Wild & Wonderful Leitz Accessories
The VEKIP, FLOTH, and DIOOY: 3 fine examples of Wetzlarian ingenuity
The VEKIP is one of the stranger devices Leitz ever came up with, but this unlikely looking “staircase to heaven” made perfect sense back in the late-20s and early ‘30s, well before Leitz marketed enlargers like the superlative Focomat IIc (1956 to 1983) which offered a perspective correcting tilting film carrier, complemented by a fully adjustable tilting easel. The VEKIP, which resembles a thick carpenter’s square with its oblique side notched like a staircase, lets you tilt your printing easel upward in 9 discrete steps to correct for perspective distortion (such as the converging vertical lines you get when pointing the camera upward to shoot a tall building at street level). The more the lines in the picture converge the more you must tilt the easel upward, and the more you need to stop the enlarging lens down to get a uniformly sharp print. One can dismiss the VEKIP as primitive, but it’s nicely made and almost as effective as a continuously variable tilting negative stage or easel. As you might imagine, the VEKIP is quite rare—there are none currently listed on the major online auction sites! To hazard a guess, we’d place value of a VEKIP at about $200-$300, so you’d probably be better off applying that amount toward a great hulking Focomat IIc, which currently runs about $850.00 to $2,000.00 in pristine condition.
The FLOTH, available in versions with an angular opening for the 50mm f/2.5 Hektor lens, or with a rounded opening to fit the 50mm f/3.5 Elmar, is a small U-shaped bracket, attached near the front of the lens, that holds a hanging plumb bob on a string that’s used for centering a subject, such as a catalog page or other flat art, placed on a copy stand. Typically used with a Leitz STARE collapsible reproduction stand and a WINKO angle viewfinder on a WICAP/WICAB adapter for precisely positioning the subject, the FLOTH is a simple, elegant solution, but one that highlights the elaborate stratagems needed to overcome the vintage Leica’s lack of reflex viewing. Yes, the FLOTH (either version) is uncommon and eminently collectible, so if you simply must have one, be prepared to shell out somewhere between $425.00 to $500.00 for a complete unit with string and plumb bob!
The unpronounceable DIOOY is a diopter checker made specifically for Leica dealers who need to determine the best corrective eyepiece for their customers’ Leicas—the one shown is mounted on a Leica M. It slides into the accessory shoe and is fitted with a circular array of 10 diopter lenses (+1 to +5 diopters, -1 to -4 diopters, and 0 diopters) each of which can be placed over the camera eyepiece allowing the user to select the one that gives the sharpest view. Similar devices are commonly used in optometrists’ offices to determine which glasses are best to correct a client’s individual eyesight. While the Leitz DIOOY isn’t all that useful for the average Leica shooter, it’s beautifully made, very cool, quite scarce, and clearly collectible. There are two currently up for sale on a leading auction site—one with a starting bid of $250, the other listed at $580 or best offer. Verdict: you can probably snag a pristine example for about 400 bucks, but it won’t do much for your astigmatism.
Profuse thanks to James Lager for kindly providing all the photos used for this article.