Good things in Small Packages: the 25mm ƒ/4 SnapShot Skopar lens in Tacoma, Washington

Dear Readers, another confession: Once again, I suffered from GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). It is hard to resist, like trying to avoid chocolate or bacon. Just before the de minimis exemptions ended in August 2025, I ordered a Voigtländer 25mm ƒ/4 SnapShot Skopar lens from a Japanese vendor. The lens arrived at my door in three days! *

Cosina in Japan makes these modern Voigtländer lenses. The company has licensed the famous name since 1999, but the current production has no tangible relationship with the venerable German company from the early 20th century. Voigtländer (Cosina) is one of the few companies that offers some of their new lenses in Leica thread mount (LTM).** 

Cosina introduced this little lens in thread mount around 2000. It is zone focus only, meaning it is not connected to the camera's rangefinder. I originally bought it to use with my Leica IIIC but am using it more often on my Leica M2 with a M-LTM adapter. The lens is tiny and convenient to toss into the camera bag. For framing, I use a 25mm Voigtländer auxiliary viewfinder that mounts on the camera's flash shoe.

* I plan to not order any more photo equipment from Japan or China until the confusion around the tariffs is cleared up. 

**  Other modern LTM lenses, all discontinued:

• Around 2022 or 2023, TTArtisan in China sold a version of their little 28mm ƒ/5.6 lens in Leica thread mount. It is discontinued, and if you can find one: $$$.
• In 1999, Leica issued their superb 50mm ƒ/2 modern Summicron lens in a thread-mount version. It is now a serious $$$ collectors' item.
• In 2000, Pentax issued their SMC Pentax-L ƒ/1.9 43mm Special in LTM. This is also now a collectors' item. 
• Ricoh remounted their 28mm ƒ/2.8 lens from their GR camera in a barrel with thread mount.
• Avenon (manufacturer unknown) offered a 28mm ƒ/3.5 lens in the 1980s. 
• MS-Optical remounted some Contax 28mm ƒ/2.8 lenses in LTM. Availability unknown. 
• Light Lens Lab made a 35mm f/2 Collapsible Eight Element lens in 2019.

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Tacoma

I first tested my SnapShot lens on my Leica IIIC in Olympia. Later, I mounted it on my M2 body using a M-LTM adapter and went to Tacoma. The light was subdued, perfect to show colors on an unused wood warehouse on East D Street.

East D Street view north

Murray Morgan (11th Street) Bridge over the Foss Waterway

 This historic warehouse was built in 1900. It suffered a fire in July of 2025. I could not find much information on the building's origins or original purpose. One comment in redditt (always of dubious authenticity) claims it was the Western Iron and Wire Works in the 1920s. It has become a canvas for graffiti artists, with some surprisingly skillful creations.

This building is an interesting canvas. I may return with my 4×5 camera and black and white film.

Steel warehouse, 701 East F Street

There are many other warehouses and industrial sites in the harbor area, but most are just modern commercial sheds. 

Geek Stuff

25mm ƒ/4 SnapShot lens mounted on my Leica IIIC camera

This is a well-engineered little optic. The markings are legible, and it feels good. Some reviewers complain of mis-alignment (decentered elements) in some samples, but mine appears to be correct. I think this lens shines with close-up and mid-distance topics. Highly recommended!

I took the photographs above on Kodak Portra 160 film. Glazer's Camera in Seattle, Washington, developed it in C-41 chemicals.

Looking wide in Olympia with the Voigtländer Snapshot Skopar lens (Oly 22)

The Voigtländer 25mm ƒ/4 "Snapshot" Sopar lens is a little gem of an optic for Leica thread mount (ltm) cameras. It is zone focus only and does not couple to the rangefinder. But estimating the distance is not a problem with a lens this wide. This lens is modern and multi-coated, in contrast to the many mid-century ltm lenses that are on the market. Many of them have haze, fungus, scratches, and damaged coatings, and were made before lens designers had access to computer optics programs to optimize performance. 

Here are some examples from May of 2025 in and around Olympia, Washington.

Olympia Outskirts

Woodard Bay Conservation Area, view north (ƒ/11)

Rainbow Rails and West Bay, view north from 4th Avenue Bridge (ƒ/8.0½)

Guard shack at former wood mill, West Bay Drive (1/100 ƒ/11½)

Unused wood chip conveyor belt, West Bay Drive

Downtown Olympia

Alley parallel to Washington Street (1/40 ƒ/8)

Railroad bridge over Capitol Lake

About once a week, a train trundles over this bridge and heads west to an industrial area in Tumwater. 

