Talk:39mm screw lenses

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This is the discussion page for 39mm screw lenses. Click here to start a new topic.


Discussion pages are for discussing improvements to the article itself, not for discussions about the subject of the article.


Cosina / Voigtländer info

The Cosina / Voigtländer info that has been added is nice and useful, but imho it would be better placed in the Voigtländer page, that only contains a very basic chronology, or the Cosina page, that contains some very basic information, and is quite insufficient. We could also create a specific Cosina Voigtländer page if desired. --Rebollo fr 04:39, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

I mostly agree, but I'd have a strong preference for Cosina. While Cosina is of course using the "Voigtländer" name legitimately, that's all it is: the use of a name. (Or, since we're dealing in lenses here, the arbitrary/commercial use of names, plural.) Whatever could be said about the new Cosina-made Zeiss lenses, these "Voigtländer" lenses are made and designed by Cosina, and it seems bizarre to add info about them to the page on a company that exists only in name. -- Hoary 09:27, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

Company names too technical

I think we should not be overly technical about the company names. It is true that Topcon only took the name of "Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon" in 1989, long after it had stopped selling cameras and lenses, and that technically it should be named "Tokyo Kogaku". It is also true that Nikon should be called "Nippon Kogaku" before 1988. I think that the technical details about the naming of the companies are interesting, but belong to the company's page. The reader of this page is not specifically concerned, and we can continue to call these lenses "Nikon" or "Topcon" or "Minolta" like everybody calls them. --Rebollo fr 11:25, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

I'd start by disagreeing that everybody calls them that. They don't. I don't; and while I'm willing to believe that I'm unusual, I find it hard to believe that I'm unique or even very unusual.
It's not as if a lens were only branded "Nikkor" (for example) and only people who were knowledgable or looked up reference works would know that it was made by Nippon Kōgaku. On the contrary, the lens clearly says both "Nikkor" and "Nippon Kogaku", and does so because the latter was the company name and it would be (for LTM lenses) decades before the company renamed itself Nikon.
And yes, Camerapedia is a reference work, isn't it? I thought that a reference work was one that I could rely on for correct information. If somebody is so dimwitted that, say, "Nihon Kōgaku (later Nikon)" is too hard for him to understand, I suppose he can find plenty of dumbed-down alternatives to Camerapedia.
We may have different understandings of what's merely "technical". Getting the name of the company right to the nearest year or so (let alone the nearest decade!) doesn't strike me as a mere technicality. What I'd call a technical quarrel would be, say, one between "Nippon Kōgaku" (correct transliteration of the name) and "Nippon Kogaku" (the name as it's engraved).
Incidentally, saying that the lens was made by Nikon isn't merely an anachronism, it also obscures a good example of an interesting phenomenon: a great number of Japanese camera companies started with one name, thought of another for their cameras, and came to rename themselves after their cameras: Canon, Konica, Nikon, Pentax, Petri, Topcon. (The same thing happened elsewhere, of course: Rollei, Leica, etc.) -- Hoary 00:58, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Under company name, or lens name?

Whether or not you agree with me that "Nikon" should here be "Nippon Kōgaku" (with or without macron), if the lenses are listed under this header, then Komura lenses should I think be under Sankyo (again with or without macron. Or if they're under Komura, then Nikkor lenses should be under Nikkor. I think company names are better, because (for example) to split Simlar lenses from Topcor lenses seems needlessly confusing. -- Hoary 01:20, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

Or something. I'm not at all certain that I'm right here and am open to other ideas -- but the existing non-system seems a bit odd. -- Hoary 09:38, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

Organization of this page

This page needs to be better organized, but I am a little lost. Once I tried to make separate pages, one for each manufacturer, and I setup the navigational template for this purpose. But it does not make too much sense to have a separate page for any maker that produced a couple of M39 lenses. A good idea would be to fix a lower limit, let's say 10 different lenses, to create a separate page. All the other makers can stay in this page, or go to something like "Other 39mm screw lenses". While at this we could fix the titles, I finally agree with User:Hoary that the company name is the only viable system. --Rebollo fr 11:45, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

