Fed S - Leica (from a 1d, 1940).

Hello,

I have received my new Fed-Leica. Very happy, of course!
No doubt it was made from an S one. But when...?
The letters are a bit too large: I try to load a picture comparing three cameras: the 219780 is a genuine Leica.

The lens puzzles me. Made from an enlarger? The datas could date it in 1918... The diaph is written from 3 to 12 and it's the diameter of the iris. So, it's open at 12 and shut at 3. If you have ideas, I would be grateful!

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Hello Jacques,

the lens looks interesting but I have no idea what it was made for...

By the way, I also own such a "Leica" made from a FED S or maybe made from a FED Zorki? (look at the speed dial, it's the same as on my FED Zorki).

The engraving of mine is very fine and looks very well made.



Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Hi Ulrich!

Very interesting!
I think too that the speed dial is a Fed Zorki one.
What about the lens? Is it a fake Summar from a Fed 2/50? Its number?
And the body: shutter box in aluminium or brass? What appears exactly when you remove the base plate?
Some more pictures, perhaps?

The engravings are beautiful, especially the "D"!

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Hello Jacques,

after taking a closer look to the camera I think that is a pure "Frankenstein" FED!

There are 3 screws under the rewind knob and the screw in the middle on the front side is behind the lens mount. So it must be the top plate of the shutter house of an early FED. The top plate with the Leica engraving is one of the later ones (no round one as you can see). The shutter itself also looks as one of the later ones (maybe FED 1d or a FED S of that variant). And the speed dial is one from a FED Zorki...

It seems that someone has had 2 or 3 broken FEDs and made one "Leica" of it.

The lens is a faked Summar based on the FED 2/50 lens.

But the guy made a good job, the camera works good :-) So I think it is a very unique piece.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Jacques,

i forgot... the number of the lens on the back is 29215.

Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Hello Jacques,

here are 2 other pics of it, the first shows the "Summar", look at the engraving (the mm in Summar), looks as the guy has had bad eyes :-)



The second one shows a detail, you can also see the middle screw in front. An interesting detail is the collar around the shutter release, it looks very fine, not as coarse as the xx hatch normally is.



Ulrich

http://fotos.cconin.de

Hi Ulrich!

A beautiful Fed Frankenstein, really!
But when we speak of fakes, we can wonder what a genuine fake is...
Even if the different parts are from the same period, we can neither say if it was the original maker who assembled them... nor when.
As for me, I don't know how I must consider my Fed S/Leica... A real and exceptional fake or anything? It would have been much easier if it had had a (real!) fake Summar...

Anyway, your lens is much interesting: it's only the third fake Summar/Fed we meet.

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Hello Jacques,

I also don't know when my fake was made and if it is a fake (I believe in that more as it was soviet made by FED). I did not know that the faked lens is so rare, I thought that there were more...

By the way, there is an interesting article by Oscar Fricke, you can find it under
http://fedka.com/Useful_info/Commune_by_Fricke/commune_A.htm

There he writes this (just below the middle of the article):

------------------
While under the administration of the NKVD, the Dzerzhinsky Commune did something which is perhaps unique in the annals of camera history; it copied the Leica in name as well as form. The FED was already a physical copy of the Leica, but some of the cameras were also engraved with the familiar 'Leica' trademark, and some f3·5 lenses were engraved 'Leitz Elmar'. Whatever the motivation, this strange practice persisted over several years, during which an apparently sizeable number of cameras was made. Beyond any shortcomings in workmanship, the give-away features of these cameras was the distinctive FED viewfinder window. The earliest known 'counterfeit Leica' was manufactured in 1936, while the most common year seems to be 1938.
------------------

And there is a picture of a FED that looks like mine, you can see that it has the small depression near the rewind switch lever, the middle front screw is behind the lens mount and it has 3 small screws under the rewind knob, just like mine also has:

http://fedka.com/Useful_info/Commune_by_Fricke/Pictures_150dpi/f17.jpg

So, I don't really know if I have a fake or one of these cameras that were probably made be the FED community??

Ulrich


http://fotos.cconin.de

Hi Ulrich,

It's because of this text of Fricke that I desperatly look for an original pre war fake...
A good axample is given too in the JLP: a 1a/1b.
The camera which is an illustration of Fricke seems to come from a NKVD 1b: middle screw half hidden and small bolt to lock the base plate.
But as you say, we have no way to know if our Fed/Leicas are real prewar fakes or postwar makings. For me, I compare with original Feds: if the fake has all the features of a 1b, it could be (I insist on "could"!) a "real" fake from a 1b. Idem for 1c, 1d...But it's only an idea...

Amitiйs. Jacques.

Hello!

I have just received this one. Interesting.



It is a Fed S d type with a 2/50mm Fed, all that converted into Leica.
The Fed number (128698)has been preserved.
The Fed number of the lens is coherent (28597) and matches the body's number.
And the faker has put on the "Summar" the original body number to be "more true", probably...

So, all that was made in 1940. The date of conversion is unknown, unhappily...

Amitiйs. Jacques.