A Rare Leitz 50mm f/1.4 Black Paint Summilux Lens

Serial No: 2198815 (1966)
Body: G - signs of years of professional use
Optics: VG/E - minimal internal dust
Notes: 2nd version with recomputed optics, a combination of black paint and black anodized with red feet scale, complete with Uva filter, regularly serviced by owner, focussing and aperture operation very smooth

Provenance:

Homer Sykes b.1949

Bob Schwalberg (October 12, 1927 – October 8, 1996)

The f/1.4 50mm Summilux lens number 2198815 was given to me by Bob Schwalberg, photojournalist, technical writer and European editor of the now defunct American magazine, Popular Photography. He was affectionately known as Mr Leica, an expert on camera equipment; having worked for nearly 7 years for the manufacturer E.Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar, Germany in the public relations and product design departments.

I met him in the offices of the British Journal of Photography in Covent Garden, London in 1970? I was showing the picture editor my photographs and he was delivering an article he had written for the magazine.

We got chatting, he liked my photographs and saw that I was carrying a Leica with an old Elmar lens. He asked me to visit him the next day at his hotel with some more photographs and bring my Leica M3. He wanted to give me a new 50mm lens he had just acquired from the Leica factory in Wetzlar, Germany. This f 1.4 50mm Summilux lens was exchange for my old slow Elmar lens. (The lens was new when he gave it to me, straight out of the Leica box. As I recall.)