Lenses for CL

[Simon Ogilvie <edlsnoe@deep-thought.ericsson.se>]

I've just bought myself a CL body and a (much newer) 50 f2 Summicron, and am 
enjoying being on the Leicaphile bandwaggon, albeit the bottom rung (if you'll 
excuse the mixed metaphor)!

I've heard a lot of conflicting information about lenses for this camera.
Some people have said that the only lenses that work with it properly are the 
40mm and 90mm that were sold with it, although as it has the 50mm frame lines 
a 50mm lens must have been "allowed".  On the rec.photo newsgroups recently 
there was a request for a list of compatible lenses, but that didn't seem to 
get very far.  Other sources imply that all M-series lenses will work - even 
some of the collapsible ones which are supposed to foul the metering cell.  
Authoritative illucidation would be appreciated!

Also, I've been told that the 90mm f4 lens that is intended for the CL is a 
restricted f2.8 Elmarit, and close examination of the aperture blades seems to 
confirm this.  Why would Leica have done this?  Someone suggested to me that 
this is something to do with the limitations of the rangefinder, but other 
than a lens physically blocking the rangefinder I can see that any lens could 
be a problem.  As the ff Elmar-C is a lot cheaper secondhand than the f2/8 
Elmarit it would seem to be a bargain, especially if it were possible to 
modify the lens in some way to remove the aperture restriction (Willem-Jan? 
:-).

Any information regarding the true lineage and performance characteristics of 
the various Leica CL and Rokkor CLE lenses would be of great interest.

Regards,
Simon.
______________________________________________________
 Simon Ogilvie   -  UNIX Systems Supervisor
                    Ericsson Data Ltd., Guildford, UK
 simon@guildford.ericsson.se