Best M Adapter for CV 15mm Heliar

[Fragomeni]

Hi all,

I have a Voigtlander 15mm Heliar in LTM screwmount on the way and I'd like to know if there is an ideal M adapter to use it with my Leica M6TTL. I know that there are M adapters that allow proper selection of framelines in the case of certain screwmount lenses but in this case that is irrelevant since the lens uses its accessory finder. I'm just trying to figure out if there is an ideal adapter that works better then others for this particular mating or if they're all the same. Thanks in advance for your help! I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, I've been unable to find threads on this particular topic. Thanks again!

 

[sebii]

All the same 🙂

 

[Fotohuis]

The best solution is the Cosina Voigtländer SWH 4,5/15mm with M-mount. Also the filter problem is solved then.

 

[Fragomeni]

I'm not interested in the M-mount version of the lens. The screw mount version is more flexible in that I can use it on a variety of cameras that the M version cannot be used with.

I plan to just pick this one up so that I can also use it with a Nikkor 35mm LTM lens that I enjoy, will it work properly with the 15mm Heliar LTM?

Can anyone explain in brief why LTM to M adapters are made for different focal lengths? I get that using the appropriate adapter allows the selection of the proper frame lines but is that the only difference between them? Is that why any of these will work with the Heliar? Because the Heliar uses an accessory finder so proper frame line selection isn't an issue? Thanks so much for the help with this folks!

 

[Fotohuis]

I get that using the appropriate adapter allows the selection of the proper frame lines but is that the only difference between them? Is that why any of these will work with the Heliar? Because the Heliar uses an accessory finder so proper frame line selection isn't an issue?

This is correct.

 

[efix]

The Voigtländer adapter should work fine. As long as it's no cheap Chinese copy ... had bad experiences with one of those ...

 

[Fragomeni]

Thank you all for the help!! Very much appreciated!

 

[umcelinho]

also, the voigtlander or leica adapter use better materials than cheap adapters, they won't stick to the lens thread. go for an adapter that you can use with the focal length you like the most, if you have an ltm 35mm go for a 35/135 one.

tip: keh.com has 2nd hand adapters from leica and voigtlander for almost half the price of a new one, but they won't come with a rear M cap. you can get a 2nd hand rear cap there as well though.

 

[Fragomeni]

I went ahead and bought a Voigtlander 35/135 adapter from Adorama then they emailed me to say it was backordered so I canceled it. Apparently they're backordered everywhere. I ended up picking one up off of ebay from some place in Hong Kong (the same Voigtlander adapter with caps). I didn't think to check KEH or I would have bought it from them.

 

[literiter]

I bought the Heliar 15mm LTM about a year ago, with the Voigtlander M adapter. I use the lens with my M2 and M4-P. Very nice lens!

I want to use the lens on my iiif occasionally as well.

There is a slight glitch with this concept.

When I first mounted the lens with the adapter on my M2 I noticed that the lens was not perfectly vertical. I removed the 4 screws on the base of the lens itself and remounted the lens base to the point it was perfectly vertical on my M2.

When I remount the lens on my iiif the lens is not vertical and I must remove the base of the lens again and remount the base to accommodate the camera. This isn't gonna happen to many times.

I hope I explained this enough,

Anyone else have this problem??

 

[Lflex]

...

When I remount the lens on my iiif the lens is not vertical and I must remove the base of the lens again and remount the base to accommodate the camera. This isn't gonna happen to many times.

...

Anyone else have this problem??

This phenomenon is quite common with many if not most LTM lenses - also Leica lenses with Leica adapters.
For rangefinder coupled lenses it is not a problem as a slight change in distance between lens and film will automatically be compensated by the focusing coupling mecanism.
For non-coupled lenses it may pose a problem when scale focusing - especially ultrawides which has lots of DOF in front of the lens are reversedly more sensitive to variations in distance between mount and film.
However, I have a 12mm+VC adapter and see a very slight misalignment (maybe half a mm from reaching "12 o'clock") but I have seen no ill effect of this misalignment.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

since 15mm falls outside of the m-body framelines, then any adapter would do. however for practical reasons, a 50-75 adapter is inherently more useful than say a 28-90, if all you have are 50mm screwmount lenses.

i tried several chinese branded adapters, i had success with several of them, however there is a bad batch floating in market which was manufactured incorrectly. this resulted in framelines which were partially shown. i finally gave up and bought voigtlander adapters.

hope this helps

 

[literiter]

This phenomenon is quite common with many if not most LTM lenses - also Leica lenses with Leica adapters.
For rangefinder coupled lenses it is not a problem as a slight change in distance between lens and film will automatically be compensated by the focusing coupling mecanism.
For non-coupled lenses it may pose a problem when scale focusing - especially ultrawides which has lots of DOF in front of the lens are reversedly more sensitive to variations in distance between mount and film.
However, I have a 12mm+VC adapter and see a very slight misalignment (maybe half a mm from reaching "12 o'clock") but I have seen no ill effect of this misalignment.

My misalignment was about 5 or 6 degrees (!) which I compensated for perfectly, by adjusting the lens's baseplate. Of course now it is misaligned on my iiif.

No big deal, I can live with it. I was just curious to see if there was something I had overlooked.

 

[jpberger]

Just one thing to note is that wide angles have very short depth of focus (as opposed to depth of field which they of course have a lot of) which means that if the adapter is out of tolerance it will be more likely cause problems with such a wide lens than with a longer lens. The super close focusing ability of the LTM version is a good reason to choose it over the M-version (although if you stop down all the way it's not much of an issue.)

 

[literiter]

Just one thing to note is that wide angles have very short depth of focus (as opposed to depth of field which they of course have a lot of) which means that if the adapter is out of tolerance it will be more likely cause problems with such a wide lens than with a longer lens. The super close focusing ability of the LTM version is a good reason to choose it over the M-version (although if you stop down all the way it's not much of an issue.)

Do you think it may be best to assign this lens to a iiif Barnack to forgo the adapter?