[Leica] A few thoughts...

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

>Dan wrote:
>Twenty years ago ...
>I noticed that the infrared showed subcutaneous veins on many of the
people!

	Dan, twenty years ago at college I bought the cheapest bulk film I
could find, some of it was 5 ASA line film, this wasn't panchromatic and the
effect on portraits (what a choice of film for that!) was that every spot,
blemish, and pore stood out like the dirtiest blackheads imaginable!!
Naturally the portraits (which were of fellow male students) were the
subject of much ridicule amongst the class!

>Harrison McClary wrote:
>Great,  glad to know that expensive piece of glass on the front of my 
>camera is Corning-ware....does this mean I can cook with it also?   

Now we have to decide what dish would be cooked in a Leica lens element. 
Can I suggest a vegetarian LUGnut casserole?!

>Ken Wilcox wrote:
>Anyone out there have a hood for a 28 Elmarit Safari that they would
>consider parting with? 

Ken, I'm not sure whether it was yourself or someone else that was asking
about the colour of these Safari lens caps. I found a boxed version at my
local dealers and looked at the cap, it was black, not green.

>Edward Meyers wrote:
>I have a goggle 35mm Summicron for my M3. When I use this
>lens on my M6 or M5, with my glasses on I can see the entire
>frame. The bright frame is smaller, but easy to see. 

Jay then wrote:
>As Charlie Chan would say: "Must humbly make
>contradiction..." That goggle was designed to decrease the image
magnification
>in the M3 finder so that the full-frame view simulated the coverage of a
35mm
>lens rather than a 50.  Put that goggle on an M6HM whose full-frame view is
>already a 35mm and it will now indicate the coverage of [approximately] a
28mm
>lens.  On a "regular" M6, it would show [approx] a 24/21mm view.  This is
>exactly the way Tom Abrahamsson's grafting of the same goggle onto a 21mm
lens
>works to eliminate using an auxiliary finder.

Surely the clarification here is that the goggles of a 35mm M3 lens (I have
a Summilux) translates the 50mm frame to that of a 35mm field of view. Not
the 'full frame view' as suggested by Jay, these lenses key in the 50mm
field of view rather than the 35mm frame. 
The goggles have a magnification factor of x0.7, therefore when mounted on
an M6 , the 28mm frame would show a 19.6mm field of view, close enough to a
21mm 'for jazz'!

I use my lens on the M6 and find it is a question of 'swings and
roundabouts'. I love the close focusing ability of these 'M3' type lenses
(down to 26" instead of 40") but the image size of the 35mm frame in the
viewfinder is small compared to using a non-M3 type 35mm lens, more akin to
a 50mm (frame field) on the M2/4/5/6.

I shot mostly with this lens at Photokina and the results weren't as
wonderful as I could have wished for, more flare and less sharpness than my
last, (non M3) version.
My sharpest looking pictures came off a Zeiss lens which I'd had modded to
fit on the M6, a full-frame Fisheye Distagon originally off a Rolleiflex
35SL, even one shot at 1/2" looking at the cathedral in the dark evening,
lit by spotlights, cracking!

Jem