That sounds fair enough. However, I don't think that numbers in themselves matter. For example, as long as nobody feels like writing anything about the Nikkor lenses, I don't see any point in moving them elsewhere. If on the other hand somebody writes a screenful about Yasuhara's single lens, that should go elsewhere.
Incidentally, I'm not at all happy with the title "39mm screw lenses". I think that "LTM" is gradually gaining ground (even among people like myself who don't actually use any Leitz/Leica equipment), and that it's useful for distinguishing between (i) these lenses and (ii) those for the Zenit (and perhaps others as well). -- Hoary 12:05, 16 May 2006 (EDT)
You are right for the first point.
About the title, the problem is that LTM is an abbreviation, not necessarily transparent. "Leica thread lenses" makes me think of lenses made by Leica, and we would have titles like "Zunow Leica thread lenses". --Rebollo fr 12:21, 16 May 2006 (EDT)
Well, it is "Leica thread mount"; so the mount is that of the Leica. The lenses could be from Leitz or anybody else. "Leitz LTM lenses" and "Zunow LTM lenses" seem OK to me, though I'll concede that Google has very few hits for the former and none for the latter. -- Hoary 23:43, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

M39 lenses and their focusing on their respective cameras

Note: I see that there has not been too activity on this article in the past two years. Also I would like to note that the repressive activities of the "powers that be" in the world have bled into the Wikipedia, making it useless for anyone attempting to create reasonable and accurate articles. This is why I am working here on C(K)amerapedia.

One issue that I think is worth discussing is a very important one; Soveit-era lenses do not focus correctly on Leica-standard cameras, including the Voightlanders. There is an article on the web explaining why, but it went so far over my head that I can only recommend for its photo of the Soviet lens designers -- which is excellent.

http://www.dantestella.com/technical/compat.html

I call the problem a "ration problem" as opposed to a "one to one" problem. No Soviet-era lens can be adapted to any Leica-standard camera, period except one without a coupled rangefinder!

LTM vs M39

To Psychoanalyst god, who added the following paragraph today:

The Leica Thread Mount is often confused with the M39 lens mount, which is a 39mm by 1mm DIN thread, whilst the LTM is a 39mm by ~0.977mm (26TPI) Whitworth. Incidentally, the widely used acronym LTM, was invented by Marc James Small, best known as the author of 'Non-Leitz Leica Thread Mount Lenses' and the co-author of the 'Zeiss Compendium '.

It is common practice to use "M39" as another name for the Leica screw mount, see for example this page by Dante Stella or this English Wikipedia page. To me, M39 is a generic name for any 39mm diameter screw mount, and M39 × 1/26" is the official specification of Leica screw mount (see the French Wikipedia page and " various other, including manufacturer's specs), whereas M39 × 1 is that of the 39mm by 1mm thread used on Russian cameras.

As to the assertion that the LTM acronym was invented by Marc James Small, I think the acronym is intuitive enough, and I don't see the need to quote the person who invented it, and to provide Amazon links to his books. Moreover, I would be surprised if you could provide a source proving that the acronym was not used before the said books. Of course, you could provide the reference of the book on LTM lenses in a "Bibliography" section at the bottom of the article (without Amazon links).

--rebollo_fr 08:39, 20 August 2010 (EDT)

This page needs some major edits. As it stands, it states some absolute falsehoods. The article as a whole doesn't distinguish between 39 mm and 'Leica'. The list purports specifically to be a list of Leica-mount lenses, but includes Zenit-mount ones. It would be better to call the page 'Leica thread mount lenses', or 'Leica 39 mm thread mount lenses'and maybe have a link near the top to another page for 'Soviet 39 mm SLR lenses' or similar. I may come back and see what other pages already exist. Not sure the technical difference between the mount threads matters; what matters is that the lenses fit or don't, and focus or don't. --Dustin McAmera 11:57, 10 March 2011 (PST)