Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/10/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Colin J wrote: > However, I still want to use two bodies and am > considering buying a screw mount Leica body and a > 50mm lens. I would also use this body with > Voigtlander 12mm and 15mm lenses. with the wide angle lenses you could also buy a Bessa T or L for architecture. Indeed CV were promoting them as such in their early catalogues. The latter are very cheap at the moment and for architecture etc could solve your problem at a very cheap price - and plenty of people are using them in situations where they get paid. > > Is it viable to use a 50+ year old screw mount > body for paid work? Is it possible to get > reliable, repeatable results from a IIIf? absolutely, there are plenty of LUGers using IIIfs to produce reliable results you can look at a reasonable proportion of the LUG PAWs including my own. You may not like what you see ;-) but they are reliable. If you buy one use some common sense and test it in much the sam,e way as you would test a new M-mount and if necessary get it CLA'd. I ask > about the IIIf because it seems good value, with > black dial versions selling at very attractive > prices. > > Would there be a better choice than a IIIf? What > would I need to do to ensure that a used IIIf > could become a reliable professional tool? The seperate eyepieces for finder and focus are different and are a bit of a pain in the *** at first, with experience it seems to get easier. Exposure is a question of using the usual rules ("sunny 16" etc) with B&W and as you are experienced with a darkroom post-processing. People used to shoot plenty of Kodachrome... The Bessa T has TTL metering, speeds to 1/2000th and flash sync... > > I also need advice on which would be a good > choice of 50mm lens. It depends what you want to do. You have got a choice of modern glass or older glass. The older glass has a certain nuanced image all of its own which you may well like - or not! I use an f1.5 Summarit which gives me good low-light capability, if not Noctilux level. There are a huge variety of lenses to be bought in LTM and not just Leica, the 5cm f1.4 Serenar is supposed to be better than the Summarit, but is much rarer - at least here in the UK, some people prefer the Nikkor. Then there's the modern CV Nokton 1.5.Begining to get the picture? Th I currently use a > collapsible Tele Elmarit (Leitz Canada) but would > be selling this and buying a good screw mount > 50mm. > Hope that this helps, would be happy to discuss further off list - or on if M &R people don't mind! Peter Dzwig