Bessa 3A and 35mm lens

[jcm0]

Hi,


I am a Mamiya 7 user and I would like to get a Bessa RxA camera to make shots in low light. I would like to do portraits (head & shoulder) too, and the Bessa RxA minimum focusing distance + limited shutter noise seems a good choice.

I would lean toward the R3A because of the magnification of the viewfinder which will help to focus in low light.

A 35mm/75mm combo would be a great choice for me. I would have had a 40mm/75mm combo, but I haven't seen something to my taste in the few available 40mm lens (The nokton 40/1.4 gives a too bad bookeh and its minimal focusing distance of 0.9 is too high).

I may need to use a 90mm lens to get head and shoulder shots. The R3A with its viewfinder will help to get an accurate focusing.

My question:

Is it possible to use a 35mm lens with the Bessa R3A ? I don't wear glasses and I expect to be able to get a rough estimate of the real lens coverage by using the border of the viewfinder.

Any reason I may have missed to get the R2A versus the R3A ?

Thanks in advance for your answer,

Regards,

JCM

 

[pab]

I find using the whole viewfinder works OK but it might not be good for critical framing.

Per

 

[jcm0]

thanks

thanks

Thank you for your reply 🙂

I wanted to be sure that I can get most of the 35mm field of view into the viewfinder (since some people reported that the viewfinder could not show more than the 40mm FOV), and that there isn't another problem with this combo.


Anyway, I don't expect to be able to make a critical framing with a RF ! On the Mamiya 7 RF, what you get on film is about 10-15% larger than what you have in your finder when the focus distance is infinity 🙁 , and for what I know, this problem exist on any RF camera !


Regards,

JCM

 

[rvaubel]

Critical Framing

Critical Framing

jcm0

To paraphrase HCB "Critical framing is a bougouis concept". I'm trying not to be to flippant, but a rangefinder is not an SLR with regards to accerate framing. Thus we have the "decisive moment" and other means of expressing our visial concept that are unique to rangefinders. The RF world is a lot different than the SLR world.

Rex

 

[kully]

JCM,

The Nokton 40,f/1.4 focusses down to 70cm.

As rvaubel says, critical framing on a rangefinder is silly. The framelines havn't been super accurate on any rangefinder I've owned (R2a, Oly RC, RD, GTN ... ), I'm even using the 40mm on an R2a with the 35mm framelines.

BTW Is your opinion on the Noktons 'bokeh' based on prints or reviews?






cheers,
KTB

 

[jcm0]

Hi,

Thank you for your answer.

My opinion on the Nokton bookeh is based on a lot of pictures I have seen on the net. There are very few cases where the bookeh is not nice, but in these cases it is *so* horrible that the picture is unusable even with lots of photoshop corrections 🙁 . For what I have seen the conditions to get an awful bookeh are:

- aperture <=2.8
- lighted lines (any directions) in background

... which is not as uncommon as one may think, especially as I intend to use the Bessa R3A in low light...


Regards,

JCM

 

[ferider]

I use a Canon 35/2 on the R3a and it works well. Note that the R2* 35mm frameline is much more conservative than most people think (and when
compared to Leicas for instance). It shows you 40mm down to 3m or so.
Compared to 40mm, 35mm is just an additional 8% on either side.

Roland.

 

[sockeyed]

I've taken several thousand pictures with the Nokton 40/1.4 (single coat). Maybe 5 have had bokeh that is bad enough to distress me, and I'm fairly critical about OOF areas. The lens has qualities that make up for any shortcomings it has in terms of harsh bokeh: great sharpness, good ergonomics, compact size, beautiful tones and colours. The bokeh only gets questionable wider than 2.0, IMO.

This is wide-open (or very close to it):

And this is what it can do in colour:

Here are links to all my posted CV 40/1.4 shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sockeyed/tags/cv4014/

Good luck with your decision!

 

[jcm0]

Thank you Ferider 🙂

 

[jcm0]

Hi sockeyed !

