[Leica] The Mystery of the Missing Lenscaps

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

The following email arrived at my computer this morning, having
presumably been addressed to me in error. I'm reposting it on the
assumption that the writer (a retired medical man with whom I've
exchanged emails on the subject of large-format photography in
Afghanistan)  intended it for the LUG.

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It was a foggy day in early December 1899 when my good friend Mr
Sherlock Holmes solved the Mystery of the Missing Lenscaps.

His client, the honourable RP Johnson <rpjohnson2@home.com> had
written wondering why "every Leica lens I look at (new or used) has a
lens cap; but every Leica lens I buy is missing the lens cap.  I want
to know where they are all going."

For Mr Holmes, a born master of disguise, it was the work of a  moment
to transform his appearance from that of an English gentlemen into
that of a American camera enthusiast - though it struck me that the
strange pocket-ladened waistcoat he was wearing (he called it a 'Domke
jacket') was scarcely elegant, and did not go well with his
deerstalker hat. Pocketing my old service revolver, and a powerful
magnifying glass, he headed out into the crowded streets of the Great
Metropolis.

When he returned that night, he had the confident air of a man who has
achieved his goal.

"The case is solved?" I asked.

"A mere trifle, Watson", he replied. "As I suspected, our client had
the solution before his very eyes, but could not see it. Pray read to
me the statement he made in his communication to us this morning - the
part where he describes his recent visit to a camera emporium in
search of lens caps.

Picking up our client's letter, I read aloud:

"The Leica guy admitted that they had a box in the back (in the dark)
that had 3rd party lens caps.  These run under $10, but you have to
sort of try them for fit to each lens individually."

"Given this vital clue", said Holmes, "I kept watch on one of the
premises which unfortunate addicts such as our client visit to satisfy
their craving."

"My God, Holmes", I cried. "You have been to a photographic swap meet?
Such places are worse than the lowest of opium dens."

"No, I lay in wait near a camera store in Whitechapel. Spying some
miserable wretch scuttling from the premises, I apprehended the
follow. Pulling open his camera bag, I saw that the contents were
Nikon cameras and lenses - a little-known brand made in a factory in
Japan (which I briefly visited while working on the Case of the
Mikado's ABLON). 'What did you purchase in that camera store?' I
demanded. Shamed that his purchase was to be made public, he handed
over a small metal cap engraved 'Leica'."

"By Jove, Holmes", I exclaimed, "Is this not the very kind of cap
which our client says goes missing?"

"Exactly, Watson - the vital clue was the phrase our client used -
'third party'.  The base fellow I'd apprehended had purchased the cap
because it was 'a good fit on my f1.4 Nikkor' - a cap from (in the
words of our client) 'a box in the back'."

I sighed at the depths of depravity to which the human race could
sink. "He was prepared to place a fine example of traditional German
craftsmanship upon some cut-price lens made in the Far East? What can
these Japanese fellows know about lens-making? Japan isn't even in the
British Empire."

"Lacking a cap for their latest acquisition (purchased no doubt at one
of those vile camera fairs or swap meets) these camera addicts will
not shrink from using a cap made by another manufacturer if it will
meet their purposes", said Holmes. "Thus after the briefest sojourn in
a box in the back of a camera store, a lens cap of the highest quality
may find itself mated to a fourth-rate optick made in Muscovy. Why
only this morning I saw in the Strand a tourist who was using a lens
cap made by that most excellent British company Reid and Sigrist to
cover not the fine Taylor-Hobson Anastigmat for which it was intended,
but an inferior optick manufactured by a jumped-up German microscope
maker."

"Are you suggesting, Holmes, that all those missing Leica lens caps
have been purchased second-hand for use on other brands of lens?
Brilliant detective work!"

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

(Mr Holmes has asked me to say that the full facts of the Case of the
Mikado's ABLON - explaining the reason for the change in size of the
small hole on that device mid-way through the production run -  cannot
yet, alas, be placed before the public.)

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