Wahoo
Senior Member
Danny
Posts: 95
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Post by Wahoo on Sept 6, 2007 17:39:16 GMT -5
Has anyone had experience using Voightlander Bessa L with Russian lenses ? I do know about lens to film plane differences and I have enough lenses to be able to adjust a few without problems. Good idea, Bad idea, pray tell ? A camera similiar to mine.
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Post by herron on Sept 6, 2007 22:29:28 GMT -5
I have the same Bessa-L ... but I haven't yet bought a rangefinder for it (or one of those nice Skopar lenses made for it).
I've got a 37mm f/2.8 Russian lens mounted on it right now, with a few words in English saying "Grand Prix 1958" on the barrel. It's got the old KMZ "arrow bouncing through a prism" logo on the lens ring, so I'm assuming it's something out of Krasnagorsk, for a Zorki, or maybe a Zenit. It has the knurled focus ring near the mount, like some of the early Zenit's, so that's my guess.
I have a roll of B&W in the camera, but have not finished it yet for processing, to know if there is any apparent focus problem. As soon as the roll is done, I'll let you know.
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Wahoo
Senior Member
Danny
Posts: 95
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Post by Wahoo on Sept 7, 2007 7:39:51 GMT -5
Ron, Thanks for your prompt informative reply, my intentions are to use the Bessa L with a 'tuned' Russian J3 with a 50mm finder but without rangefinder. The focusing scale on the J3 f1.5 50mm is clear, precise and if I can calibrate this to the Voightlander (Leica std.) I think this RF camera should have a performance almost up there with the best. Although I do like the Russian cameras, in use these Bessa's bodies are slicker,easier infact I can't think of any mechanical function that it's FSU counterpart can even compare. Below are some photo's taken with a Minox EL using just the focusing scale, yes I know that the Minox has 35mm lens and therefore a greater dof.
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Post by herron on Sept 7, 2007 9:14:25 GMT -5
I agree...Cosina's done a marvelous job with their Voigtlander resurrection. It's a fabulous little camera. Since I intended to use it more for impromptu "street" pictures...something I haven't really done in years, I figured the DOF forgiveness of a wider angle lens would be just the thing. If I could afford that neat 25mm Skopar, that would be the one for me!
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Post by herron on Sept 7, 2007 22:06:50 GMT -5
Here's my Bessa-L, sitting on a Gorillapod in the midst of the debris on my camera work table: You can see my nice blue-covered (original cover) Fed-2 below it...and that lump behind the Fed is my folded Zeiss Ikonta. There's an assortment of other cameras, bodies, lenses, film and tools there, too! There's a red filter attached, as I'm shooting B&W and tomorrow is supposed to be a nice, partly cloudy day! You can see the knurled edge, which actually matches that on the Jupiter lens mounted on the Fed-2 below it. And here's the English inscription on the lens barrel, reading "Grand Prix 1958" There is no name whatsoever on the lens...not on the barrel, or the lens ring. But the lens ring does have the Krasnagorsk logo I mentioned, which tells me where it came from! It's a nice lens...I've used it on many of my Russian cameras. This is the first time I've tried it (or any lens) on the Voigtlander, so I really can't say if there are any infinity focusing problems with it yet!
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Post by GeneW on Sept 8, 2007 8:22:34 GMT -5
Beautiful shots of your Bessa L setup, Ron.
Over on RFF there's a lot of knowledgeable discussion on using FSU lenses on Leicas and Bessas. There is evidently a very small difference in the way they mount and this evidently can show up as less-than-perfect focusing when subjects are shot wide open, up close. For this reason, some of the folk there re-shim the FSU lenses to calibrate them for Leica mounts.
On the other hand, the difference is slight, and some members claim they shoot their unshimmed FSU lenses with no apparent problems. I've certainly had decent luck with an unshimmed J8 on my Bessa R. To hedge my bets, though, I recently bought a re-shimmed I61 to use on my Bessa.
Gene
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