and had a replacement case made. A little too heavy for every day use, but a nice shooter.500mm&Case1.jpgMy 50cm case.JPG500P.JPG
 
That's wild. I never knew this existed, let alone seem pictures of it.

My contribution today is perhaps a bit more pedestrian.

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Why, "That's just a decent, if not amazing condition Opton Biogon.." you might say. And it certainly looks as if you're right until I do this.

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It has a Leica thread mount. It's rangefinder coupled. And most strangely of all - the milled rangefinder cam and the screw mount itself have the the last three serial numbers stamped into them in Zeiss fashion. However I do not believe this to be a Zeiss original.

A very well made effort, yes - but again I doubt it's original. Still, very interesting and rare since unlike for the pre-war and wartime lenses you can't just scavenge parts off a Russian lens to do the conversion.

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The Leica mount fits neatly in place where the Contax bayonet used to be and is finished in some alloy (I do not think it's aluminum - it's too heavy for that. I am not a metallurgist...) as well as the surprisingly gently sloped RF cam which bears a stamped registration number (969) which sadly is not visible without disassembly. Focus tracks perfectly on all my M and LTM bodies.
 
Mighty interesting TenEleven,

This last week I serviced an unknown Contax-to-LTM adapter that was binding so badly you'd just be unscrewing the lens from the camera instead of focusing. No idea about it's provenance, but I think it's another one of those early post-war 3rd party adapters. No markings on it, except a small scratched in "5" inside the mount.
It's running smooth now after some gentle polishing and focus is spot on when I tested it with a Jupiter-3 on my Leica M-3.
Next up for servicing is the 50/1.5 Sonnar that came with the adapter. ..... Before they go back to their owner.
 
There are some very well made Contax-to-LTM Japanese adapters out there, I think the head bartender might have some writings on them. (Orion/Kindai International) But I assume you're aware of these and it's not those.
 
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