Slightly redecorated 1984 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper near Capitol Mall (1/60 ƒ/5.6½)

"Oly Girl" at her best

Summary:  This is a handy little lens with good optical output. The plane of focus curved in towards the photographer, so you need to be aware of this curvature when composing. Being multi-coated, it creates bright and contrasty color, at least on Kodak Ektar 100 film. The lens appears to resist veiling flare. It has a more contrasty and modern look than my Summitar and Jupiter-8 lenses, both of which are much older and have more primitive coatings. All in all, recommended if you are comfortable with estimating the focus and the ƒ/4 aperture. 

With the use of a Leica M to ltm adapter, I can use this SnapShot Skopar on my Leica M2 camera. 

(Standby for more examples in the future.)   

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 05 - Farms and Basalt Country in B&W

The big open country of Eastern Washington invites black and white photography. It is a relatively new photographic terrain for me, although long-term readers may remember that I took a September 2024 trip to eastern Washington. Here are some scenes from my 2025 trip.

Spokane 

Centennial Mill (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/8)

This immense concrete monolith is the former Centennial Mills on East Trent Avenue, built in 1940. After several mergers, Centennial became part of part of the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) corporation. The mill is now unused. It dominates the skyline east of downtown. What a view you would have from that tower.

Reardan

Reardan (50mm ƒ/1.8 Canon lens, dark yellow filter)

Here are more of the silos that dot the skyline throughout eastern Washington. Most now are made of concrete or steel. The wood silos from the early 20th century have mostly succumbed to fire. 

Davenport

Farm off Rte. 2, Davenport (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

Davenport is in open farm country. This farm still had a traditional wood barn with shingle roof. But many farms now have modern steel buildings, which I find are not nearly as picturesque.

 

Grand Coulee

Midway Avenue, Grand Coulee (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, 1/250 ƒ/8)

Beer store, Coulee Boulevard, Electric City (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens)

The towns near Grand Coulee still have a bit of company town appearance. The dam certainly is a monumental engineering achievement. 

Ancient Lakes 

The Ancient Lakes occupy one of the huge coulees created during the great floods. They are near Quincy, Washington, just east of the Columbia River. The trails are easy to walk. As you enter the valley from the west, the basalt cliffs loom over you. The coulee feels lonely and remote, although the surrounding plateau is farmland and vineyard.

Basalt boulder that tumbled from the nearby cliff, Ancient Lakes Trail (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Ancient Lakes Trail, near Quincy, Washington (Canon 50mm ƒ/1,8 lens, med. yellow filter)

Basalt columns near Deep Lake, Dry Falls State Park

Mabton

Grain silos, Rte 22, Mabton (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/250 ƒ/5.6)

This ends our short tour through eastern Washington in farm and basalt country. I took these pictures on Kodak T400CN film. The film was expired, and Photoland at The Evergreen State College grossly underdeveloped it. Therefore, some of the frames do not have the full tonal range and are grainy. I like C-41 film because the ICE tool in my Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner can clean up most scratches and chemical blobs. But for 35mm film, I will return to using fresh black and white film (such as Tri-X or Acros).

Technical Note

I took most of these photographs with my 1960s Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 Leica thread-mount lens. This is a nice example of 1960s Japanese optical and mechanical excellence. The one had intact coating (rare) and no internal haze (even more rare). When I bought it, the seller disclosed some fungus. Don Goldberg (DAG Camera) cleaned it and reported that it was intact. Unfortunately, many (most?) of these 1.8s are ruined. Some lubricant internally outgassed and etched/hazed the inner elements permanently. Such a pity. The Canon ƒ/1.4 thread mount lenses seem to have survived in better condition. 

The Leica IIIG in Oregon and Eastern Washington (May 2025) (Abandoned Films 13d).

We were restless after a very wet March in Olympia. It was time for a road trip. And I wanted to exercise my Leica IIIG camera and try Kodak T400CN film again. Some of these expired rolls have looked fine, but others have deteriorated. The rolls I used in Greece looked great. I should give up on this long-expired film forever, but thought I would try one last  roll. I loaded a roll in the IIIG for some of the great expanses of Washington state east of the Cascades (plus an overnight in The Dalles in Oregon). 

The Dalles, Oregon

The Dallas (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

The Dalles is a busy rail junction. But areas of this rail yard now have bare sections and unused tracks.  Still, an interesting place. The mill became a winery?

