Kim Coxon
Moderator
I am trying to do some more research into the Contax v Leica standard for 50mm lenses in relation to FSU LTM lenses. For a variety of reasons, I am not convinced that there is a design problem. The most often quoted source for there being a design difference is Robert Ludwig work quoted on Dante Stella's website here. http://dantestella.com/technical/compat.html
Whilst I don't disagree or dispute the tests he did, I am not convinced by the conclusions. One of the problems may be the relatively small sample that Robert Ludwig used. The perception of the problem may also be exagerated by the fact that if anyone has a "good" lens, they tend not to report it but a bad lens will always promote questions. I want to try and gain a larger sample to my own experience. So please help and fill in the "poll".
If you have a J3 that came to you focussing correctly throughout the range, then tick "J3 good near, good far" If it was correct at inf but back focussed at close range tick "J3 good far, poor near". If it was out throughout the range, tick "J3 poor near, poor far"
There is also a similar set of questions for the J9 and "other" FSU lenses. In this please do not include results for the early collapsible 50/3.5 which were "mated" to a specific body.
Many thanks
Kim
Whilst I don't disagree or dispute the tests he did, I am not convinced by the conclusions. One of the problems may be the relatively small sample that Robert Ludwig used. The perception of the problem may also be exagerated by the fact that if anyone has a "good" lens, they tend not to report it but a bad lens will always promote questions. I want to try and gain a larger sample to my own experience. So please help and fill in the "poll".
If you have a J3 that came to you focussing correctly throughout the range, then tick "J3 good near, good far" If it was correct at inf but back focussed at close range tick "J3 good far, poor near". If it was out throughout the range, tick "J3 poor near, poor far"
There is also a similar set of questions for the J9 and "other" FSU lenses. In this please do not include results for the early collapsible 50/3.5 which were "mated" to a specific body.
Many thanks
Kim
Stu W
Well-known
Kim, I've used FSU lenses in ltm, and I found that when purchased they needed collimation, but once collimated were accurate at all ranges. Stu
MartinP
Mentor
This is an interesting survey - I suppose it is clear that rangefinder-error (ie, the camera body) should have nothing to do with responses to the question being asked....
My own experience is too limited (just a few Industars) to pick an answer , above, but I will be interested to see what results you get.
My own experience is too limited (just a few Industars) to pick an answer , above, but I will be interested to see what results you get.
Stu W
Well-known
I voted on the Jupiter 9. The copy I had was in absolutely mint condition-unused. I think the reason why was it was so off as to be unserviceable. On the + side unlike Leica lenses it is very easily collimated. Stu
Kim Coxon
Moderator
I may well do another survey on the bodies. 
Even if you only have one lens, please say how it behaves. It is a multiple poll so you can answer for J3, J9 and the others. I would like to get a "feel" for as many lenses as I can. Alternatively if you have "lots" post the results.
Kim
Even if you only have one lens, please say how it behaves. It is a multiple poll so you can answer for J3, J9 and the others. I would like to get a "feel" for as many lenses as I can. Alternatively if you have "lots" post the results.
Kim
MartinP said:
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Kim,
I have original Factory Data Sheets for three J-3's purchased "new old Stock". They show that the focal length is 52.5mm for the 39mm thread mount lenses. This is the Contax standard. There has to be an error "somewhere" unless the focal length of the lens is changed. I've moved the rear elements in on a Helios-103 to use on my Nikon RF's. I've done it on a "way-off" J-3 in LTM by filing some of the rear module's mount down very close to the glass. I've never seen a secondary shim to control the stand-off of the rear module on a J-3 as there is on the Helios and Menopta's.
I have original Factory Data Sheets for three J-3's purchased "new old Stock". They show that the focal length is 52.5mm for the 39mm thread mount lenses. This is the Contax standard. There has to be an error "somewhere" unless the focal length of the lens is changed. I've moved the rear elements in on a Helios-103 to use on my Nikon RF's. I've done it on a "way-off" J-3 in LTM by filing some of the rear module's mount down very close to the glass. I've never seen a secondary shim to control the stand-off of the rear module on a J-3 as there is on the Helios and Menopta's.
