Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/01

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Subject: RE: [Leica] New Leica Products
From: Jem Kime <jem.kime@cwcom.net>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 08:07:28 +0100

Guy,
The magnification for a finder to offer 12mm coverage in an M viewfinder 
would be 0.36, I can't ever concede that Leica would think this worthwhile.
I am surprised though at where they stopped (in terms of magnification) 
with the rumoured .58 model. I can understand from Bill R its meant as an 
eye relief model, and I can applaud that, especially for specs wearers but 
for those of us who still have the capapbility it would have seemed a 
better idea (to me) to have gone a little wider and been able to offer both 
24 and 21mm framing options, even if the latter was the 'edge' of frame. Of 
course that might have robbed the finder of offering a 90mm frame with any 
sense but I think for a 'wide angle' Leica that's what I (other people?) 
would have been happy with. This new offering seems to have fallen between 
two stools for me.

The Leica H was a prototype half frame camera with a fixed lens, it had no 
adjustable framelines, they only came in with the M series.
Something which was a development on the idea of adjustable viewfinders was 
used by Periflex. They had supplementary viewfinders which located in front 
of the viewfinder, certainly they had them for the 28mm and 200mm. This is 
in effect what Leitz did with their 35mm and 135mm 'RF' lenses for the M 
series but they also needed to adjust the dioptre on the rf measuring 
window too, which then meant changing the cam on the lens, all a bit 
cumbersome. Periflex had a seperate focus measuring system of a periscopic 
reflex viewer which showed only a small part of the screen.

Jem

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Guy Bennett [SMTP:guybnt@idt.net]

how many years til they produce an m that has framelines for a 15? would 
that be a .03?
or for the new cosina 12? would that be a .0.05?

why not adjustable framelines that you could make as big or little as you
like. kind of like they have on the well-loved leica h?

guy