[Leica] Canadian version of the Apo-Summicron?!

[imx <imxputs@knoware.nl>]

What really happened is this:
At Photokina 1998 the Apo-Summicron has been announced and there were ten
lenses available for demonstration. These first 10 lenses AND ONLY THIS
SMALL BATCH has been produced and assembled in Canada. These ten lenses had
a slightly defective aspherical surface and these ten should have been all
returned to the company. But a few slipped away (?) and are now suppsedly in
private hands.  The original idea was to produce the lens in canada and so
the first batch of boxes had the inscription (made in Canada) printed. But
the first series 100 lens elements (aspherical) that were made by Canada
were still outside of the required tolerance band and so Leica had to bring
the full production to Solms. The out-of-tolerance lens elements were not
used in the production version of the Summicron of course. We must be
realistic here: I could check a Summicron with the socalled "defective"
element and a correct one and noted only a small difference (in contrast at
some zones of the image). Normal use would not stumble across this: so we
should try to be realistic: what leica calls a defective lens, would go
undetected by 99,9998% of users and would be within tolerance with many
optical firms.
It is thus impossible for any buyer to have a lens delivered to them from
that "wrong" batch of elements. Naturally even within Solms some tolerancing
has to be accepted but that is another story.
Hopefully this brings us back to reality.


Erwin