I've bought an Aristophot, a device which is built like a battleship, mostly the same colour and weight! It is (was) used for macrophotography and for slide copying but I have no idea about the lenses which will attach to it. I can list those that don't because they're the ones I own. I suspect that intermediate rings are available and identified somewhere. I see a reference to it in Leica Fotografie 1971/3 which tells me that there is a pamphlet. Any ideas about how I locate one? Anyone actually own an Aristophot or am I at last unique in my Leica collection? Peter Phillips

-- Peter Phillips (peterph@senet.com.au), September 10, 2001

Answers

According to the 1951 Leica manual, it has a lens board, which implies different boards for different lenses. Then it goes on to name such famous optics as the Macro-Summars (24-120mm, all f4.5) and the Milars, 65mm and 100mm, also f4.5. I've seen Macro-Summars on ebay once in a while--there's an 80 right now--but never a Milar. I wonder if you'd be lucky and they might have some standard enlarging lens thread (I think 34.5mm is one such thread, and I have an ancient adapter to bring that size up to LTM size, which might mean something- -or might not)--so maybe you could fit an old slower Schneider Componon or something similar.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), September 11, 2001.