Leitz easel question

Dear all,

I have recently purchased 2 Focomats and they each came with a different easel. With the Ic I got a two bladed cast iron (or so it seems to me) easel that takes paper up to the size of 22cm X 27cm.
The Focomat IIc I got came with a smaller easel, also two bladed and has a wooden base.

Both easels have the grooves for the clamping mechanism on the baseboard.

My question is about the easel i mentioned first.

It has a steel or alloy base and is a little shorter than the wooden one. The wood based one measures 2.5cm's in height which is the default for Leitz easels I think and works with the autofocus using the normal pin on the Ic and the 25mm setting on the IIc's column.

The other one is 23mm and seems to be rather odd. The Ic it came with had an exactly 23mm tall spacer ring on it so it could be used by having the pin in the lower hole of the column and the ring on top of it.

Is this standard that the easel is 23mm tall or it's missing some anti-scratch layer from the bottom?
I was rather worried using this on the nice wooden baseboard, it would perhaps scratch it all over.

What I did is I added some felt to the bottom and it is now not scratching and also this lifted the base to 25mm so it is standard.

Any hints on what I have? Can't seem to find this easel anywhere on Google with the steel base, just the wooden one. And why is it 23mm only and is that spacer ring that came with it from Leitz or some custom design?

Thanks,
Ben

The top:



The bottom:



The felt I added to make it 25mm and non-scratching



And the spacer ring of 23mm

I have 3 of the wood easels; that metal one looks like the wood base has been stripped off. The 23mm spacer is probaly custom made, but not by Leitz I don't think.

Thanks Chip. It is indeed a mystery but it doesn't seem to me that the wood was stripped off as the the size of the sidewalls would not allow for any covering, it would stick out then.

Moreover I found this which - although the bottom is not showing - seems like the one I have albeit with a yellowed surface.

https://www.willhaben.at/iad/kaufen...rahmen-vergroesserungsrahmen-leitz-219186253/

Hope someone can shed some light on this.
Thanks,

Ben

The one in your web post reference has a base, yours does NOT have a base.

bence8810 said:

The other one is 23mm and seems to be rather odd.

Click to expand...

I got a 8x10 Leitz easel that is only 3mm in height. Base is a flat steel plate with its underside coverd by PVC foil and it got 3 sunk in screwholes seemingly to mount it to a wooden adapter plate offered seperately by Leitz.

chip j said:

The one in your web post reference has a base, yours does NOT have a base.

Click to expand...

What do you mean my does not have a base? It is 23mm in height, only 2mm short of the other wooden easel. You mean to say the base is 2mm thick only on every Leitz easel?
I think mine is just a different version where the base is metal too.

What AgX mentions is yes another easel, 3mm tall and is optionally attached to a block of wood with the clamping mechanism at the bottom. I have one of those too with the wooden base and undoing the screws I can take the plate off and use it without the board.

The one I am showing in my post above has a base and is only 2mm shy of the normal easel's height. The one I linked in from Austria in my 2nd post is also looking like just mine, too bad we can't see the underside.

Ben

Here's another photo of my easel 1 minute after I opened the package that came from Germany, it traveled clamped onto my Ic's board.
Maybe here you can see the base better.

Thanks,
Ben

I have one of the metal ones. It isn't magnetic, so it isn't steel, although it weighs quite a bit. I've never found any info about it either. I just assumed they made them for a while then stopped making them at some point since wood was cheaper. At least you won't ever have to worry about it warping or delaminating. I'm guessing they are relatively rare.

The 1 or 2mm difference is completely irrelevant. It won't have any affect on print sharpness. Using the spacer won't hurt, but it also won't really matter. The spacer ring was probably made by some anal German....

Patrick Robert James said:

I have one of the metal ones. It isn't magnetic, so it isn't steel, although it weighs quite a bit. I've never found any info about it either. I just assumed they made them for a while then stopped making them at some point since wood was cheaper. At least you won't ever have to worry about it warping or delaminating. I'm guessing they are relatively rare.

The 1 or 2mm difference is completely irrelevant. It won't have any affect on print sharpness. Using the spacer won't hurt, but it also won't really matter. The spacer ring was probably made by some anal German....

Click to expand...

Good to hear this isn't the only one out there!
Are you not afraid of scratches? I just got it, my enlarger is from 1950-51 - the first year of production so the easel is likely to be from the same year.

Let's hope some others will be able to shine some light on this as well!
It sure is well built or let's just say, overbuilt! But I like it that way.

Ben

Yes, that is definitely a base. I'm not sure if even Leitz knows everything it made, and for what.

bence8810 said:

Good to hear this isn't the only one out there!
Are you not afraid of scratches? I just got it, my enlarger is from 1950-51 - the first year of production so the easel is likely to be from the same year.

Let's hope some others will be able to shine some light on this as well!
It sure is well built or let's just say, overbuilt! But I like it that way.

Ben

Click to expand...

I have a 1a that is exactly like the 1c except for the round base on the column. The serial number of the lens installed on it when I got it dates it to the very end of production of the 1a going into the 1c. I forgot the year off hand. I am guessing it was one of the last 1a's made. The easel obviously dates from the same time. Perhaps after the war they made them out of some metal which was easier/cheaper/better than wood at that point. Who knows.