Kim Coxon
Moderator
Hi Brian,
The trouble is I am not sure that that is relevant. A couple of years ago I also managed to get 3 "NOS" J3's. The sheets on those also said the same thing and yet they all focussed perfectly on both a Bessa R and a Canon VI-L. I have also had a "NOS" J12. The sheet on that gave the focal length as 35.something. The cam tube is not directly attached to the lens mount in the J3 and there is a second helix which could translate the can action in the same way it does in the J12 or J9 or indeed many "true" LTM standard lenses. There was also an early J8 that had a similar double helix though most have a single one like the Industars.
Kim
The trouble is I am not sure that that is relevant. A couple of years ago I also managed to get 3 "NOS" J3's. The sheets on those also said the same thing and yet they all focussed perfectly on both a Bessa R and a Canon VI-L. I have also had a "NOS" J12. The sheet on that gave the focal length as 35.something. The cam tube is not directly attached to the lens mount in the J3 and there is a second helix which could translate the can action in the same way it does in the J12 or J9 or indeed many "true" LTM standard lenses. There was also an early J8 that had a similar double helix though most have a single one like the Industars.
Kim
Brian Sweeney said:
The distance from the front of the lens to the back of the RF cam stays constant when measured at closest focus and then at infinity focus, just checked this on my 1959 J-3 with my digital calipers. The double-helical keeps the lens from rotating, but does not translate the cam action. This is the lens that I moved the rear module in slightly, and then adjusted the main shim. It's been my user J-3 for a couple of years now. It is every bit as good as the Canon 50/1.5. I have a Contax to M-Adapter with a spiral that does translate the Contax Standard to Leica standard- it is measurable.
Kim: next time you take a J-3 apart, look where the optics module screws in. As I recall, it screws into the portion of the helical that has the RF Cam. That means there can be no translation to correct for the "as specifed" 52.5mm focal length.
Kim: next time you take a J-3 apart, look where the optics module screws in. As I recall, it screws into the portion of the helical that has the RF Cam. That means there can be no translation to correct for the "as specifed" 52.5mm focal length.
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xayraa33
rangefinder user and fancier
my newish looking J-9 in LTM, which I bought in 1991, focuses so poorly that I can never use it.
The J-9 is Kim's specialty. There is a main shim, and a secondary shim to change the element spacing.
brachal
Refrigerated User
I've added my answers to the poll. I am not a scientific user ... not even close, but I've never had a noticeable, persistent focus issue with any of my FSU lenses.
One thing I've wondered about that touches this issue: export Zorkis. From what I've read and heard, large numbers of Zorkis were exported to the West. If there was a different focal standard, would the cameras and lenses have been shipped as is, or modified? Or did they hope nobody would notice? I know that some Jupiters were also made for export to the West. Would they have really exported a lens that couldn't focus properly, or did they just not care? I don't have any answers, but maybe somebody does. I'm just posing the question.
One thing I've wondered about that touches this issue: export Zorkis. From what I've read and heard, large numbers of Zorkis were exported to the West. If there was a different focal standard, would the cameras and lenses have been shipped as is, or modified? Or did they hope nobody would notice? I know that some Jupiters were also made for export to the West. Would they have really exported a lens that couldn't focus properly, or did they just not care? I don't have any answers, but maybe somebody does. I'm just posing the question.
alternatve
Well-known
My J3 focus perfectly both near and far. It's my main 50mm lens now.
Samuel
Samuel
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi Kim,
I think the poll is missing a couple of "poor near, good far" options. That was the case with the J-9 I sent you.
Philipp
I think the poll is missing a couple of "poor near, good far" options. That was the case with the J-9 I sent you.
Philipp
Spyderman
Well-known
Kim, I'm missing some options there (good far, poor near).
