Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/07/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 07:45 PM 7/18/01 -0400, Dante Stella wrote: > >On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Marc James Small wrote: > >> Gee, maybe someone should write a book about these lenses! > >Marc, some old geezer beat you to the punch. Oh... yeah... forgot! > >Any idea how many 2" Amotals or Jena Sonnars were sold after the war? I >can't imagine it was too many. Or someone killed all of those lenses. Now, that IS a good question. Some modern researchers believe the Sonnars were actually assembled in the Soviet Union, from spare Zeiss optics looted from Jena, but I'm not certain if I buy this tale. But the total numbers could not have been great, and the known serial numbers fall all over the place, indicating sporadic production in LTM, if these were Jena-made. The tale on the Amotal is that these lenses were mounted in Italy from lenses made surplus when the Bell & Howell Foton went out of production. The lens mount is incredibly crude but does work. Some of these lenses were also made in Contax RF BM. I have heard a production figure of 500 lenses but don't know if this is accurate. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!