Elmar barrel rubs RF puck as it collapses

[sliceoflight]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I did a search and couldn't come up with anything.

I have a newly-acquired M-mount Elmar 50f2.8 lens of the vintage variety (from '59 I believe) and have noticed that as I collapse the barrel, the little flange or lip at the rear rim of the barrel just barely rubs the bottom of the rangefinder puck. This is on both my M6 and DS M3 bodies. I've attached a photo taken from the rear of my M3 with the door open to show what I mean.

If I rotate the barrel the flange moves out of the way and the barrel clears (but it's still very close). Is this normal and has anyone else seen this? Does it also occur with the newer Elmar? It's not drastic but it still gives me the goosebumps!

Cheers, and thanks for any feedback.

Ming

[Rob-F]

Yep, I tried my 2.8 Elmar on my M3, and got the same thing. It does not really foul on the cam follower, but it does rub slightly. Looks like the thing to do is to rotate the barrel until it just releases; then collapse without further rotation. Hopefully it can't really do damage, though, or Leitz would have noticed!

[peterm1]

It pays to be careful with stuff like this.

I found that on my M3 the winding lever binds against the shutter speed dial when the former is fully closed. It means I have to be careful to displace the lever a few millimeters when I change shutteer speeds. I have already replaced one shutter speed dial which was badly gouged by this when I bought the camera.

I also tried using an adapter designed to mount Canon SLR glass on Leica screw mount cameras. (A Novoflex LEINIK is its name.) The thing works well enough and in theory I should be able to add a screw mount to M mount adapter to it to use on my M3 or M4P. Problem is that the diameter of the adpater is a bit too big an it binds by a fraction of a mill on the rangefinder window frame on both M cameras. I noticed it in time but had I not or had I been too vigorous in twisting it when mounting I would have caused cosmetic damage.

I would be more worried with your problem as the risk is that this could cause expensive functional damage.