And now for some NOOKY HESUM
Before somebody launches into salacious remarks, let me hasten to clarify what the NOOKY HESUM is. It is a device that Leitz created for owners of Thread Mount Leicas Type II and III, but not IIIg so that they could do some close-up photography. Well, sort of. The LTM lenses typically focus to no closer than 1 m, and with the NOOKY HESUM, you can get down to 44 cm, i.e., with a 5cm lens, around 1:6 magnification. A 12 cm object then almost fills out the vertical extent of the film, with just a bit of margin at the top and bottom.
NOOKY doesn't mean anything in German. It's just one of the five letter pronouncable pseudo-gibberish codes that Leitz invented so they could order hadware unambiguously over the phone, in telegrams or with telexes. HESUM is short for Hektor, Summar or Summitar, which are all large-aperture lenses with 5 cm focal length.
There also was a SOOKY, which is more or less the same, but for the Summicron lens, and a NOOKY, without a HESUM, for the Elmar. Someone must have clued them in that NOOKY has a quite distinct meaning in English because they renamed the NOOKY HESUM to NOKUM, which is of course pure hokum. NOOKY HESUM it was, and NOOKY HESUM it shall stay.
In the picture you see:
Leica IIIa (AGNOO), made in 1938
Leica Summitar collapsible (SOORE), 1950
And of course the NOOKY HESUM, which goes between the camera body and the lens. The lens is unscrewed and collapsed. The NOOKY HESUM is screwed into the Thread Mount. Then the flange at the of the lens tube is wedged into clamps in the NOOKY HESUM.
The focusing of the lens is disabled, but the NOOKY HESUM has a focusing thread, It also has a parallax corrected viewing frame and a window with a lens so that focusing will work at less than 50cm. Not unlike the goggles on the later Summicron Dual Range lens for the M.
The whole setup, you will admit, looks ineffably cool. You may wonder how easy it is do close up shots. Not very, I must admit. It's a very fiddly, tricky business.
But it's so cool. This has "High Tech" written all over it. 1930s high tech, but high tech nevertheless. The camera you see here is ready for action. I just loaded a film and will use her for some close-up tests.
And now for some NOOKY HESUM
Before somebody launches into salacious remarks, let me hasten to clarify what the NOOKY HESUM is. It is a device that Leitz created for owners of Thread Mount Leicas Type II and III, but not IIIg so that they could do some close-up photography. Well, sort of. The LTM lenses typically focus to no closer than 1 m, and with the NOOKY HESUM, you can get down to 44 cm, i.e., with a 5cm lens, around 1:6 magnification. A 12 cm object then almost fills out the vertical extent of the film, with just a bit of margin at the top and bottom.
NOOKY doesn't mean anything in German. It's just one of the five letter pronouncable pseudo-gibberish codes that Leitz invented so they could order hadware unambiguously over the phone, in telegrams or with telexes. HESUM is short for Hektor, Summar or Summitar, which are all large-aperture lenses with 5 cm focal length.
There also was a SOOKY, which is more or less the same, but for the Summicron lens, and a NOOKY, without a HESUM, for the Elmar. Someone must have clued them in that NOOKY has a quite distinct meaning in English because they renamed the NOOKY HESUM to NOKUM, which is of course pure hokum. NOOKY HESUM it was, and NOOKY HESUM it shall stay.
In the picture you see:
Leica IIIa (AGNOO), made in 1938
Leica Summitar collapsible (SOORE), 1950
And of course the NOOKY HESUM, which goes between the camera body and the lens. The lens is unscrewed and collapsed. The NOOKY HESUM is screwed into the Thread Mount. Then the flange at the of the lens tube is wedged into clamps in the NOOKY HESUM.
The focusing of the lens is disabled, but the NOOKY HESUM has a focusing thread, It also has a parallax corrected viewing frame and a window with a lens so that focusing will work at less than 50cm. Not unlike the goggles on the later Summicron Dual Range lens for the M.
The whole setup, you will admit, looks ineffably cool. You may wonder how easy it is do close up shots. Not very, I must admit. It's a very fiddly, tricky business.
But it's so cool. This has "High Tech" written all over it. 1930s high tech, but high tech nevertheless. The camera you see here is ready for action. I just loaded a film and will use her for some close-up tests.