These are the two Leitz SM-LUX (circa ~'57 and '62) scopes were both eBay purchases while I was killing time on a rig in the North Sea through the holidays. The scope on the right was meant to be the keeper and the scope on the left was purchased as a parts scope, primarily for the trinocular head.
As it turns out ‘refurbished’ and ‘excellent condition’ were not terms I would have used to describe the scope on the right when it arrived. The focus mechanism has some sticky/rough spots and the entire unit is bare of lubrication. Fine focus has ended up being manageable with SM-LUX however with this particular scope it is too jumpy and noisy to deal with. The lighting source is also the standard 6V warm toned bulb that really isn’t powerful enough beyond 250x in my opinion. For photography the brighter and whiter the better, IMO. It didn’t even arrive with decent eyepieces, but instead some pretty beat up AO eyepieces that I would even question the legitimacy of. Either way they're not very clear. I contacted the seller and his response was that for the age of the scope it is in 'excellent condition', despite the refurbished listing. I won't be using it for now.
Fortunately the ‘as-is for parts’ scope I was expecting to be in bad condition seems to be in excellent condition and has a 24V illumination source. I have been told that Leitz has apparently never sold a 24V system for these. Could this be a one off DIY modification? It works great. I swapped the objective lenses to the tri-head unit and ‘serviced’ the headpiece. Disassembly was straight forward and not at all as daunting as I had imagined it might be. The head is excellent.
Here’s a mock-up of the Nikon on an adapter tube meant for my 800mm. The actual setup will be the 52mm x 28mm adapter ring onto the filter threads of a Nikkor AF 1.8D lens. The 28mm inside of the adapter ring will thread onto either of the Periplan eyepieces with the rubber cups and drop directly into the phototube.
From what I understand using a camera lens at infinity focus through the intended eyepiece is an easy to do parfocal adaptation that Leitz designed into their microscope systems, designating the phototube and eyepiece with a red dot.
