A Versatile Adaptation of the Leitz Wetzlar F/2.5 Colourplan

I spend far too much time watching photography YouTube videos and reading photography websites and fora. Hours and hours.

Right, with that confession out of the way let me tell you about something worthwhile I got from those videos/website/fora that does at least make 15 minutes of that time; time well spent!

I would like to give you a little backstory for context, but you can skip forward a couple of paragraphs if you don’t care. I shot film as a kid in Scotland and England, I went to sea at 16 and bought my first SLR in St Maarten, a Pentax ME Super and I shot loads of pictures. A couple of good ones too.

Fast forward to the 2000’s and I’m shooting Olympus 4/3 and then M4/3 and I discover that old lenses can be attached to my EM1 MkII and they are cheap. And so, the rabbit-hole of buying and using old lenses and old film cameras begins and boy is it fun. Another confession, I have far too many film cameras.

Then one day I come across someone who has adapted enlarger lenses and projector lenses for us on a mirrorless camera. I’m intrigued but don’t get around to doing anything until I get a Leitz projector as part of an auction lot and inside that projector is the Leitz Wetzlar Colourplan 90mm F/2.5 projection lens.

So, where to begin??

I scoured the internet and found there are people who have adapted these particular lenses, and I decided I’m going to do it too. So here is my story:

The consensus seemed to be that you should get a 52mm to 42mm helicoid which you can find on Amazon for about £25. So, I did that. The problem was that if I wanted to focus any further out than a couple of feet then this wasn’t going to work. So, I dug through my boxes of photography bits that I’ve collected from various auction lots over the past few years and came up with a 52mm to 49mm step-down ring. It appeared to have been glued to a 49mm Hoya diffuser filter as they would not come apart. That’s a good thing, it turned out!

I attached a Cokin 49mm filter ring to that 49mm Hoya filter once I had removed the glass diffuser. I realised, from what I had seen on videos, I could put electrical tape around the bottom of the lens barrel, and it would fit into the Cokin ‘holder’ but not very securely. So, I went back to the projector and inside found the helicoid that was used to focus the image being projected.

I slid that out, inserted the lens and BOOM! I have the perfect means to hold the lens securely.

I could now glue the Cokin holder to the Leitz helicoid and have the following setup:

To help achieve the goal of maximum focusing distance I needed a way to fit the setup to the camera with the minimum distance between the bottom of the lens and the sensor. I played around with an M52 to M42 adapter which then attached to an M42 to MFT adapter. Too much!

I bought another adapter online. ‘The 52mm to M39 adapter which was then attached to a M39 to M4/3 adapter. This thing is shallow adding only 1cm to the connection and thereby giving me a total sensor to the first piece of glass distance of 6cm. That’s pretty close.

This allows me to focus to a maximum distance of infinity and a minimum distance of 55cm (subject to sensor distance). If I want to get even closer, I just swap out the reversing ring for the Amazon helicoid/M42 to M4/3 adapter setup and I can focus as close as 22cm (subject to sensor distance).

Now, the story doesn’t end there because I wanted to be able to do three more things: attach a lens hood, attach filters and find a way to add some form of aperture control. The lens currently only shoots wide open at F/2.5. So here is what I decided to do:

I removed the glass from a 49mm filter, and glued it into the top of the lens barrel. To that I can attach filters (my goal is to see if I can get the lens to work on my film cameras as well as use ND filters on the Olympus) and a 49mm threaded lens hood. You can see that setup below:

What next for this project?

Finally, I want to be able to change the aperture. I plan to take a selection of 49mm filters and find a way to create different size apertures. I will of course need to work out the sensor coverage to prevent or minimise vignetting. I haven’t figured out the best way to achieve apertures but circular disks of black card with different size holes in them might work; there is also a 30mm to 49mm step ring that I could adapt.

Happy to get your suggestions in the comments below.

I hope you found this helpful and interesting, and the images above give you some idea of what you can expect from this kind of setup (all SOOC jpg’s). Do note that there are different versions of the Colourplan lens, and my recommendation is the all silver Leitz Wetzlar German version as seen above. There are also many other ways to attempt this adaptation; remember I mentioned the internet…!

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