[Leica] Canon converted to Leica

["Harrison McClary" <hmcclary@earthlink.net>]

Donal Philby wrote:

> Harrison, so how does the lens work?  I shot a few frames with Helmut's
> R3.  But got film back with all blanks.  Guess what.  With dead battery
> on R3 the shutter cranks, makes shutter-like sounds, moves, but doesn't
> open.  I guess you have to know that if meter doesn';t work, camera
> doesn't work.  


Donal,

The lens works wonderfully. 

For those not knowing what we are talking about, I had an old Canon 
FD 600 4.5 lens with a useless (worn-out and messed up) Nikon mount.  
The lens had been converted many years ago when Canon was the first 
out with a long 600 this fast. The Nikon mount had become worn out 
and someone tried to fix it and screwed it up. A friend who was 
getting out of photography offered the lens to me just to get it out 
of his closet of "junked photo gear". I took it on the off chance I 
could ever find someone who could make it useful again. Donal's 
friend Helmut Moeller took off the old Nikon mount and replaced it 
with a Leica mount. The lens now works great on my R8. It has only 
one aperture, 4.5, but using a lens that long I would seldom stop 
down anyway.

I used it to photograph the spring practice of the Carolina Panthers 
NFL football team for one of our magazines and I got some really nice 
photos with this lens. It is nice to shoot with a long lens 
that doesn't weigh a ton (I have a 400 2.8 Canon with 1.4 converter 
that weighs at least twice as much as the 600).  The images are 
sharp, the lens is quick and easy to focus.  This is one of the 
really old lenses with the goofy knob focusing, but I found it easier 
to focus than the standard barrel focusing and was able to follow 
focus the recievers running their patterns quite well.

Thanks for helping me get this lens up and running again, and tell 
Helmut that he does beautiful work. I'll send you one of the 
magazines when it comes out so you can see what it looks like.

Oh and by the way, the lens does shoot better photos now that it 
is on a Leica than it ever did on a Nikon, or Canon.  How's that for 
Leica snobbery.  :)

NOTE FOR THE HUMOR IMPARED:::The above is said totally tongue in 
cheek. I have seen photos made by the former owner with this lens 
that are almost icons in the news/sports photo realm.
Harrison McClary
http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto