Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/09/03

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Full magnification viewfinders
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 21:21:11 -0500

At 01:46 PM 9/3/98 -0600, you wrote:

>Well, I think there must be more to it than this.
>Almost 40 years ago, the Canon P was made with a full magnification
>viewfinder that worked well with 35mm lenses.  Canon's description of the
>Canon P viewfinder/rangefinder went like this:

There is a physical reason why in Leica it doesn't work. Could be the way
the rangefinder is built, and the size of the camera body, but the reason
why they can't make it 100 percent is they can't and let us use 35mm
lenses. That's why you can't use 35mm lenses on the M3 without goggles.
That's why the M4P and M5 have .72 magnification, so they can work with 28
mm lenses. To compare a Canon camera to a Leica is apples and oranges.
There could be lots of engineering reasons why it works for Canon and not
Leica that made the compromise worth it for the Leica engineers. If Leica
could and wanted to do it without some major compromise, I'm sure they would.
- -- 

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.