Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/16

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Industar (Ukranian) lenses.
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 23:33:39 -0400

At 03:06 AM 5/17/98 +0000, Richard Urmonas wrote:
>What about the Industar lenses.  These appear to be used on a fair number
of the Leica copies from
>that part of the world.  Anyone have experiance with these?

I find the Industar lenses for the FED quite confusing, which amuses the
great expert on these guys, Oscar Fricke, most mightily, as HE thinks they
are a simple and straightforward series.

Most of the Industar lenses are Russian and emenate from the great KMZ
works outside of Moscow, home to most of the production machinery looted
from the Carl Zeiss works at Jena after the War (some went to the LOMO
works in St Petersburg, while all of the camera production machinery went
to the Arsenal works in Kiev.)  A few of the Industar lenses were or are
made at the FED plant at Karkhov (named, as noted by another esteemed
LUG'er, for the founder of the NKVD) in the Ukraine.

The Industar-22 was a 3.5/50 lens produced from 1948 to 1953;  it was
replaced by the Industar-50 in 1953, and this remained in production until
1971.  Both were produced in rigid and collapsible versions.  The 2.8/50
Industar-50 was tweaked a bit at the FED works to produce the Industar-26,
made from 1955 until 1963;  the use of Lanthanum glass changed this to the
Industar-61L, produced from 1961 to the present.  

All are Tessar clones similar in performance to the Elmar.  These are
rather pleasant lenses and, no, there is supposed to be no radioactivity
from the I-61L!

Marc


msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
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