how bright is the focus patch on the bessa?

[meandihagee]

i tried two bessas Rxx at my local camera store and it was pretty hard for me to see what happens inside the focus patch.

i mean, the viewfinder is big and i did see the frames and the patch very nice and bright, but it was really hard to get a clean and fast focus.

does the bessa perform badly in artificial lit interiors (like the camera store was) or is it just plain bad?

i also tried the medium format bessa III and the patch was significantly better.

can you compare it to other rangefinders' patch?

is bessa a good buy as an all-around camera?

what are the limitations of this camera? if the focusing isn't quick and easy i think i'm going stick with my slr.

thanks

 

[Pickett Wilson]

The Bessa's I've owned have been at least as easy to focus as my Leicas. Cameras in the Bessa R series are good photographic tools. They don't have the fondle factor that Leicas have, but otherwise are great.

 

[Krzys]

If your eye is perfectly centered on the patch then it is brilliant. But if it is in the wrong place then it is utterly terrible/not there at all!

 

[paulfish4570]

it is so bright, it'll put yer eye out! well, maybe not that bight. just center up your eye and go to town. my almost-59-year-old right eye is in love with the patch ...

 

[payasam]

My some-months-over-59 right eye (I think the other one's around the same age) found focussing an R2 significantly more difficult than focussing three M Leicas, a FED-2, a Zorki 1C, a Canon VT and a Leica IIIc. The view-finder, though, was perhaps the best I have ever encountered.

 

[Tom A]

The Bessa and Zeiss finders have very bright focussing patches - but you have to have the eye "centered" dead straight on the patch. Partly because the construction and partly because unless you do that - the coverage of the framelines is not correct. Once the eye is centered - the frame shows the coverage of the lens (usually inside the frameline for something far away and just outside the framelines for close focussing. The lines are actually very precise when you use this as a guideline.
However, I never worry too much about it. If I want 100% exact coverage - I dig out an old Nikon F for that. Rangefinders are approximate for coverage at the best of time anyway. I prefer a bit more on the negative as it is easy to crop - but damned difficult to add to the image.
The M's have the best defined patch of them all, but overall the Bessa/Zeiss finders are brighter to look through.

 

[meandihagee]

thanks guys for sharing.

M