Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/07/19

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Leica] Why I like the Leica-Users and Other Stories
From: Paul Chefurka <Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:47:09 -0700

Sounds like the black cat one could take a picture of with that 28/1.0 must have at one point belonged to a guy named Schroedinger...

Paul

- -----Original Message-----
From: Peter A. Klein [mailto:pklein@2alpha.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:15 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Leica] Why I like the Leica-Users and Other Stories


> > At 06:03 PM 07/17/2001 -0700, "Dan Honemann" <ddh@home.com> wrote:
>> P.S. I'm still waiting for the mysterious answer to why no one makes a 28mm
>> f1.0 lens.  And I'm hell bent on posting inane messages like this till I get
>> one!

> on 7/18/01 4:32 AM, Peter Klein at pklein@2alpha.net wrote:
> > Because if they did, you'd fall in.

>Gilbert Plantinga <gilplant@earthlink.net>> wrote:
>Not exactly. You see, when you walk into a small room with the Noctilux it
> tends to suck all of the available light out of the room as soon as you take
> off the lens cap. With the wide field of view of a 28 you could do some
> serious environmental damage outdoors! Serious photon shortage!

Quite right, Gilbert.  But it's a safety issue, too. The stream of
hyperaccellerated photons running at the edge of the lens' angle of view
creates a partial electromagnetic vacuum just outside and behind the
perimeter of the front element.  The wider the lens, the farther around
and behind the lens this vacuum goes.  At 28mm and wider, the
photographer is in serious danger with an f/1.0 lens. And with wide
lenses, you tend to get closer to your subjects, endangering them as
well.

All this was discovered in Wetzlar in the 1950s.  Young genius lens
designer Heinz Blitzengartner created what he thought to be a
breakthrough 28mm f/1.0 lens prototype, only to be sucked into the lens
and implanted onto a roll of Agfachrome the first time he tried it. 
Fortunately, Heinz' colleagues realized what had happened.  They quickly
capped and removed the lens, and Heinz popped out of the camera.  He was
not seriously injured, but was so embarrased by the unexpected turn of
events that he quit optical design and became a quantum physicist.

- --Peter