Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/02/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Carl Zeiss owned the German patent rights on vacuum coatings from 1940 to 1960. I believe that Carl Zeiss, USA, had the US patent rights as neither Wollensak nor Kodak seem to have patented their processes at the request of the US military. Carl Zeiss, USA, was owned, in any event, by the US Government from 10 DEC 1941 and for twenty years thereafter. In any event, Carl Zeiss only licensed the process to its associates and friends. Thus, Hensoldt, Rodenstock, Voigtl?nder, and Schneider got to use the process but Leitz was not. Leitz then used an alternate system which involved drip coatings which were somewhat soft but which were moist and which tended to disappear as they dried. For that reason, some of the first coated Leitz lenses seem to have been treated more heavily on the inside elements than on the outer surfaces. By 1954, Leitz knew a bit more about how to handle this and many of the coatings from that era have held up quite well. The coatings on my Hektor are quite nice and I've never worried about them as it is a rather nifty lens to use. (It would also work well to throw at someone attempting to attack me, giiven its almost softball-shaped size when fully collapsed and its hefty weight. And I've already done the bounce test on mine, so I know that the score would be Hektor 1, Bad Guy 0. If your lens has fungus, send it in to John Van Stelten and let him look at it. Follow his advice: John Knows Lenses and has been doing almost all my lens work for two decades. (I did have Leica do some work on a Leicaflex lens which needed new elements, and I only did that at John's suggestion.) John is immensely honest and possesses the probity of a Roman judge: he refused to recoat my Summitar as he said that it didn't need it, and it didn't. I'm still shooting with it today.) John will clean the lens. If it needs recoated, he will remove the existing coatings and will replace them with a vacuum coating superior to that which was state-of-the-art in 1954, so you can then send an e-Mail nastygram to Mister Zeiss at Oberkochen in the glee you will receive from using this rather versatile and interesting lens. And using it is so retro it is beyond being retro: when you pull out your camera, clip the film leader, load the darling, dig out the Visoflex, remover the covers and mount it on the camera, then pull out a small grapefruit and unfold this into a lens and mount that, then actually start using it, you will have gawkers from all stations of life staring at you in wonderment. If someone asks, politely tell them that the process is classified and that you'd have to kill them if you told them more. That generally gets a laugh. But it is retro beyond retro, like using a Rolleiflex TLR. And the Hektor takes damned good pictures. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!