How many Owners of the M8 use a Visoflex?

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eleskin

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I am just wondering how many of you own and use a Visoflex. I just bought the Visoflex 2 body without a prism on ebay at a good price for my 90mm Summicron and 135mm Elmarit.

How has it worked for you (what you like and dislike), and how you expanded your Visoflex to take other lenses, including non Leica lenses.
 
I have used one. I have a Visoflex III. I'm not sure if the shutter tripping arm on a Visoflex-II is tall enough (the M8 is taller than the M3/M2/M4/M6, like an M6TTL or M7) but maybe it is. I know for sure that the prism for the Visoflex-II will not clear the top plate, so you will need to find either a Visoflex-III prism (will fit the II body) or one of the vertical "chimney" finders (but those are really only good for tripod use). You also need to draw some crop lines on the ground glass because the M8 has a 1.33x crop. You can determine where they go with a ruler, or by chimping. An ultra-fine-point Sharpie works OK to mark the lines.

I have two lenses I can use on the Visoflex. One is a 400mm "trombone" Telyt, and the other is my 135mm f/4 Tele-Elmar, whose front part unscrews and (after unscrewing a baffle in the rear) I can screw it into a special short focusing helical mount. There were some other lenses that also can be taken apart to use on one of those short mounts, plus of course the 65mm Elmar which never had a "long" mount. A list of the lenses can be found in several books, like Jonathan Eastland's M Compendium and Brian Bower's Leica M book among others. I don't know if the lenses you mention can be taken apart and short-mounted to a Visoflex. If you just put a normal M lens on a Visoflex, it's like adding an extension tube (note the thickness of the Visoflex housing) that moves the lens farther away from the body. Therefore the lenses will be quasi-macro lenses but not focus to any normal distance.
 
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You'll get a rather small view through the Visoflex since you'll have to mask the ground glass to match the M8's sensor area. I have both the prism and chimny finders for my Visoflex II.
 
I have been toying with the Idea of simpily taping on a square Peak Loupe I have for 35mm. I have used taping methods (electrical tape to graft 2 parts together) to alter other equipment I use , and this is a good method until I see a finder at a reasonable price. What may also be possible is to magnify the image in a similar way the eye piece magnifier works on all Leica M's. I am somewhat good with optics in that I have built my own Newtonian reflector telescope, and have a good understanding of magnifications and optical alignments.
 
I have been using the Visoflex I with the 45 degrees angle and the Bellows to do some macros with the Tele elmar 135/4 head and with the focotar 3. I had a couple of spare Viso focusing screens, so simply draw the framelines on the glossy side with an extra fine Sharpie, comparing a grid on a wall against what was shown on the rear LCD screen.
 
Question for Al Kaplan or any other person that can answer this.

Question for Al Kaplan or any other person that can answer this.

Al,

I am assuming you have an M8 and are using your Visoflex 2. I have read that the only issue is the finder you would use with it. The Visoflex 2 finder is not high enough for the taller M8 body. Will everything else work ok, that is will the leaver that presses on the shutter button on the M8 be in the right position? if not, I wasted my money and should be looking for a Visoflex 3. The Visoflex 2 was hard to resist for $75.

Any other person reading this can comment as well, I would appreciate the information.
 
I said I wasn't positive the arm on the II is high enough, but I'm about 95% sure. That's because I sold my II before I bought an M8, and I hate to talk out my you-know-what. I'm almost sure I used one on my M6TTL which I think is the same height as the M8. Since you already bought it, you might as well try it. The reason I bought the III was mainly because it has an instant-return mirror. I believe there was a version of the II, called a IIa, that allowed the mirror to come down when you let go of the release arm, but I believe it's quite a rarity. Also the III can be attached and detached without removing the prism.


Al Kaplan said:
You'll get a rather small view through the Visoflex since you'll have to mask the ground glass to match the M8's sensor area. I have both the prism and chimny finders for my Visoflex II.
Click to expand...

The area of the M8's cropped sensor is 75% of full frame, so it isn't that small. What I did and most people have done, rather than mask the ground glass, is to draw the frame with a fine-line Sharpie. That way you still get the full brightness of the entire screen, and have the advantage of seeing outside the actual frame, just like in the M viewfinder. That's what Leica did with the DMR, they included a replacement focusing screen that had crop lines engraved on it.
 
