[Leica] Questions about the visoflex III

[jbcollier at shaw.ca (John Collier)]

I have a friend who adapted his black 65 mm Elmars to a Nikon tilt/ 
shift bellows. Apparently the image circle is not that big and you  
can't shift or tilt very much at all. He also had a hell of a time  
with paint flecks from the diaphragm blades and has learned to  
quickly field strip and clean the lens.

John

On 17-Mar-08, at 6:22 PM, ferrel anderson wrote:

> I regard to the two versions of the 65 mm Elmar lenses, I offer the  
> following comments.  The earlier chrome version is a low contrast  
> lens that achieves excellent resolution of 80 lpm at only f8.   
> Color pictures show a pastel rendition, that can be wonderful if  
> that is what you want.  The black version is a high contrast lens  
> of much higher resolution.  These comments are based on actual  
> picture results with B&W and color slide films.  The resolution  
> results were on B&W film taken of resolution test targets at the  
> conventional 26 focal length distance.  Neither lens achieved  
> excellent resolution at the edges, but at macro distances where the  
> center of the lens is used to project the picture results, the  
> resolution is excellent across the field.  In comparison shots  
> taken at the reproduction ratio of 1:5 with the 60 mm Macro Elmarit  
> R and the 100 mm APO macro Elmarit R lenses with Kodachrome, the  
> results were indistinguishable.  When I work with the Bellows R,  
> the two lenses that I use without hesitation are the black 65 mm  
> Elmar and 100 mm Macro Elmar.  If I want to use macro lenses as  
> universal lenses, I choose the 60 mm Macro Elmarit R and 100 mm APO  
> Macro Elmarit R lenses.  They are both superb, from the center to  
> the corner of the picture and at all distances.
>
> I should add, that in resolution tests taken with the much Lamented  
> Kodak Technical Pan film, the 60 and 100 mm R lenses run circles  
> around the other lenses discussed above.  The great leveler though  
> are the films that are most commonly used where maximum resolution  
> is from 80 to 100 lines per millimeter.  All of these lenses,  
> except the chrome 65 mm Elmar, at optimum aperture out-resolve  
> these films.