I am not worried about scratches. I don't really use the easel though. After many years of having slightly different sized prints from not getting easels exactly the right size, I decided to go to single sized easels. I have a couple of 4 in 1 easels modified for full frame at their different sizes. The 8x10 is 7x10 now. Everything is the same size as a result. Life is easier.

The one thing I didn't like about the Leitz easel is the paper stops. Hated those spring mounted things with their little tiny lip. I bought some super thin aluminum and bent it back on itself then contact glued it to the top of the stops with the bent back side under the little lip effectively making the lip larger. Works great now. No more jacked up prints, wasting time and money.

I'll have to do a thread about the Focomat one of these days. I made the carrier into a glass one for example.

Please, please do a thread on Focomats!

Patrick Robert James said:

I have a 1a that is exactly like the 1c except for the round base on the column. The serial number of the lens installed on it when I got it dates it to the very end of production of the 1a going into the 1c. I forgot the year off hand. I am guessing it was one of the last 1a's made. The easel obviously dates from the same time. Perhaps after the war they made them out of some metal which was easier/cheaper/better than wood at that point. Who knows.

I am not worried about scratches. I don't really use the easel though. After many years of having slightly different sized prints from not getting easels exactly the right size, I decided to go to single sized easels. I have a couple of 4 in 1 easels modified for full frame at their different sizes. The 8x10 is 7x10 now. Everything is the same size as a result. Life is easier.

The one thing I didn't like about the Leitz easel is the paper stops. Hated those spring mounted things with their little tiny lip. I bought some super thin aluminum and bent it back on itself then contact glued it to the top of the stops with the bent back side under the little lip effectively making the lip larger. Works great now. No more jacked up prints, wasting time and money.

I'll have to do a thread about the Focomat one of these days. I made the carrier into a glass one for example.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot - this clears things up.

The Elmar on my Ic is from 1950 according to this: Serial 770474

http://www.kenrockwell.com/leica/lens-serial-numbers.htm

According to this site, the Ic was sold from 1950 so that is when mine must be from, the original owner I got it from worked for Leitz.

https://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-wiki.en/index.php/Focomat_Ic

This tells us that indeed in the years after the war this metal easel was perhaps supplied for focomats.
What I don't like about mine is that when I enlarger to 5x7 which I often do, a good chunk of the easel is handing off the baseboard. For this reason I actually prefer to work with 4 bladed versions.

So you aren't worried about scratches. I will then remove the felt I put on and see how I get by with it.

Thanks,
Ben

Just because I'm not worried about scratches on my already scratched up baseboard doesn't mean you shouldn't be! Do whatever makes you feel comfortable.

I would replace the Elmar. Not such a good lens, unless you like taking portraits. A modern lens will blow it away in terms of sharpness if that is what you are looking for. I was going to sell mine, but when I tested it the neg I grabbed happened to be a portrait, and I kind of liked it so I decided to keep it around. Most 50mm lenses will work on the Focomat, you just might have to change the extension tube size. I've found that everything seems to work with either the DOORX or a 10mm tube I have. The lens has to be 50mm though to use the autofocus. I have tried several lenses on mine. The ones that worked with the autofocus after calibration were the Elmar and Focotar-2 (duh), the Durst Neonon (Pentax), Minolta Rokkor-X and I think the Computar DL. Strangely the Fujinon-EX I have focuses large and small, but it is off in the middle. Weird. I might have tried other lenses too, but I forget. Anyway, replace the lens....

One more thing to check too is if it is aligned. Look at the baseboard where the column meets it and see if the wood is indented there. You might have to shim it after all these years. If you have a laser alignment tool or could borrow one it would help.

Patrick Robert James said:

Strangely the Fujinon-EX I have focuses large and small, but it is off in the middle. Weird.

Click to expand...

Yes, that puzzles me too.

I have the Focotar LFE which I’ll be using on it just keeping the Elmar to have the original setup the way it rolled off the assembly line as I plan to keep it.

Good idea about the alignment check, will do that soon. I don’t have a laser alignment tool but could do it with a big white board on the baseboard at max height and measure the dimensions of the projected frame. I think....

Will see what I do with the easel in terms of cushioning but good to hear it’s a relatively rare model.

Thanks all,
Ben

Coming back to this old thread, I just came across this auction in Japan that has the same Ic for sale like mine and it seems to come with the same version metal easel...

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/271742700

So there are more of these out there! I wanted to sell mine but now second guessing myself as keeping it would mean I have the original setup...

Another interesting bit is that it comes with a 40mm Focotar f2.8 and the person mentions it can autofocus just fine and he marked the new positions on the column where the parallelogram needs to be fixed at. This is to this comment:

Patrick Robert James said:

The lens has to be 50mm though to use the autofocus.

Click to expand...

Ben

The 1c can auotfocus w/lenses from 40mm to 60mm, I believe. The illumination might not be even w/a 40mm, however.

I don't know how the autofocus will work with a lens that is not a 50mm unless you change the cam. If I put the 60mm Orthoplanar on mine the focus goes way off with very little movement. Leica made 50mm cams to replace the 40mm ones on the V35 so it is possible they made other cams for the 1c.

I'd skip the 40mm like Chip mentions. You would probably have quite a bit of light falloff with a 40.

Yes I won’t be getting that enlarger just mentioned what was said in the AD. I am happy with the 50.

The steel base easel was nice to see though...

Ben

WOW, Patrick, you have an Orthoplanar?!! THE one lens that I've lusted for. How is it, compared to say, a Focotar 2?