Thank you for the pictures you've provided. I know that the Nokton 40/1.4 is a great performer in many cases, and your pictures are really nice. Other qualities are price and size both so small 🙂 . I have to think again on all that 🙂 First thing is I have selected a body, I will take time to select my lenses !

Regards,

JCM

 

[jtm]

If you want to use a 35mm lens and a 75mm lens, in the dark, with accurate focus, then you might want to look again at cameras that have a naturally larger rangefinder base. This would include all the Leica Ms, the Zeiss Ikon, and the Hexar.

I bought a Bessa R several years ago, when they were pretty new. It has essentially the same finder as the R2A. I used it happily for a year or so, with 35mm, 50mm, and 75mm lenses, in the dark, before I gave in to the tempation of a well-priced M4-P. I liked the M4-P, and used it for a couple of months (without using the Bessa) before I convinced myself that it wasn't really much quieter than the Bessa R, and it was a lot heavier, and it didn't have a meter, and maybe the Bessa was just fine and I could find a better use for the money tied up in the M4-P. So I sold it.

It didn't take long after that to realize that, if nothing else, the Leica had been much easier to focus reliably in low light than the Bessa. I didn't notice it too much while using the cameras, but I could see it easily in the pictures. I might not have believed someone who just told me about it, but I could certainly tell in the number of Bessa pictures that weren't quite focused on the right thing.

So not I have an M2, and I just put up with having no built-in meter. And in the dark, at f/2 and f/1.4, and especially with 50mm and 85mm lenses, I feel like it's worth the trouble. Roland can probably tell you that with an 85mm f/2, you have to focus carefully even with an M2 or M6. For that length, you might even prefer an M3 or Ikon (too bad the M3 doesn't have 75mm lines).

 

[ferider]

Roland can probably tell you that with an 85mm f/2, you have to focus carefully even with an M2 or M6. For that length, you might even prefer an M3 or Ikon (too bad the M3 doesn't have 75mm lines).

That is correct: I just got some test shots back from the R3a with 85/2 and 1 out of two shots are off. However, the 75/2.5 is focusable on the R3a with
no problems.

For 85/2 the best camera is still the M3, IMO. Even with the M6/M2 I feel much more comfortable with a magnifier using the Nikkor.

The DOF with the 85/2 wide open at 1.5m is 4cm. The DOF of the 75/2.5 at the same distance wide open is 6cm, that seems to be ok with the R3a.

Roland.

 

[sockeyed]

Intererstingly, over coffee the other day, Tom Abrahamsson told me he actually finds it easier to focus the Leitz 75/1.4 on the R3A than his Leicas.

 

[ferider]

I wish I could try the Summilux. But it's true, the R3a is great with 75mm. The isolated frameline in the bright 1:1 finder (brighter than my older Leicas) is real nice. But, for 85/2 I like my M3 better (no 75mm frameline).

Roland.

 

[hth]

When I am using a 35mm lens I prefer to be able to see a bit around the framelines, makes it easier to compose. An uncluttered finder is also nice to have.

/Håkan

 

[Mazurka]

Intererstingly, over coffee the other day, Tom Abrahamsson told me he actually finds it easier to focus the Leitz 75/1.4 on the R3A than his Leicas.

"Easier to focus" doesn't necessarily mean "more accurate." I bet he rarely, if ever, shoots the Lux wide-open at close range. Futhermore, a 1:1 finder with the larger frame-lines, is easier to use with the Lux than even a 0.85 finder.

But I do wonder how much the 75 Lux intrudes into the corresponding frame-lines on the R3A ...

 

[sockeyed]

I didn't try the 75 Lux on my R3A, but I did shoot a few frames on my M6. I didn't find much VF blockage, probably because the 75 frames are a smaller % of the VF on any rangefinder. A 35mm lens with the same bulk as the 75 Lux would block a fair bit of the 35mm framelines.

I shot at f/1.4 and f/2, close up. The DoF is just TINY with that lens. I focused on the frames of my friend's glasses and while they were sharp, his eye was clearly out of focus!