Waiting for a horse

Columbia Hills State Park

Cross the Columbia River, drive past Dallesport, and ascent a gravel road up into the Columbia Hills. In contrast to the forested mountains of the Columbia Gorge closer to Portland, these hills are in the rain shadow and are a dry terrain. The area is famous for wildflowers in early spring.

Dalles Mountain Ranch (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Farmland and the Palouse, Washington

Head east out of Richland, and you drive through miles and miles of beautiful rich farmland. As you continue east, you enter a land of hummocky low hills composed of loess (wind-blown silt). This is the Palouse. It encompasses parts of western Idaho and central east Washington. 

Rail junction, Roosevelt (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/60 ƒ/11)

Pasco-Kahlotus Road north of Pasco (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

Historic schoolhouse, Pasco-Kahlotus Road (Jupiter-8 lens, orange filter)

Silo, Kahlotus (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

Grain terminal, Oaksdale (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

The Grain Train, Oaksdale

This roll of T400CN was thin. Once again, it may have been mis-developed by Photoland at The Evergreen State College. I will not use their services ever again. This old T400CN is grainy, probably much more so than when it was fresh. But I still like the tonality, and the ICE scratch removal in my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner is a great convenience. Still, it is time to stop fooling around with T400CN. As a substitute, I can try Ilford XP2, which is the only C-41 black and white film still in production. 

1700s Cavanserai or Han, Eminönü District, Istanbul (Nov. 2024)

The Ottomans conquered Constantinople on May 29, 1453, after a 55-day siege. Unlike the exhausted, bankrupt (financially and politically), and demoralized Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans were energetic and militarily more sophisticated. The Ottomans already controlled the vast hinterland of Anatolia and swaths of the Middle East. To encourage trade, they built caravanserai, protected and safe trading posts, where merchants could shelter over the night or during bad weather and exchange goods. They were safe from bandits. Many semi-ruined caravanserai are still found in remote areas, attesting to trade routes. (As an aside, my dad, a hydraulic engineer, often asked where these remote outposts got drinking water. Were areas of Anatolia wetter in the Medieval period?)

Some of these caravanserai, also known as han, are in the Eminönü district of Istanbul. They were originally intended to serve as inns and trading centers, where merchants operated shops and warehoused goods. Hundreds of years later, these hans are still in use.  

Büyük Yeni Han, completed in 1764 (Leica M2, 21mm ƒ/4.5 Zeiss Biogon lens)

Büyük Yeni Han (note the air conditioners)

From Wikipedia:

The han' is located in the central historic market district that extends from the Grand Bazaar to the Eminönü neighbourhood on the shore of the Golden Horn. Since the founding of the first bedesten by Mehmet II in the mid-15th century, the Grand Bazaar developed into the city's main hub of international trade, spawning entire districts of shops, warehouses, and merchant lodgings. A han, a type of urban caravanserai, was a common type of commercial structure in Ottoman architecture (and more broadly in Islamic-world architecture) which served a number of functions including lodging for foreign merchants, storage for goods or merchandise, housing for artisan workshops, and offices from which to conduct dealings. A number of hans were built over the centuries in and around the Grand Bazaar district. The Büyük Yeni Han was completed in 1763 or 1764 CE (1177 AH) on the orders of Sultan Mustafa III.

A structure from the 19th century bridges across the courtyard, unfortunately blocking the grand expanse of the original rectangle han.

Entrance archway to Büyük Yeni Han (35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens)

I stumbled into the Büyük Yeni Han somewhat by accident. I was looking for a balcony or platform to take some pictures of the rooftops. I walked into the arch and saw some steep dark steps leading upwards. That seemed promising. Soon I was on the third level. There was even a rough but usable lavatory up there.

I love complicated rooftops like this. It is a pity that most of the modern buildings are rectangle concrete boxes.

Houses built into the side of Büyük Yeni Han

Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar is the ultimate arcade of them all. But it is so clean! The ceiling is decorated, the floors are polished, and it is well lit. And there is WiFi, and no one smokes inside. And people pay with plastic. Where is the earthy bazaar I recall from 1965?

Modern arcade in the Sultanahmet area

Well, Istanbul never ceases to provide interesting subject material. It is on my must-return list. If you have not been there, GO VISIT.

I took these photographs with Kodak Tri-X film using my Leica M2 and various lenses. Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine developed the film in Xtol. I scanned it on a Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner.