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Nearly does not fit the bill – a tale of filters, lens hoods and squirrels.


I once bought a Leica M3 at a ridiculously low price. I was surprised that the seller didn’t seem to know the correct value of the camera especially as it had a quite rare Summarit 50mm f1.5 lens with a Leica UV filter (41mm thread) and both of the original lens caps. Probably because the lens was not even mentioned in the listing I got the whole lot for a very low price. Those days are now largely gone of course and Russian sellers are suddenly asking more for Fed and Zorki copies (untested) of Leica II and III cameras than genuine cameras go for. Such is life!

Anyway, time passed and as usual, something else caught my eye. I had by this time 2 M3 cameras so I sold the one that had come cheaply to me with the Summarit lens but I was very canny – or so I thought – and kept the UV filter as they were selling on their own for up to £100. I put it away safely.
The thing about the Summarit, well two things, is that:

a) it has a bad reputation for lens flare / contrast issues but if you can control them it is otherwise a good lens b) it has an unusual 41mm filter thread with a bit of a strange pitch.

For a company that had been addicted to 39mm filter thread lenses, 41mm was a bit of a departure. So none of your existing filters worked and you had to buy ridiculously expensive 41mm filters. The lens hood was obviously “designed by a committee” as we say in the UK. A heavily over-engineered, black, square metal box that could collapse (Leica have always had a thing about collapsible items). A bit like their answer to SLR cameras, the Visoflex! A complicated and heavy contraption to convert a rangefinder into a TTL camera.

The collapsing lens hood for a Summarit lens still sells for £150 without a problem. It looks – well, let’s just say beauty is in the eye of the beholder! But you need a hood – that’s the problem. When in doubt Google will provide an answer. In a Leica forum where geeks and nerds huddle closely together I learned that a 40.5 lens hood would work – oh, I forgot to say that I regretted selling my original Summarit and so I bought another one, (while trying to ignore the amount of money I lost in that series of transactions). Vented plastic jobs from China were suggested. I duly transferred £5.99 from the struggling UK economy to the booming Chinese economy. Eventually, after being carried on foot (it seemed) across the searing Gobi Desert and the vast plains of Central Asia, held high by a series of swimmers across the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Nile, rowed past Malta and the Balearic Islands and marched through Spain and France, it found itself on another slow boat to Scotland. Luckily I had thus far survived the worst of the Pandemic and couldn’t wait to attach it. The new Summarit had also come with a UV filter – which was good because I never did the find the one I put away carefully that came with the first lens.

Problem 1 – the UV filter has no thread that will allow you to attach a 41mm or a 40.5mm lens hood. OK – remove it.
Problem 2 – a 40.5mm hood, whether from China or Jupiter, will not, under any circumstances, allow itself to be screwed on to a 41mm Summarit. It will pretend briefly to be attached just to make you happy and then it will fall off. It might as well have a 40.5 metre thread. It is incompatible. It doesn’t work. Not a chance. Maybe with a lump of chewing gum but otherwise? No cigar.
I put it in the box of things that hang about hoping to be useful one day but they know they are never going to be used. The Misfits Box.
Weeks later, still annoyed about losing a £100 UV filter from the original lens, I wake up during the night and think “Step up filter with another cheap hood!” I’ve got lots of 58mm bits and pieces as Canon like 58mm, including filters and polarisers so I’ll get a 41-58mm step up and a 58mm lens hood. Job done.
Eventually they arrive and they work – but they look a bit bulky. Not modern and sleek like the vented hood that fought its way here from Beijing. So they are allowed in the Leica case but not with enthusiasm.
More days pass and it’s consigned to the subconscious. Then I wake up again and think “I don’t have a hood for the 35mm Summaron either – or for the Elmar 90!” Of course they use good old 39mm filters and hoods. So now I buy a new 39-40.5mm step up and I can attach the sleek modern vented hood to those lenses. But not to the 41mm thread Summarit………….
If I had thought it through carefully I could have bought two step up rings and a sleek, modern vented hood that was bigger than 41mm so it could have done for all three lenses – aaaarrrggghhh!
And of course there is still the question of whether a bulky non-vented hood will work without vignetting on the 50mm lens, given that it isn’t designed for it, and….will the sleek modern vented hood work equally well on a wide angle lens and a portrait lens or only on one or neither!


So “nearly” isn’t perfect and it isn’t acceptable. And sometimes you have to buy the correct thing for the job and not be a mean Scotsman and…….safe places are only safe if you can remember exactly where they are, as all good squirrels (Scottish, Chinese or Greek even) know. Are there any squirrels in Greece or China – I’ve never thought about that before!
So I’m annoyed about that series of events and I’m still annoyed about the missing filter. I have turned the house upside down trying to find it. 
If I do, I want it placed beside me in my coffin. Then I won’t lose it again.

Gordon Christie