Leica Summicron 90mm f2 Canada Midland

Leica Summicron 90mm f2 Canada Midland

Problem: Rangefinder lever stuck

This is a very rare lens, although the "normal" 90mm Summicron is quite popular and pretty cheep (retaliative to a Leica glass), the Canada Midland is a rare piece. It's quite hard to find any good info on it online. On one site I found that a total of 490 lenses where produced between 1957 and 1962. Based on the serial number it was made at 1958, but I'm not 100% sure about it.

It's a M39 - a screw mount, so I can use it on my Sony NEX camera, it's a crop sensor so I will get something 135mm equivalent of focal length, its quite long for my taste, but can do for half body or head shoots.  



Anyway,

The lens I've got was in quite good condition, you can see it was dropped and the mount if bent a bit inside, but it still can be screwed in fairly easy. The glass is in good shape, as well as the aperture. The problem is that if one really wan't to use it on a Leica camera, he needs to couple the lens to the range finder, this is done via this "prong" at the back of the lens. It's simply moves with the focusing ring, pushing on the range finder lever inside the camera. So this part was stuck, probably due to the hit the lens took.



Basically the disassemble part is easy and minimal, you just need to get the "prong" out. By removing the two side screws.



Next I took the think apart to clean it. Pushing it all the way in, you'll see the end of the spring visible at the bottom. You just need to lift it out of the hole (I used a knife's edge)

And these are the three part, the spring, the moving and static parts.

After cleaning the whole think (I also used some very fine sending paper to really make it smooth) the whole think goes back together, insert on part into the other and then lock everything with the spring.

Next I've tried to unbend a bit the mount as it to close to the "prong". For this I've made a tool which can be useful also for bend filter rings, so its a good think you remember this.

All you need is a piece of wood, I've used a round saw to drill a 40 mm (the mount is M39 - 39 mm) hole in the middle of the block and then cut it in half. Make sure you save the inside piece that you've sawed off.

Next I've placed the lens into the block, and the inner piece inside the lens, and gave it a few taps.

And that's about it. Its not perfect, but it will do.

So I did shoot few test shoots with this lens, and I really enjoyed it, It's a bit on the long side as I said, but it was quite easy to get sharp images even at F2 and the colors and total feel from the lens came out very nice.

(Sony NEX3 - Leica Summicron 9cm f2 @ f2)