Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]"rp johnson" <meengsjohnson@home.com> wrote: >I recently acquired a CL with the 40/2 lens and shade. The lens cap supplied (Leitz) is a "press-fit" and I am certain that someday when I remove it, it will pop out and be lost forever. I would prefer to remove the lens shade and use a more traditional lens cap. >Are such items readily available? The simplest solution is to hunt around folks like KEH until you can find a spare Leitz cap for the CL. It's a very firm push-in fit, so in theory there is little chance of the cap falling off. However, plastic ages and gets brittle so the end result is that your cap may end up losing some of the little teeth which hold it in place. Lose enough, and its grip could be weakened. I suppose that rubber also ages, so the hood into which the cap fits may fail long before the camera reaches the end of its days. Many of the third-party caps found in photo stores rely on small outward-moving sprung tabs to hold them on the lens. If you could find one in 39mm diameter, that would fit the 40mm Summicron-C. Unfortunately, the smallest size seems to be much larger than this. I suppose you could search around in the junk boxes at camera fairs and look for a push-on cap which would fit the outside of the lens mount, but you'd have to cut two segments out to make room for the lugs on the aperture ring. The screw threads on the inside of the 40mm front ring fit an E39 filter, so you could look for a filter with poor-condition glass and use that as a screw-on front cap. Or fit an E39 UV filter (or an empty E39 ring is you don't like UV filters, then look for a third-party push-on cap and hood which would mate with that. If you visit a camera fair, and have the time to rummage through dealers' junk boxes, this sort of mixing and matching can be fun. My 85mm Jupiter can no lens cap when purchased, but a grovel through odds-n-ends boxes produced a Miranda cap which would fit. Later I found a Leitz cap which would also fit and looked nicer than the Miranda cap. (If anyone with an 85mm Jupiter is looking for a lens cap, email me privately, and you can have the Miranda cap.) By now, all this talk of lens caps and UV filters will be blowing the fuzes of the non-collector members of the LUG, so I'll sign off by wishing you all the best with your "new" CL. It's a great little camera, and I think Oskar Barnack would have loved it. Regards, Doug Richardson