My J-3 and J-9 both behave exactly as if the Dante Stella's "theory" was true. Both were good "far" and backfocussed "near". Moreover my several samples of J-8 behave identically.
PS: My solution was to recalibrate the Bessa to match the J-3 and all J-8's. My J-9 is still a bit off, but that's because it was off both standards when I bought it.
My J-3 and J-9 both behave exactly as if the Dante Stella's "theory" was true. Both were good "far" and backfocussed "near". Moreover my several samples of J-8 behave identically.
PS: My solution was to recalibrate the Bessa to match the J-3 and all J-8's. My J-9 is still a bit off, but that's because it was off both standards when I bought it.
nzeeman
Well-known
i was always confused with stellas theory. why would soviet designers leave their lenses adjusted for contaxes. they made leica copies before wwii - i believe they fully copied leicas and they surely used leica standard before wwii. there is no reason to change all that after the war and take new standard for ltm cameras and lenses. it seems that stella think that soviets didnt have good enough engineers who are capable of making sonnars adjusted for leica standard. we must remember that sssr had great scientists - maybe best in europe in that time so i think that theory about lens which is not adjusted well is surely untrue. that is a story which leica fans talk about every manufacturer. everyone is bad only leica is great and nobody is able even to copy it because God himself assemble leicas so they are perfect and unmatchable. i think the solution is simple - fully ignoring leica gear - put your fsu on fsus , canon , CV bodys and make nice photos - and leave leica to leica fanatics.
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi Srđan,
(1) It makes no sense to produce lenses for two different camera systems with only a very small difference in focal length, if instead you can decide on one of the two as a standard.
(2) It is no problem to design the FED/Zorki/Drug/... rangefinder in such a way that it can be adapted to various normal focal lengths. According to this hypothesis, that's why most FSU screwmount rangefinders have a wedge-shaped rangefinder cam follower that can be easily adjusted for close focus, and the Drug has an eccentric screw. That would mean that the Contax standard was chosen, because it is easier to adjust a Zorki to the Contax standard than a Kiev to the Leica standard.
All in all this makes a lot of sense. However, I think Kim has an alternative hypothesis that seems to go into the direction that many LTM lenses were nevertheless shipped adjusted to "the Leica standard", whatever that means in practice. It is certainly striking that with Kiev mount lenses there appears to be much less of a problem with close focusing - maybe because these lenses were more consistent because readjustment was unnecessary (but maybe also because there is simply no Western Contax-mount camera alternative except the Nikon and most Nikon nuts are somewhat reluctant to use Soviet lenses, because they are even more elitist than Leica users). It is also striking that it is apparently relatively easy to adjust the normal focal length of the LTM lenses, by moving the front and rear groups relatively to each other (something which I read a lot about especially from Brian Sweeney, but which I've never tried), which suggests that the truth may be somewhere in between. The factory may well have shipped lenses in both configurations at times; after all, with a Zorki it was no problem whatsoever to adjust the close focusing distance of your body if close focus was off. Since a Soviet photographer was unlikely to build up a large collection of different Jupiter-3s and Jupiter-9s, in all probability adjustment wouldn't be necessary too often, and even if it was, if he got a J-3 that was off consistently, it was easily possible to modify the lens so that it fits his particular body. If this alternative hypothesis holds true, it would mean that the market today should be flooded with lots of lenses with minimally different focal lengths, which appears to coincide with what we observe.
Before the war the situation was completely different. Many FED lenses from before the war tend to be incompatible with "the Leica standard" anyway, because lenses were matched to bodies individually, not unlike Leica did it themselves before they introduced interchangeable lenses on a large scale. One should also note that Leica took great care to design their standard in such a way that it would be incompatible with everybody else; the screw thread on the first Leicas was a M39 thread with 26 threads per inch, easily mistaken for a standard M39/1mm thread until you notice that lenses don't work because you have to jam them in and break the screw thread in the process.
