After recently shooting a roll through the old Zorki 1 I was reminded of my love for the rendering out of that old Industar-22. It’s commonly referred to as a Leica Elmar clone, which is somewhat accurate. It, especially the old Industar-10, copies the physical form factor of the classic Leitz 5cm f3.5 Elmar, but the optical formula mimics a classic Zeiss Tessar. The confusion is understandable, the lenses look very similar, and like the Leica, the Zeiss optical formula is another 4 element/3 group lens design.
My first introduction to these lenses was the original Leica Elmar that came on my old Leica IIIa, and I have always been enamored by its rendering. A clean sample produces a remarkably “transparent” rendering. It’s hard to describe. It is beautifully sharp without being clinical, it imbues a certain lifelike quality to the images, as though the camera is seeing as we might.
All this having been said, and my recent spark with the Tessar rekindled, I opted to throw it on the M262 this afternoon for an after-work walk to see how it turned out.
Now, I must say that my Industar-22 is not up to the same standard as my old Leica Elmar. There is a bit of decentering, so the focal plane is not uniformly flat across the image. This combined with poorer corner performance lends itself to a drawing that is a bit more “characterful” than my Elmar. But, that being said, even with its shortcomings it still manages to deliver a good dose that beautiful Tessar rendering.
Shooting the Industar on the M262 is a fun setup. The Industar will collapse in to the M262 making for a very compact and borderline pocketable (the M262 is probably a bit too thicc to really pocket) shooting setup. The immediate feedback of digital also allows you to work around some of the propensity for flaring you get with the Industar. I’ve also worked out how to shoot it on my M4-2 without damaging the interior of the camera when collapsing the lens so I’m looking forward to running some rolls through the M4-2 with the Industar. Here are some additional images from the walk, thanks for reading!