The M8 is a couple of mm's higher than the M6TTL or M7. I can't get my VII to work on my M8. I guess it could work with the arm forward and using a double cable release.

Regarding other lens systems, Novoflex, Kilfitt, and Komura are the obvious choices. The lenses are easy to find, usually reasonably priced, and generally give good results. The problem is finding the right adapter. There are rare and getting harder to find. Kilfitt's tend to have coating issues (and lose their rubber band trim); Komura's tend to have stiff focus because of cheaper grease. The Follow-Focus, while kinky, is a marvelous peice of engineering. I've never had one that didn't work right.

The easy fit problems:
- Novoflex Follow-Focus A (the one with the LTM thread) are 100mm from lens mount to film for lenses 300mm and longer. Since VII/VIII are 68.8mm you need about 31.2mm (but not more then) of extension. VISLEI-P is the right adapter. Follow-Focus B uses VISBA; one appears on E-bay about every 6 months. Follow-Focus C & D need modification to work.
- Kilfitt Basic lenses 150mm and longer (the ones with the LTM thread) are 93.3mm from the film. Go ahead and use OUBIO, being aware the lens have to be focused out 2mm to get to infinity. There are 2 135mm varieties. One is at 93.3mm from film. The other is 78.8mm from the film, as are the 90mm's. So these need and LTM to LBM adapter and extension of not more than 9mm. Kilfitt AN and WE lenses can be used, but really hard to find adapters are required.
- Komura lenses 200mm and longer (not the rangefinder coupled 200mm) are LTM and 76.8mm from the film. So you need a LTM to LBM adapter and not more than 7mm of extension.

There are all kinds of other lenses. Each has its own story of how to get it to work.
 
I used to own an Astro Pan Tachar 150mm f/2.3 that was stolen a few years ago. Astro was a company in Berlin that made fast long lenses mostly for the motion picture industry. They also made a 125/2.3 and a 150/1.8. They made a variety of adapters for various 35mm SLR's, Visoflexes, and 6x6 cameras with focal plane shutters like the Bronica S, Hasselblad 1000f, and the Praktisix/ Pentacon Six and its variants.
 
Astro Berlin made a wide array of Big Glass lenses. They were very popular in the movie industry. Many of them would fit on Visoflex with an adapter, including the two you mention. Typically they were used on LTM Leicas with Astro's Identoskop reflex housing. The Identoskop is not tall enough to work on any M camera. The Fernbildlense series (Long Focus), mostly f5.0, is interesting, going up to 2000mm.

Astro did make lenses with LTM adapters. I have never seen the adapter offered separately from a lens. I've only seen three lenses with such adapters for sale. The adapter itself is nothing special and a good machine shop should be able to make one.

All the Astro stuff is collector item class with high prices. Usually some equipment can be seen on e-bay by searching on Astro Berlin.
 
http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com/2006/06/elena-kaplan-politics-in-her-blood.html

This is a shot of President Jimmy Carter made with the 150/2.3 Astro lens on my Visoflex II. Scroll down a few inches. The secret service guys went bonkers when they saw the rig. I had to take the lens off the Visoflex, remove the prism, and take the Visoflex off of the Leica body. Back then if it didn't say "NIKON" it must be a weapon.
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Jimmy Carter shot

Jimmy Carter shot

Hi Al,

Wow! Are you saying the Secret Service made you take your Visoflex apart for inspection?

I saw these guys too in action when Clinton visited my home town (Allentown Pa). They stick out like sore thumbs though (those trench coats they wear are a dead giveaway). I was on a roof of a building my father owned with my M6, and the SS called the building and told us to get off the roof (we wanted to get a good view of Air force One while it was landing).

By the way, I bought a Visoflex 3 on Ebay yesterday (the Visoflex 2 I bought will be a spare). $140 with prism. I thought it was a good deal even though the Leitz logo was intentionally scratched off. I dont care, I use equipment, and am not a collector! the only issue is some dust in the prism which I assume I can clean by taking it apart. Anybody ever clean their prism by taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again?
 
Al, How did you adapt that 400mm Spiratone Sharpshooter to your Visoflex?

Al, How did you adapt that 400mm Spiratone Sharpshooter to your Visoflex?

Al,

I have read some threads that you mounted a 400mm Spiratone on your Visoflex by yourself. How did you do it?

Thanks,
Ed

(eleskin)
 
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