Leitz lens on russian and kr 10 Ricoh

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Leitz lenses are extremelly good and sometimes cheap. One of my group
friend donated me a ricoh kr 10 and i want to mount it a leitz screw mount tele objective . Is it possible and how ?
and is it possible to mount old leitz screw mount lenses to russian leica copies ?

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

 

[DBP]

There is no problem with mounting 39mm screw mount lenses to other cameras with the same mount, unless you run into a Leica collector who accuses you of heresy. As for putting one on a KR10, you will have a problem because the body of the KR10 is too thick to permit focusing at infinity. So even if you found the right adapters, you would only be able to use it as a macro lens. This can be a source of confusion with the early Zenit SLRs, which have a 39mm lens mount, but different lens to film distances than the rangefinders. Given that the USSR made the same model lenses for both, it is easy to get the wrong one.

 

[HerrBremerhaven]

Some of the really old Leica rangefinder lens came apart, leaving a long lens head. If I recall correctly, the 135mm and 90mm were the only ones that could do that (maybe a few others). The idea was you could unscrew the lens in order to place the lens head (optics) onto a Leica Visoflex reflex housing. So that would leave a longer distance between film plane and the lens mount.

The trick would be having an adapter made. I have heard of somewhat rare adapters for using these Visoflex ready lenses on Nikon bodies, but never heard of anything else. Unless one was made for a Ricoh SLR at some point, your only other solution would be to have one custom made ($$$).

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
Dead Link Removed

 

[srs5694]

Aside from the issues DBP describes (restricting use of rangefinder M39 lenses as macro lenses when mounted on SLR bodies), to mount an M39 lens on a K-mount camera you'll need two adapters: One to mount an M39 lens on an M42 body and another to mount an M42 lens on a K-mount body. The latter are readily available from any well-stocked photo store. The former, to the best of my knowledge, are uncommon except from the former Soviet Union; they were common there because the Soviets made M39 SLRs and then switched to M42, so adapters were readily available. You can buy them today from eBay sellers based in former Soviet states. I'm sure a decent machine shop could also custom-build such an adapter.