Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/08/24

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Parallax concerns
From: Alex Hurst <corkflor@iol.ie>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 16:10:04 +0100

George Huczek wrote:

>   I was taking a picture of the front grill of an old car (a 1956
>Studebaker Golden Hawk ... only 4071 were produced).
>   I framed the image carefully in the viewfinder, making sure that I got
>the full grill in.  I framed very close to the edges of the framelines
>(standard M6, 50mm lens, distance about 1.5 m away from the subject).
>   The negative shows the right edge of the grillwork cut off.  I'm sure
>that I framed this properly to get the entire grill in.  I thought that the
>framelines in the viewfinder shifted slightly to compensate for
>close-focusing distances.  However, it appears that there may be something
>going on that I am not aware of.  At close distances with a rangefinder, is
>it necessary to frame more loosely, and leave some free space at the edges
>of the negative to compensate for parallax?

George - the framelines do indeed shift to compensate for parallax, and
I've never had any problems framing accurately at that distance with either
of my M3s or M2 using any focal length of lens.

As you were shooting from 1.5m there really shouldn't have been any problem.

However, when you rack out a lens to focus really close, you're increasing
the focal length sufficiently for there to be a cropping effect - which is
why Leitz provide a supplementary close-focussing mark on the VIOOH finder.
I would have thought this would be more pronounced with short teles than
with a standard lens, but I don't think this is your problem.

Are you sure your rangefinder's not slightly out of whack, which would
affect the parallax correction too?

Slan

Alex



Alex Hurst
Cork Florists
19 Winthrop St, Cork
Republic of Ireland
Tel: +353 21 270 907
Fax: +353 21 271 248
email: corkflor@iol.ie
Website: http://www.flowerlink.com/corkflorists
Home website: http://homepages.iol.ie/~corkflor/