[Leica] cheap 25mm lens for Leica

[Jeremy Kime <jeremy.kime@bbc.co.uk>]

"Something for the weekend Sir?" 

Well, a little item to leave you with before I go off to London to 'play'
with the rest of the boys and girls on Sunday. If you're wondering what to
do this weekend...

You can buy a 25mm lens for a mere few pounds. "Where?" I hear you ask.
"Inside a disposable panoramic camera", says I. Eg the Kodak 25mm f12
version. Mine cost me about $5, it was out of date.
So, you want to use it on your Leica, its easy. First of all, break it up!
Carefully...
You'll want to preserve the nice lenshood (tres chic) and be considerate
when you disassemble the shutter (v. primitive). Try to end up with a
section of the front of the camera (containing the lens) about an inch /
inch and a half in diameter. There's a small opening in the lens
construction after removing the shutter arm, you can tape that up with some
black insulation tape (left over from masking those red dots) so as to 'keep
all the light in'.
You'll now need a plastic body cap, about $15 (presuming you're using an M
camera) into which you should drill a 1/2" hole in the centre. On the front
of the camera, you'll notice there is a flange or lip to the lens unit, this
needs to be glued to the back surface of the inside of the body cap. If you
make the hole in the cap too large, the lens will sit too far forward and
your only sharp distance will be c. 18" away, (Guess how I know this?!) You
may need to file the hole wider at the front to ensure the front edge isn't
obscuring the len's view.
The lenshood sits exactly on the front of the cap after cutting off the lugs
at each side, glue this in place and put some more tape between the top and
bottom sides of the hood to join up with the lowered centre section of the
cap. It can be fun to mount the lens at 90 degrees to that which you stuck
the lenshood on, but the pictures end up the same!

OK, the original camera had a curved film plane so the results won't be
quite as good, but were talking Leica novelties here, not prime quality! If
you really want to, you can stick a little red dot anywhere you fancy on the
lens, near the bayonet lug is useful, punch it out of a Leica letterhead
with a paper punch and you can almost get the whole logo into that tiny
little circle!

And hey! You get full functioning metering with the M6 too, terrific.

Now go and take some pictures, if you have an M4-P, M6, just look outside of
the 28mm field of view, if you've already got a 24mm v/finder why are you
reading this?!

Jem