[Leica] First impressions: that 1.25x M viewfinder magnifier

[Jeff Moore <jbm@oven.com>]

I received mine a few days ago.  I haven't actually had the chance to
use it much for real yet -- just hardly been doing anything which
seemed to call for a long lens recently -- but I've certainly looked
it over and tried it on some cameras.

First off: it's just beautifully made.  It comes in a teeny perfect
little leather case which looks like a doll's accessory; that case can
snap onto, say, a camera strap.  Attached to a leather tongue inside
the case is a tether, which appears from a distance like a piece of
thinnish black elastic cord but turns out to be a fine metal-link
serpent in what looks like black chrome.  This tether has a clip which
attaches to the magnifier.

Won't the tether get twisted or rolled around the magnifier as it
screws into the camera?  No, because the outer barrel of the
magnifier, into which the tether clips, is actually a rotating
sleeve.

This is a modern classic in the pantheon of quirky, cleverly-designed
and beautifully-executed Leica accessories which wouldn't be necessary
if the camera's basic design had happened to be different.

Looking through it?  I've mostly done so on 0.85-mag bodies while not
wearing spectacles.  I'd say that:

 - It makes the 90mm frame pretty darned comfy.  Some breathing room
   around it (kind of subjectively like 50mm on a 0.72; I'm sure
   somebody will be obnoxious enough to dare attack or defend this
   assertion with the Actual Numeric Ratios), but I like some room for
   context.  I Like It.

 - It makes the 135mm frame... less of a hardship.

 - It brings the finder's overall mag close enough to a miraculous 1:1
   that one might consider a two-open-eyed working style.  Haven't
   done it enough to be sure whether that's a recipe for eyestrain or
   an unalloyed plus.

 - And... far from least... y'know how if you use a 50 a lot, you can
   mistakenly use the 50mm frame lines from habit when you have the
   75mm mounted?  Y'know how some of us have wished for an M with
   manual frameline selection a la the Bessa-R, or a special
   50-frameline-less body or *something* to help with using that pesky
   but wonderful 75mm Summilux?  An 0.85 M6 plus the magnifier pushes
   the 50mm frame far enough toward the edges that it's less
   convenient to use, thus throwing a subjective spotlight on the 75mm
   corner dealies.  IT TURNS AN M6 0.85 INTO A GOOD CAMERA FOR USING
   THE 75mm LENS!  Hallelujah!

The only downside I've noticed: it seems to induce or perhaps
(unsurprisingly) just exacerbate, magnify if you will, any little bits
of vertical rangefinder misalignment.  This effect may vary with your
eye's centeredness behind the eyepiece.  Certainly not fatal.

Cool gizmo.
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