Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/08/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:53 PM 7/31/2008, leo wesson wrote: >I don't understand it. All of the acronyms sound like secret society talk. > >If I want to do closeup stuff with my M8, what do I need? >Can I use any of my m lenses? The OTZFO and the like are not acronyms: they are catalogue code-words used by Leitz from before World War I until 1958. The rationale behind these was to save money back when salesmen sent in orders by telegraph and were charged by the word. Leitz started to change this to a numeric system in 1936 but the switch was killed off by the advent of World War II and so the code-word system survived until 1958 before the progenitor of the current "computerized" system was adopted. (Zeiss Ikon always used a numeric system, incidentally, though it changed its system in the 1950's; Carl Zeiss Jena used catalogue code-words through World War II.) I have never seen an M8 so I do not know its basic dimensions. I understand that a Visoflex III will fit an M8 with the 90-degree VF but I am not certain whether the shutter release marries up. (For that matter, a 1936 PLOOT would work, with a double cable release, though you need an adapter to fit the LTM cable-release fitting to the M8.) For close-up work, a Viso III and Bellows II would be ideal. A Viso III also allows telephoto work as far out as you care to go: I regularly shoot with my M6 on a Questar 3.5 with a 2X Dakin Barlow for a total focal length of 2600mm. That is a LONG optical beam, though, so a SOLID mount is needed! With a Bellows II, you ought to pick up an LTM 39mm by 26 turns-per-inch Whitworth) to M42 adapter. One of the successors to Edmund Scientific (I constantly confuse the two) sells an M42 to "Royal Screw" (the Objective Thread of the Royal Microscope Society, still the standard microscope objective thread to this day) adapter. With this combination, you can then mount all of those lovely Mikrotars and Luminars and Photars and Micro-Tessars and Micro-Summars and Milars to your camera for macro- and microphotography as now exists only in your wildest dreams. Next, we'll get you into the Aristophot system, and you'll be doing digital through your microscopes ... Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!