No Diopter on Leica II ?

[Timmyjoe]

Looking at a Leica II from 1935, and I'm curious how on these old Barnacks, how do your adjust the diopter on the rangefinder lens. On my iiic & iiif there is the lever below the rewind knob, and I've seen on other Barnacks there sometimes is a lever around the rangefinder lens on the back of the camera.

But with this Leica II, it doesn't have either of those adjusters. How would you adjust the rangefinder diopter on one of these?

Best,
-Tim

 

[Dralowid]

No Diopters on a black Leica II, and looking at your picture no strap lugs either!?!

Later chrome II has diopters

To some extent the lack of diopter is less important bearing in mind that the original II rangefinder does not have the magnification that a III has.

 

[B-9]

I do not believe these adjustments were meant to correct for eyesight... instead they were simply to focus the rangefinder image far or near.

Your II simply does not have this feature which was first implemented on the III.

 

[Erik van Straten]

Beautiful camera btw.!

Erik.

 

[farlymac]

I don't have a reference that gives the part numbers, but when I asked about the -2 diopter that came on my Zorki 1d viewfinder, I was told that Leica had those too.

Here is a listing of Leica diopter lenses. Though it does not list them for the III series, there is an advert at the bottom of the page from 1936-Leitz-London.

PF

 

[Timmyjoe]

Thanks for everyone's input.

I don't own the camera, not yet at least, just trying to figure if I would have a difficult time focusing it. The more I look at my iiic, I realize now, as mentioned above, the lever isn't really a diopter, it's really for focusing near and far.

So the magnification on the older Barnack camera rangefinders is not as strong as on the later models. Does that make them harder to focus? I think I'm getting close to my limit with the iiic, when compared to my M3 and my Nikon S2.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Livesteamer]

The only way to answer this is for you to look thru a Leica II. I actually prefer the Leica II for my eyes but I use a pair of IIIc's. The Leica II works well for me, I find the focus lever on the IIIc bothersome but my IIIc's are sturdy users and my II is a very clean original and I want to be careful with it. Joe