Don't interpret too much into the word "the Leica standard". All this means is that the normal focal length of the 50mm lens, around which the rangefinder system is built, is 51.6 mm, as opposed to 52.3 mm (I think) which would be "the Contax standard". This is not so much about Leica as a brand rather than about a single number, which happened to be introduced by Leica in the 1930s, rather than by Zeiss which would have been the alternative.
I wouldn't put too much into Leicaphile's derisive talk about Soviet equipment. People who spend a lot on their equipment tend to build up quite an emotional relationship with it, and Leica is great for attaching myths to the name. In the rangefinder world, up to the 1950s and early 1960s the Soviet production IMHO was perfectly on par with the worldwide standard, and that was when on the rangefinder market they stopped innovating on a large scale anyway (for various reasons). If you want more modern Soviet cameras, you have to look at SLRs. It is also true that, notwithstanding the presence of great scientists, and notwithstanding the existence of some outstanding products, the Soviet industry also produced quite a bit of junk - there was a reason that everybody ditched their Raduga TV sets for imported Japanese ones in the late 1980s, for example. Then again, I've been hanging around quite a lot with professional photographers from the former Soviet Union, and even among them it was a pretty common idea that Leica is the epitome of cameras, while domestic cameras were largely for the amateur market, and many of the more complex domestic models had a reputation of being capricious and unreliable. I've heard that often enough from photographers and former and current camera salesmen that I think that this was pretty much the general attitude in the Soviet Union towards domestic the camera production, at least since the 1980s. All in all, the history how photographic equipment was produced, used and appreciated in the Soviet Union is a fascinating and multi-faceted one; we're certainly not doing it justice if we describe it as a history of junk from a developing country, but we shouldn't overglorify it either because of the Mir, Gagarin and Tereshkova.
Philipp
I believe the basic assumption for that hypothesis is that after the war the situation on the domestic Soviet market had changed a lot with the introduction of the Kiev, which followed the Contax standard. According to this hypothesis, the Soviets noticed two things:nzeeman said:
(1) It makes no sense to produce lenses for two different camera systems with only a very small difference in focal length, if instead you can decide on one of the two as a standard.
(2) It is no problem to design the FED/Zorki/Drug/... rangefinder in such a way that it can be adapted to various normal focal lengths. According to this hypothesis, that's why most FSU screwmount rangefinders have a wedge-shaped rangefinder cam follower that can be easily adjusted for close focus, and the Drug has an eccentric screw. That would mean that the Contax standard was chosen, because it is easier to adjust a Zorki to the Contax standard than a Kiev to the Leica standard.
All in all this makes a lot of sense. However, I think Kim has an alternative hypothesis that seems to go into the direction that many LTM lenses were nevertheless shipped adjusted to "the Leica standard", whatever that means in practice. It is certainly striking that with Kiev mount lenses there appears to be much less of a problem with close focusing - maybe because these lenses were more consistent because readjustment was unnecessary (but maybe also because there is simply no Western Contax-mount camera alternative except the Nikon and most Nikon nuts are somewhat reluctant to use Soviet lenses, because they are even more elitist than Leica users). It is also striking that it is apparently relatively easy to adjust the normal focal length of the LTM lenses, by moving the front and rear groups relatively to each other (something which I read a lot about especially from Brian Sweeney, but which I've never tried), which suggests that the truth may be somewhere in between. The factory may well have shipped lenses in both configurations at times; after all, with a Zorki it was no problem whatsoever to adjust the close focusing distance of your body if close focus was off. Since a Soviet photographer was unlikely to build up a large collection of different Jupiter-3s and Jupiter-9s, in all probability adjustment wouldn't be necessary too often, and even if it was, if he got a J-3 that was off consistently, it was easily possible to modify the lens so that it fits his particular body. If this alternative hypothesis holds true, it would mean that the market today should be flooded with lots of lenses with minimally different focal lengths, which appears to coincide with what we observe.
