Canon FL / S 19mm f3.5

Symmetric Sixties Super-wide

The SLR Killed Symmetry

By the 1970's, the advent of the SLR had killed symmetric wide-angle designs. Too bad. They were, and still are today, superior to the retrofocus wide angles that have come since. Such beautiful little things. A perfect progression of curves from front to rear. A nice hunk of glass butted right up against the film plane, with the iris blades sitting right about where the actual 19mm focal length claims to be - not pushed way out in front by an SLR mirror with gobs of extra glass to compensate.

The German Biogon and Super Angulon lens designs were cloned by Canon, Nikon, Minolta, and Mamiya in small batches over 30 years ago. The Mamiya Press 50mm (for 6x9 120 roll film) is a fantastic clone of the Zeiss Biogon. I once compared the Mamiya 50mm to the Leica Summicron 50mm 1990's version, and found the center image quality of the Mamiya Biogon clone to be virtually equal to the Summicron at f5.6 - But the Mamiya covers a whopping 6x9 frame format! But I digress again...

Even today's most advanced digital SLR wide-angles suffer from very noticible barrel distortion and chromatic abberations. Plus they're huge - a DSLR with a 12-20mm zoom weighs a ton and sticks out like nobody's business. Yuk.

Two Canon 19mm Designs

Canon produced a 19mm lens for their rangefinder Leica clones, and a slightly larger version for their SLR bodies. On the SLR, it was used wih the mirror locked up. Optically these designs are the same, with just the outer mounting hardware differing. The "S" version is for rangefinders, with a slightly smaller form factor, and the "FL" version for SLR's with FD (then FL) mount.

The good news is that the SLR version FL lens can be used on Leica M and M39 bodies. You just need a Canon FD-to-Leica converter, officially made by Canon as the "Lens Mount Adapter B". You scale focus the lens, but so what? At 19mm and f3.5, you can't screw this up.

Metering on Leica M6

I modified this Canon 19mm FL lens to meter on the Leica M6 body. Similar to the Leitz / Schneider Super Angulon, the rear optics on this lens extend so far back as to almost touch the film, thus blocking the light metering pattern on the M6 shutter curtain.

To make the modification, I simply ground out a circular notch in the metal collar surrounding the rear optics. You can do this by first loosening the tiny set screw on the collar itself, and then unscrewing the collar. This does nothing to the optical assembly, because the collar is just an outer holder and doesn't actually touch any glass. Go ahead - it's easy!

Extreme Glass

If you buy a Canon FL or S 19mm lens, be very careful about the glass! These lenses are quite old and were manufactured with technology that pales by today's standards. In fact, these lenses were far cheaper than their German counterparts and one can only imagine the technology corners that were cut to acheive the low price points.

The first Canon 19mm lens I bought seemed at first to be in perfect condition. But after shooting film with it, I found horrible contrast problems and examined the glass under a high-power microscope. The front element had faint straillations just beneath the surfaces - almost as if the glass hadn't cooled properly or was somehow stressed. But this was only visible under a microscope and would be missed ordinarily.

Sadly, I was almost ready to give up on this lens when through a sheer stroke of luck, just as I was about to toss it, I found a replacement optical assembly (just the inner "glass tunnel", complete with iris) sitting on Ebay - without its focusing mount, useless to more than 99.9999% of the world's population. The only bidder in this unique position, I snapped it up for the opening 35$ ! When it finally showed up in the morning mail, I unscrewed the old optics, popped in the new assembly - and viola! A fantastic Frankenstein lens is born.

Usage

Because this is the FL (SLR) version, I scale focus. So what - it's a 19mm lens.

I've used it for a while now and find that f3.5 isn't its optimal sweet spot (no surprise). The curvature of field can be pretty bad wide open, so I stop down to about f5.6. But guess what - the rectallinear qualities are outstanding. Very straight lines and blows away digital zooms in this respect. Nice for architecture. Nice color and contrast, and virtually no chromatic abberations.

With a Leica 21mm finder, the actual image area is roughly 10% wider than what the finder says (just as the math would suggest!). I use it on a Canon Lens Mount Converter B that's been modified with a fixed 1-meter focus distance. Leave the lens scale set on 1m, get in close, and make photos!