Canon VL2-VT/VL Hybrid

[Rangefinder Man]

Hello All
I have a friend who repairs rangefinder cameras and decided the he would mate a VL2 with a VT, with a splash of VL. He put a VT base on a VL2 and put a VL shutter dial with the 1/1000 speed. To acheive 1/1000 second speed, all he has to do was drill a extra hole in the shutter disc, under the top shell. Now he can cock the camera from the top or bottom! Maybe Canon should have thought of it!

 

[harry01562]

That one will sure confuse some future collector. Probably end up on the successor to eBay described as a "prototype" or undiscovered new model.

Harry

 

[JJW]

You could always advance the film and cock the shutter on top with the "T" trigger models...

You just needed to push in the little button and raise the round knob on the camera's top plate. Granted, it's a lot like winding the film on a "Barnack" Leica, but it works.

 

[erikhaugsby]

So all it took for the 1/1000th speed was drilling a hole in the disc? Any chance you can get 1/2000 or 1/4000 by doing that repeatedly?

 

[jlw]

I've often wondered myself why Canon didn't just offer both top and bottom wind in the same camera (although I would have put a VI-L or P lever onto a VI-T.)

I assumed the reason was that there would be some difficulty getting the two advance mechanisms to play nicely with each other (mostly in keeping the ratched for each from locking out the other) but if your guy was able to do it and it works, then it must be possible. Maybe Canon was just stubborn...

As to the 1/1000 thing, he may have drilled the extra hole, but I'll be very surprised if the resulting speed is near 1/1000... unless he took the extra time to set up the curtain tensions very carefully, as the factory would have done. From what I've read, that was the real cost factor in adding a 1/1000 speed, not just the need to drill an extra hole in a part -- cameras with 1/1000 required extensive additional hand set-up on the production line, which is why lower-cost models stopped at 1/500.

As to adding even higher speeds, you'd have huge issues with evenness of exposure and repeatability of the speed setting. All that pin-and-hole mechanism does is make the shutter slit thinner and thinner as you select higher and higher speeds -- the speed at which the curtains travel doesn't change. To get still higher speeds, you'd have to make the slit still thinner -- and when the slit is very thin, even minor differences in travel speed or slit width translate into large differences in exposure, because even a small difference in size is a large percentage of the total width.

 

[payasam]

I think JLW is right and I shall never have 1/4000 sec. as the top speed on my Zorki. I'm also somewhat sceptical about the 1/1000 sec. speed on the hybrid.

 

[Rangefinder Man]

I would have to ask my friend about that. I will get back to you next week when I see him.

So all it took for the 1/1000th speed was drilling a hole in the disc? Any chance you can get 1/2000 or 1/4000 by doing that repeatedly?

 

[John Shriver]

You need faster travel times for the curtains to get shutter speeds beyond 1/1000. I've had the curtains misaligned on a Leica type shutter, too close to each other, such that 1/1000 tried to be 1/2000. What you got was diffraction blur, because the slot was so narrow.

Also, I don't know about the VL, but on the bottom loader Canons, there's no facility for trimming the 1/500 and 1/1000 shutter speeds independently. You have to assemble the curtains perfectly aligned on the drums, or the top speeds are off. On a Leica IIIc or later, there are separate cams for fine tuning. Canon had accurate enough assembly jigs that the lack of this adjustment was no problem for them. But it's a pain for us now without the jigs.

You can barely do 1/2000 with lightweight metal shutters, but it really takes a vertical blade shutter to do it right.

 

[Charles Woodhouse]

Canon VL2-VT/VL Hybrid

Hi from Australia,I am the friend of Rangefinder Man and I created the VL2-VT hybrid,and I did it as an interesting excercise for fun,and to build something different as a regular user camera.I had a wrecked VT,a spare VL2,and a VL with a broken rangefinder beam splitter.So I put the spare VL2 rangefinder in the VL,the VT rangefinder in the hybrid,and after researching the job carefully,shortened the upper section of the long VT winding shaft that goes through the take-up spool.The lever wind and trigger wind have separate ratchets and so act independently,but the shutter and film advance can be partially wound with the lever and completed with the trigger or vice versa.
As I had a spare 1/1000 shutter dial I drilled a 0.80mm hole in the appropriate place in the timing disc,and voila,a 1/1000 shutter.The other holes in the timing disc(1/30 to 1/500) are all 1.1mm and the striker hits the same anvil for all of these speeds,but to obtain 1/1000 slit an anvil closer to the striker is needed,and Oscar Barnack solved the geometrical problem in 1935 by raising the striker to be closer to the second anvil.And no,this cannot be done for speeds of 2000 or more. But as with so many older cameras,the shutter speeds are only nominal, and not exact.
I used a VL2 as the basis for the hybrid because I wanted a camera with X synch,
and apart from the 0.80mm hole (which can be plugged with steel epoxy) there was absolutely no damage to the camera.It does now have a warm tone viewfinder which I prefer,but my beautiful VL is now complete.
Cheers, Charles Woodhouse.

 

[jlw]

Charles, thanks for the interesting detail view.

