Close focusing on Bessa II

[loneranger]

I have a Bessa II which I use mainly for landscapes, shooting stopped down , with the focus at 10 or more meters, and my pics come out great. The problem is whenever I try to focus on a close object and wide open, I never get the focus right. The rangefinder patch is very blurred and hard to use, and depth of field is extremely shallow...so am I doing something wrong, or is this a common issue? I remember when I had the Bessa RF, I did not have this problem.

 

[Ken Smith]

Watched your post set here several days with no answer. I know there are folks here who have a Bessa II. I have one myself but it is with Fallsiphoto getting a CLA and therefore I cannot supply you with an answer. I do think that perhaps your rangefinder optics need a CLA.

One thing you can do is pop open the back, attached some ground glass, waxed paper, or a blank developed negative over the fil mopening. Mount it on a tripod, set it on B and hold open with a shutter release cable. This way you can check the focus to film plane at both close distance and at infinity. You may find the rangefinder might be off enough to be out of focus when wide open due to the shallow DOF.

 

[Vickko]

I shoot a Bessa II, and don't have issues with close focusing.

If your RF patch is dim and fuzzy, then you are already starting off with a significant disadvantage. That will need to be fixed before you get good results.

The other alternative is using the scale and guess-focusing, but that isn't so easy.

The lens, at f3.5, won't have much DOF.

...Vick

 

[Leigh Youdale]

How close is "close"? You don't indicate any distances and I know that my Bessa I had two supplementary lenses for close-ups and a table in the instruction manual that gave lens to object distances and focus settings for each.