[Leica] Heliar and donuts.

[Simon Stevens <simon@camera-craftsman.com>]

Thanks to all of the positive things I have read on the list, I finally
broke down and got a Voigtsina Heliar 15mm this week. So far, it has
been fun to use although I haven't seen the results yet. Yesterday and
today I used it on a job photographing a silly publicity stunt involving
an actor in a donut suit in front of the US Capitol, White House,
Supreme Court, etc., (each rather briefly, before the cops chased us
off!) Obviously, the only people who would take this sort of thing
seriously are my clients and all they really care about is eye-catching
photos for press releases, etc. Unfortunately, the weather yesterday was
pretty bad for photography, but they are still paying me and still
expect results they can use. I was pretty unsatisfied with what I was
getting with my 35, 50 or 90,  so basically to cover my butt, I did a
few that shamelessly exploit the Heliar's perspective distortion to
liven things up!

Incidentally, I got the cosina-made adapter with the lens and it aligned
perfectly. Another nice thing is that it comes with a cap that looks a
little deeper than the Leica M caps I have for my other lenses. That
extra depth seems a good idea to me in order to clear the rear element,
although I haven't actually tested the other caps to see if they will
bark the glass. My final observation is that as a glasses wearer the
viewfinder is really nice - so much so that I found that if I left it on
while using other lenses I had a slight tendency to put my eye to the
accessory finder before remembering to shift to the real finder on my
M4-P.

Simon Stevens