Hi Brian and all,
From: "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>this morning the
>Courier brought me a (manual) Voigtlander L camera body fitted with a
>Leica-fit screw-mount 15/4.5 super-wide Heliar Aspheric (rectilineal) lens
Mine arrived yesterday... with a 'present' from customs, also :-( However,
it's real nice.
>The dimensions are almost exactly the same as that of an OM body
That is, perfect ;^) I remember the Pentax MX, marginally smaller than the
OMs, as being hard to hold comfortably.
>This body has an exterior view-finder
>that clips on the outside.
Not sure if this applies to the Bessa-L, but... the shoe on my old Bessa-T,
also a finder-less camera, has become very loose. Probably you won't be
switching finders too often, if any, but put a bit of caution on it -- just
in case.
>The lens is as short as the pancake Zuiko 40/2,
>but is only about 60% of the width.
The great advantage of rangefinder (or non-SLR, in this case) cameras --
have you ever seen a rectilinear 14-15mm for SLR, with those HUGE chunks of
glass?
>The whole thing feels like a little jewel in the hand.
It does. In fact, it feels much better than my T, when I thought of the
opposite. Maybe because my L is a special, olive version with improved fit
and finish (and knobs from the later R2)
>I have to invent a lens-
>cap as there isn't one (never made for this set-up as far as I know),
As you already know ;^) the push-on caps for CV lenses with 39mm filters do
fit OK. About these caps, sometimes the felt inside curls a bit, making
insertion a bit more difficult.
>and I will
>probably get a camera case from Stephen Gandy.
Just in case... I have an original Voigtlander "never-ready" case which I
won't use -- in fact, I have TWO of them: one, very lightly used, came with
this minty Bessa L; the other one was included by S. Gandy with my
latest purchase of a new body, and haven't used it at all -- even the strap
is still in its original plastic sealed bag!
Should you be interested, I can send you the lighlty used one for just the
cost of shipping, about EUR 12 / US$ 17 or equivalent. For the new one,
let's make it EUR 24 / US$ 34 incl. shipping to NZ. Paypal is best, contact
me off-list if interested.
>The body feels and
>functions rather like the OM2000, which is hardly surprising since both are
>made by the Cosina company - which has taken over the Voigtlander
>trademark, as I understand it.
That's right. The thing I like about it (against other Bessas) is that the
meter works whenever the release is pushed or half-pushed -- be it cocked or
not. I do find somewhat annoying the lock of the shutter release when the
advance lever is flush... but it has an easy fix, as recently mentioned.
I find the shutter louder than other Bessas, maybe because of the lightness
of the body (a plus in itself). Obviously, this is not a camera for macro or
tele, but you might want to control vibration issues sometimes.
BTW: like the OM-2000, the self-timer does some kind of "MLU and aperture
prefire". Definitely no auto-aperture mechanism here, and much less a
mirror... but it does open the first set of shutter curtains -- remember
this camera has a double shutter, which is valuable on mirror-less cameras.
However, this pre-fire is very smooth, the big clack comes later, at the
actual exposure :-(
Should we call it "shutter pre-fire", Fernando? :-) :-)
(Let's) enjoy it,
--
Carlos J. Santisteban Salinas
IES Turaniana (Roquetas de Mar, Almeria)
<http://cjss.sytes.net/>
--
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