Now that you've done this, any idea why Canon didn't do it back in the 1950s? The trigger wind feature was controversial back then, which is why they also made a separate series of lever-wind cameras -- it seems as if it would have been much easier to make one camera with both systems, especially since your hybrid seems to combine the advantages of both without any disadvantages.

 

[Mackinaw]

.....any idea why Canon didn't do it back in the 1950s?

Why not ask Peter Dechert this in the "Coffee with Experts" forum? Maybe he can offer some insight.

Jim Bielecki

 

[Charles Woodhouse]

Hi jlw,
with the proliferation of Canon models at the time I really can't understand why Canon didn't offer such a model, at a premium price of course! If I were a real vandal I would have used an L1 as the basis for my hybrid because I much prefer the lever rewind, and I could easily have fitted the VT selftimer to the L1, but L1's still seem to be very sought after.
I could have built my hybrid using a VI-L as a basis, but VI-L's are quite scarce and sought after, and I thought it would be a shame to tie up a VI-L in such a project. Besides, I like the combinationof warm tone viewfinder and steel curtains.
I'll put up another post when I start using the camera.
Charles.

 

[dexdog]

Charles, thanks for the interesting detail view.

Now that you've done this, any idea why Canon didn't do it back in the 1950s? The trigger wind feature was controversial back then, which is why they also made a separate series of lever-wind cameras -- it seems as if it would have been much easier to make one camera with both systems, especially since your hybrid seems to combine the advantages of both without any disadvantages.

I would guess that duplicative winding systems would have been expensive enough to drive the price up considerabley, beyond what the market would bear. Canons were less expensive than leicas and a few other cameras of the day, but not by a large margin.

 

[Charles Woodhouse]

To answer John Shriver and others, the only difference between later Canons with 1/500 shutters and those with 1/1000 shutters was that 0.80mm hole in the timing disc, and possibly a slight taper on the under surface of the striker of I/1000 shutters to clear the 1/1000 anvil at speeds from 1/500 down. Perhaps Canons of this period were slightly cruder in manufacture because the anvils on the second curtain latch had no adjustment, or perhaps they were so precisely made that no adjustment was necessary.
When I replace curtains in screw mount Leicas or their copies I fit the second curtain with the metal strips precisely overlapping, that is one lying on top of the other, with the overlap at the right side of the film gate as one looks into the camera.I then adjust the curtains to get a correct exposure at the cameras fastest shutter speed without any tapering of the exposure. It seems to work very well.

 

[Sonnar2]

I think it's possible when CANON build the V/L-series, the RF shutters of the whole series were fast-travelling and capable of 1/1000s. After all, the "low"/budget series were heavily pushed by price, offering basically the same camera as the top price models which brings the profit. At least this was true for PENTAX about 1960 where some models even had a mark for the shutter dial at 1/1000s, missing just the engraving at the speed dial.
Shutters capable of 1/1000s have higher accelerated (lighter) curtains, curtain breaks and other sophisticated stuff which simpler shutter types miss. Most 1/500s shutters are so slow you can see the curtains travelling with the naked eye, which is hard to see at the 1/1000s shutters. The 1/1250s was one reason why the Contax in the beginning 30's was the most sophisticated camera of it's time while Leica was capable only of 1/500s.
In the book The Nikon Manual by George B. Wright I found the travelling speeds in miliseconds of the following focal plane shutter cameras:
Nikon S (1952, 1/500s, two speed dials) - 24ms
Nikon S2 (1955, 1/1000s, two speed dials) - 17ms
Nikon SP (1957, 1/1000s, single speed dial) - 13ms
Nikon S3 (1958, 1/1000s, single speed dial) - 14.5ms

Similar data could be expected by Canon RF cameras of these years.

 

[xayraa33]

this was the mid 1950s, and there were customers who still liked knob wind cameras.
Canon up to that time still catered to niche demands or supposed demands of their customers.
this was really apparent in their profusion of different bottomloader models.
the Leica equal to this mongrel is the rare original Leica MP.

 

[Charles Woodhouse]

Hey,settle down xayraa33,my VL2/VT isn't a mongrel,it's a Crossbreed!
Sonnar2 is spot on with his assessment of curtain crossing speeds in Canons from the VT onwards. Like the Red Dial Leica If,IIf & IIIf the slowest non-delayed shutter speed is around 1/50 (both curtains open),which is why their X synch is there. Also thank you for the very interesting curtain crossing speed comparison of Nikon R/Fs. I am not sure what the slowest speed of the 2 series Barnack cameras is,but I suspect it is 1/30.I've just been experimenting with my X synched 2 series cameras (IVSB2 & IIS2)and with a modern flash and with the top dial set on X they will only synch with the slow dial set on X . Very strange.
Some time ago I did a check of all my Barnack Canons with a top shutter speed of 1/500, and made after the Canon1950 (IIC,IID,IIF etc),and up to about serial number 100,000 they all had a single anvil curtain holding latch specifically for the 1/500 speed,but later cameras had a universal latch for both 1/500 and 1/1000. From memory all the cameras I checked had a hole drilled and tapped in the timing disc for the tiny screw that raises the striker to hit the 1/1000 anvil, but the discs weren't drilled for the 1/1000 setting.
Sorry to bore the socks off you but I find all these internal variations in high quality 35mm cameras fascinating.