SLR glass on M body!

[Todd.Hanz]

Has anyone ever used an SLR lense on thier Leica body? I don't mean to sound sacreligous, but I have an AIS 24mm 2.8 Nikon and an 85mm 1.8 that are pretty awesome, and as soon as Uncle Sam gives me my money back I am buying the 40mm c lens. Cameraquest has adapters for 125.00 I think.
I know the size of the combination would probably be unweildly, just wondering if anyone has tried it.

Todd

[Doug]

I have not done this... the closest I've come is screw-mount Pentax M42 lenses adapted to the Olympus Pen F half-frame SLR. Somewhat on the clumsy side, but it works.

An SLR lens on a RF body would of course be zone-focus only, as there's no RF coupling. For that reason I'd hesitate over the 85mm lens as being chancy to focus accurately by guess. The 24mm has more leeway for error and still get good results. Note that the CV 25mm Snapshot Skopar is not RF coupled either...

[pvdhaar]

Well into the seventies, a lot of scale focussed cameras were sold with focal lengths of up to 50mm. But when I look back at the pictures my parents took, it's immediately clear that they were not as well focussed as what we're used to today.

I had a Minox 35, which had a moderately wide 35mm lens that is also scale focussed. I must say that even this 35mm lens was a pain to focus by guessing.

I currently have a scale focussed 25mm and it's just about what I think you can get away with.

[peter_n]

I use a 28mm Nikkor on an M6TTL with the Cameraquest adapter and hyperfocal distance focusing. It works really well so your 24mm will work great in that setup. I wouldn't try it with an 85mm though...

[Scarpia]

This picture of downtown Glens Falls was taken with a Bessa L (okay, its not really a RF) with a Helios 58mm f2 made for a Zenit (Russian) SLR with an extender from a Kilfit 90mm LTM that is 54 years old. The helios dates from 1962, the Bessa from 2003.
Works fine. Scale focusing, of course.
Kurt M.

[Todd.Hanz]

I'd say that works well!

Todd

[scoop]

I've used a Pentax screw mount 24mm WA on a screw mount Leica with a home-built dapter which mated to the two different threads and provided the required registration distance. No focus coupling, of course, but not much of a problem with a 24mm lens and my estimation of subject distance.

The combination fuctioned well but the particular SLR lens I had was very bulky on a Leica IIIf.

Presumably, I could fit the lens to an M Leica with a screw to bayonet adaptor.