Leitz F3,4 180mm APO Telyt

The Leitz F3,4 180mm APO Telyt, was made by the Ernst Leitz Camera limited situated in Midland Ontario in Canada.

Initially the lens commisioned by and designed for the armed forces who needed a compact Telelens for 24 x 36mm film.

The lens would be a special purpose lens for reconnaissance, with an uncompromisingly high contrast and resolution and micro details, so that the 24 x 36mm= 864 square mm negatives could be enlarged to relative enormous proportions without lossing detail.

This is not an Apochromatic corrected existing lens , but a lens designed and corrected from the design table to get rid off chromatic and spherical aberration as a real Apochromat .

chromatic aberration = [link]

spherical aberration= [link]

This Armed forces version was launched in 1965, and is called the ELCAN-R F3,4 180mm and is very rare to be found, and at top prices .

Later it was decided to fabricate and make this lens available to the general public , which started in 1975 till 1998.

Even today this lens is much sought after for use on digital camera's, due to its high contrast and very high resolution and micro detailing.
But also for its compactness for a 180mm lens, its dimensions are 135mm x 68 mm and weighs 750 grams only.

The first vesion is code 11 240, second version is the 11 242 .

Erwin puts wrote in Analysis and Insight (2002) of this lens the following:

"This lens has gained a mythical status. It started life as a special purpose lens for reconnaissance purposes, but it soon was incorporated into the normal R-system.
with 6000 units planned for production.

The apochromatic correction with synthetically grown fluorite crystals had the problem of the sensitive surfaces of this material and Leitz preferred the use of glass with specific properties.

At full aperture we have high overall contrast with a crisp definition of very fine detail over most of the image area, becoming much softer in the outer zones.

Outlines are reproduced with very clean edges, that really stand out from the background with brittle sharpness, and this is even true when the background is of much higher luminance as in contre-jour picture taking and in high light contrasts.

We should be realistic here. This image quality is really first class."

This lens is becoming a cult item, and prices are rising quickly, last year 35 till 40% only and this will continue.

Current price for a cosmetically "used" one, but optically clear, is in the region of 900 till 1100 euro at this moment.

First test Shots:



Hope you like it, greetz lenZ.