When Old Meets New

Allow me to introduce you to the Ernst Leitz 135mm Hektor f/4.5, with the "Visoflex" telephoto SLR-lens adapter and the macro bellows rail installed, circa mid 1950s, attached to a Sony Alpha A7II camera.

The lens itself is a four piece kit that acts exactly like a modern SLR, and was designed for Leica viewfinder cameras. It is also adjustable to allow the eyepiece on top stay on top when shooting portrait by twisting the entire housing on its mount by 90deg, which is accomplished much the same as installing a lens - push a button on the side and rotate. It is insanely heavy being made almost entirely of brass, and is rather physically imposing..

1) The odd microscope looking eyepiece is actually attached to an "SLR" like adapter with a flip up mirror, allowing you to focus directly through the lens, which you cannot do otherwise. The ocular can be detached at the silver ring in the middle of the vertical tube, and it can then act like a top view camera such as a rollie due to its projection screen.

2. Below it is the camera mount and lens base with a cold shoe attachment and the mirror plunger and lock. The mirror is contained in this part of the lens. The lens uses an unequal length dual wire plunger that will lift the mirror then fire the shutter at the right time.

3. The bellows attaches to that by simple compression and is attached onto the lens body via the tripod mount screw you seen at the bottom of the bellows. Even though it is metal on metal, the milling is so precise there are zero light leaks, simple, but does the job. It does, however come with the risk of dropping the pieces if you are not careful. The bellows rides on two standard 15mm photo rails which allows it to act a bit like a zoom but with a range of 6" to a foot and a half.

4. The lens attaches by screwing into the the front of the bellows in the typical Leica way prior to the adoption of a bayonet mount later on. The lens hood is an aftermarket piece from Novoflex, which is actually still in business today.

It is curious because the lens base has a bayonet mount, as does the camera, though it looks to me like the bayonet mount on the lens may have been added later as it was actually mounted wrong and was 180deg out. It actually took me a while to figure out what was happening as when I first mounted it, it was upright, but when I went to portrait, it twisted the wrong way. I finally realized what happened and reattached the bayonet mount correctly after figuring out how to disassemble it. The whole lens kit may have started out as screw mount and might actually be an earlier example as I have never seen another one with rods... they all have plates from the mid fifties on.

When you want it to act like a proper 135mm telephoto with full infinite range, then you just detach the bellows and screw the lens to the body lens body directly. However, as mentioned, this kit is heavy and unpleasant to transport. It is better for use in a studio. Below are a couple of sample images. The mustang is shot using it as a standard 135mm. The bic macro is a 100% crop, while the coin macro is a 25% crop.