Dan Kerin

 Leica 90mm F/4 Elmar (M39 Screw Mount)

The Ernst Leitz 9cm f4 Elmar is a 90mm lens produced by Leica from 1933 all the way up until 1953, with a total production run of 107,480 lenses! This is was a screw mount lens designed for use on Barnack screw mount cameras but can easily be adapted to M mount cameras and other mirrorless systems. The majority of the earlier lenses were black paint while the later post war lenses are more common in chrome. Like with many of the older Leica lenses the optical cell can be unscrewed from the lens barrel for easy cleaning and use on the visoflex system. The lens is extremely simple being 4 elements in 3 groups. It features a click less aperture ring which goes from f4 all the way to f36 and has 15 aperture blades.

I was not in the market for this lens one came up in a local auction house complete with original case, hood, front and rear caps. I was able to get this for a steal but it did require some cleaning. Being such a simple lens I was able to clean it myself without much effort. The one I have dates from 1934 making it 91 years old at the time of writing this! One of the big appeals of the Leica M system is the mount has stayed the same since 1954, and allows for a huge range of camera and lens combinations. But Leica had been producing cameras since the 1920’s and a huge range of lenses to go with them. When designing the M system, they had backwards compatibility in mind so you can adapt your older screw mount lenses to the M system. The official Leica screw to M mount adapters can still fetch good money however I have not had any issues with cheaper Chinese made adapters.

Onto the performance. I was amazed with how well this lens performed for its age. I brought this lens on a road trip through Europe and while I was mainly shooting 21mm and 50mm having this small, light 90mm in the bag did come in handy. Shooting wide open at f4 yields sharp centres however you will notice softness in the corners. Stopping this lens down to f8 will yield the sharpest results and I found anything past f16 you can encounter some nasty diffraction. Unfortunately I did not have any A36 filters, and was concerned about how well this lens would handle contrast. Because this is an uncoated lens there is a lack of contrast, especially when shooting backlit subjects. You can always increase contrast in development or post production/ darkroom work so in my opinion its no big deal. I personally found the softness in contrast to be part and parcel of this lenses characteristics.

As mentioned above I managed to get this lens for a steal and generally these lenses can be had for under £150. Due to their age don’t expect perfect optics however as can be seen from the results you can still get great results. I would say for anyone wanting to play about with old lenses this is defiantly a gateway drug into that world on the cheap.