[Leica] D mount lens

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Phil,

As you know, these lenses were used on 8 mm movie cameras, a breed which
vanished with the dinosaurs. There is no need to spend much money to get
such a lens. The junk bin of any photo store that has been in business a
long time probably has dozens of them. $50 should buy you a bushel basket
full. If you only need one, you can probably get it for $5, movie camera
attached.

Some fine lenses were offered for 8 mm cameras. Kodak, Bolex, Wollensak,
Leica, Zeiss, and others made a number of them. All had the same D mount,
.625" diameter, 32 tpi thread. The standard focal length for 8 mm movies was
12.5 mm. Wide angles were 5 to 7 mm. Bear in mind that movie cameras tended
to have narrower angles of view than typical 35 mm cameras so that a 7 mm D
mount lens would approximate a 50 mm lens on a Leica. The depth of field of
a 7 mm lens is so great that you could use it as a fixed focus objective in
a franken camera.

Your project seems interesting. The sensor chip of many P&S digital cameras
approximates the size of the 8 mm film frame. Based on the resolution of
Kodachrome film, the usual movie stock, the typical 8 mm home movie camera
frame was roughly equivalent to a 1 megapixel digital sensor. The lenses
usually offered much higher resolution than that.

Let us know how it works out.

Larry Z

- - - - -

I'm looking for a "fast", wide D-mount lens. Between 4-7mm if fixed
focal length. If zoom, then wider than 7mm out to maybe 30mm. Faster
than f/2 is preferred.
I've got a crappy digital camera that needs some treatment with the
dremel tool and a new manual focus / manual aperture lens.

Since this is going on a VERY cheap plastic camera, I don't want to be
putting a 75mm f/1.4 on it. Definitely looking to stay under $50 for
this project.

Thanks all!
Phil Forrest