[Leica] Home made Leica

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

When I was a teen ager I made myself a 4x5" studio camera from a kit
supplied by Calumet Photo. Basically it consisted of a handfull of precut
wooden parts, a gear type focusing track, a ground glass viewing screen, and
a piece of limp leather for the bellows. Everything glued together like a
Strombecker model (remember those?). The hardest part was folding the
bellows so that the pleats were even and it was light tight. The lens and
shutter came off an old Kodak Autographic.I had two film holders giving me a
total of 4 shots on a photographing excursion. That was OK since I couldn't
buy much film during WW2. I didn't have my own darkroom so after tray
developing the film in my bathroom, I used the high school darkroom to make
"huge" 8x10" enlargements. When I went t0 college, I gve the camera to a
classmate.
The idea of making your own Leica workalike is mind boggling. I suspect his
next challenge would be to make a working M9, or if he really wanted to
shoot for the moon, an S2.
Larry Z