[Leica] Re: Novoflex site now in English!

[drodgers@nextlink.com]

Mark,

>>>ON the RUG someone has pointed out the Novoflex site is now in English
which
makes it much more usefull to some of us!.....
400 mm LEICA Telyt Rapid Focus Lens...
VERY cool stuff I wonder if they can be used with a Viso?<<

I spent the last several evenings scanning and printing photographs taken
with my older 400/5.6 Telyt, which was a predecessor to the current system
offered by Novoflex. My Telyt is incredibly sharp. More importanly,
contrast is extremely impressive. It's an acrhomat with only four air to
glass surfaces.

Supposedly achromat lenes are a little soft in the corners, due to the
simple two element design with a slightly curved plane of focus. (Perhaps
someday they'll come out with an aspheric version to remidy this:-).

I've never noticed corner softness in my lens. It's probably due to the way
long tele's  are normally used. The corners are rarely ever in the plane of
focus, anyway.

The achromats are very interesting and somewhat unique lenses. At f6.8
they're slow, but they perform well wide open. My  400/5.6 Telyt has a
slightly different focusing mechanism than the f6.8s. Leitz only made the
f5.6 design for 2 years. It uses the televit focusing system (at least I
think that's the name). I read somewhere it was designed to be used with a
Viso or an SLR. It was quite expensive to manufacture. And it's pretty
heavy. They went to the f6.8 type mechanism because it was less expensive
to make, and lighter. The optics are identical, but the televit allowed for
a slightly larger aperture.

The televit is pretty interesting. You can focus the lens using only your
thumb and the fine focusing knob. Or you can use a trigger and push/pull.
The latter is fast, but the former is more accurate. There are also stops
on the lens you can adjust. When I shoot baseball I set the far stop at
second base and the near stop at home plate. Last week I photographed a
stike out/throw out double play. I got 1) the third strike swing, 2) the
catchers throw, and 3) the tag at second base. All three were in perfect
focus, yet I was working with a narrow dof. Last year I tried shooting the
same series of frames using a modern autofocus and it wasn't fast enough.

As I said in an earlier post, the Telyt 5.6 is a real conversation piece. I
bought mine reluctantly. I had very low expectations. As it turned out it's
a lot of fun to use, too. Best of all, it's a great performer. My only
regret is that I don't have the shoulder stock for mine. I'd also like to
get the 560 head to use on my televit.

Dave