Before the war the situation was completely different. Many FED lenses from before the war tend to be incompatible with "the Leica standard" anyway, because lenses were matched to bodies individually, not unlike Leica did it themselves before they introduced interchangeable lenses on a large scale. One should also note that Leica took great care to design their standard in such a way that it would be incompatible with everybody else; the screw thread on the first Leicas was a M39 thread with 26 threads per inch, easily mistaken for a standard M39/1mm thread until you notice that lenses don't work because you have to jam them in and break the screw thread in the process.
Don't interpret too much into the word "the Leica standard". All this means is that the normal focal length of the 50mm lens, around which the rangefinder system is built, is 51.6 mm, as opposed to 52.3 mm (I think) which would be "the Contax standard". This is not so much about Leica as a brand rather than about a single number, which happened to be introduced by Leica in the 1930s, rather than by Zeiss which would have been the alternative.
I wouldn't put too much into Leicaphile's derisive talk about Soviet equipment. People who spend a lot on their equipment tend to build up quite an emotional relationship with it, and Leica is great for attaching myths to the name. In the rangefinder world, up to the 1950s and early 1960s the Soviet production IMHO was perfectly on par with the worldwide standard, and that was when on the rangefinder market they stopped innovating on a large scale anyway (for various reasons). If you want more modern Soviet cameras, you have to look at SLRs. It is also true that, notwithstanding the presence of great scientists, and notwithstanding the existence of some outstanding products, the Soviet industry also produced quite a bit of junk - there was a reason that everybody ditched their Raduga TV sets for imported Japanese ones in the late 1980s, for example. Then again, I've been hanging around quite a lot with professional photographers from the former Soviet Union, and even among them it was a pretty common idea that Leica is the epitome of cameras, while domestic cameras were largely for the amateur market, and many of the more complex domestic models had a reputation of being capricious and unreliable. I've heard that often enough from photographers and former and current camera salesmen that I think that this was pretty much the general attitude in the Soviet Union towards domestic the camera production, at least since the 1980s. All in all, the history how photographic equipment was produced, used and appreciated in the Soviet Union is a fascinating and multi-faceted one; we're certainly not doing it justice if we describe it as a history of junk from a developing country, but we shouldn't overglorify it either because of the Mir, Gagarin and Tereshkova.
Philipp
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projectbluebird
Film Abuser
My Industar-22 has been a great performer on any body. It's had more use than the zorki it came with.
I'm going to take the original factory spec sheet that came with my J-3 as a legitimate source of information, the lens is made to the Contax standard. The RF cam moves 1:1 with respect to the J-3 and J-8 optics module. That's because the optics are screwed directly into it: it is a solid piece of metal. That does not mean it is a bad performer. Quite the contrary, I have tested my J-3's and J-8's against the best lenses from Japan and Germany of that period and found them to be every bit their equal.
All that the difference in focal length means is that the lens needs to be carefully collimated to work on a camera that is calibrated for 51.6mm. The same holds true of using Contax lenses on Nikon Rangefinders. I carefully collimate the Zeiss Sonnars to work on my Nikons. I also carefully collimate the Helios-103's and Menopta's to work on my Nikons.
If anything, I spend my hobby time working on my camera equipment and that forges a closer appreciation than simply spending lots of money on them.
All that the difference in focal length means is that the lens needs to be carefully collimated to work on a camera that is calibrated for 51.6mm. The same holds true of using Contax lenses on Nikon Rangefinders. I carefully collimate the Zeiss Sonnars to work on my Nikons. I also carefully collimate the Helios-103's and Menopta's to work on my Nikons.
If anything, I spend my hobby time working on my camera equipment and that forges a closer appreciation than simply spending lots of money on them.
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Spyderman
Well-known
One more thing just came to my mind: the scale on the lens barrel. When you mount a J-8 or J-3 on a Leica M the focussing scale and the optical rangefinder won't match... which is IMO another evidence that even the barrells were built to different standard.
Stu W
Well-known
Spyderman said:
I noticed that myself. I also noticed the condition was corrected when I collimated the lens. In my 3 cases with FSU lenses the problem seemed to be quality control as 2 were way out of whack and 1 was spot on. Stu