Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/02/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>I thought I had read somewhere that the US navy had Leica whip up a special >90mm f1 lens for them. Is that really true? Just what the noctilust folks >need to know. Not that I would really want to hunt one down, but I am >curious if it did exist, how big is the thing? Jim Lager has some info on this lens on pages 231 and 232 of his "Lenses, volume II" Book. Yes, there was a 90mm F1.0 lens produced for the US Navy. It is HUGE! The little info in Jim's book says it was used for electro-optical night photography, which confuses me because it is an M lens and pictures show one attached to M3 and M4 -- so what kind of electo-optical device was it ever used with?? Special - electro- optical M-camera maybe??? ;-) There is a diagram of the lens elements and it has 8 elements in 6 groups. On one page there are 3 rings which apparently are used for a fixed 50 meter, 100 meter and inifinity focusing settings. The thing is so huge it looks like it obstructs the rangefinder window and maybe even the viewfinder window. In fact, it may be that there is no focusing helicoid at all -- the pictures of the lens don't make that clear. So maybe you HAD to use one of those 3 spacer rings. Mark Hammons