The Venerable Visoflex: Transforming rangefinder Leicas into SLRs
Leica’s 50-year love affair with the reflex housing, and its vicissitudes
By Jason Schneider
Even the most ardent fans of analog rangefinder Leicas (a cohort that proudly includes yours truly) would have to concede that they’re not the best choice when it comes to shooting with telephoto lenses longer than about 135mm or for capturing closeups in the near-macro range. To accommodate the needs of scientific and technical users, Leitz offered a variety of accessories, including the “MIKAS”microscope adapter with shutter (1933-1961), the OSBLO telescope adapter, and a variety of add-on closeup devices for Leica lenses, such as the “NOOKY” (1935-1955) that allowed you to rangefinder focus the 50mm f/3.5 Elmar down to about 18 inches, albeit without parallax compensation.
PLOOT Reflex Housing on III-series Leica with 135mm f/4.5 Hektor mounted on New Universal Focusing Bellows. Note double cable release, focusing magnifier.
In 1935, Leitz finally bit the bullet and brought forth its first Mirror Reflex Housing, unceremoniously designated “PLOOT” in its ever amusing 5-letter code system. Developed forthe newly released 20cm f/4.5 Telyt,in one fell swoop it overcame the limitations of accurate parallax compensation with a conventional optical or frame viewfinder, and also the fact that the effective base length (EBL) of III-series Leica rangefinders was too short to focus a 20cm lens with sufficient accuracy. Once on the market the PLOOT, which effectively converted the Leica into a heavy, clunky, but functional SLR, soon found much wider application for closeup, nature, and scientific work, and was subsequently developed into the Visoflex system, culminating in the M-mount Visoflex III, which is still ponderous but functionally almost elegant compared to earlier iterations.
Unfortunately, Leica was out PLOOTED a year later by the Kine Exakta of 1936, the world’s first successful 35mm SLR. Basic but still a fine first effort, the awkward Exakta required manually stopping down the lenses and pushing the focusing magnifier of its fixed waist level finder directly onto its plain ground glass screen, was still vastly superior for the photographer than being PLOOTED. In deference to Leitz, none of its mirror reflex housings, even the Visoflex III, was really designed to be an alternative to an SLR, but to provide Leica shooters with a workable add-on method of through-the lens viewing and focusing while remaining within the Leica system.
The PLOOT, which was listed in the catalog from 1935-1951, consisted of a cube-shaped housing with an optical thickness of 62.5mm that screwed directly onto the Leica body, thereby placing a manually cocked reflex mirror in the light path. The lens then screwed into the standard 39mm Leica screw mount on the front of the unit, and the (laterally reversed, right-side up) image on the ground glass screen was viewed through a top-mounted vertical optical finder with an adjustable 5x magnifier. For critical focusing a built-in 30x magnifier could be swing in place with a projecting lever, but the 5x magnifier had to be removed first. The image had to be viewed with the optical finder tube in the vertical position, but you could shoot verticals by loosening the side-mounted locking lever and turning the camera 90 degrees, which automatically rotated the finder field mask to show the correct image area. Like its immediate successors, the PLOOT employed a dual cable release to swing the mirror up out of the light path and then fire the shutter. The PLOOT was certainly an inconvenient contraption and clearly wasn’t designed for handheld use, but it was beautifully made and good enough to endure for 16 years with only minor modifications until it was finally superseded by the Visoflex I.
The Visoflex I debuted in 1951 and was listed in the catalog until 1962.Essentially a mildly upgraded PLOOT with esthetically rounded, cylindrical contours and somewhat improved handling, its optical depth and basic operation were unchanged. However, two new viewing magnifiers were available in addition to the existing 5x PAMOO—the vertical 5x LFVOO, and the 4x PEGOO with its eyepiece set at a 45-degree angle to provide a laterally correct viewing image. Over the course of the Visoflex I’s long production run improvements were added, including a provision for more precisely aligning the unit with the camera body, and another allowing it to be operated with a special single release coupler instead of a dual cable release. In 1955 an M-mount version of the Visoflex I was introduced that also had its accessory shoe mounted higher, enabling a wider range of accessories to be used.
Visoflex I on early Leica IIIf with 135mm f/4.5 Hektor lens head, ZOOAN focusing mount, and vertical magnifier.
The Visoflex I firmly established Leica’s Frankenstein style of endless confusing attachments and doodads for their customer’s buying pleasure, all the time pulling the unsuspecting photog farther down the dark bottomless well of endless expensive photo accessories. Most of Leica’s 90mm and 135mm rangefinder lenses had detachable lens heads. This allowed their use on the Visoflex by adding the proper focusing helical and usually an extra adapter or two to make it all work right. Getting the picture? The photog wanted to use their favorite Leica 90 or 135 lens on their Visoflex, while Leica made it possible by selling special focusing helicals and lens adapters. The Visoflex system is suspected of being especially popular with those who played with Erector Sets as kids or who took up plumbing as a hobby.
The Visoflex II first shown at Photokina in 1958 and produced from 1959-1963,incorporated a lighter, more compact reflex housing with its optical thickness reduced to 40 mm to accommodate lenses down to 65mm ( such as the acclaimed 65mm f/3.5mm Elmar) and still allow focusing to infinity. It was also the first Visoflex truly suitable for handheld shooting since its side-mounted release lever simultaneously flipped the mirror up and fired the shutter via an overhanging arm with an adjustment screw that pressed directly on the shutter release. Themirror still had to be manually reset to viewing position after each exposure, and the entire assembly had to be turned 90 degrees to shoot verticals. The Visoflex II was available in screw mount and M-bayonet configurations and was compatible with 90-degree, 4x right-way-round, or simple 5x magnifiers, the last giving a laterally reversed image. Starting with the Visoflex II, Leitz stopped engraving serial numbers on Visoflex units.
1959 saw the introduction of the Nikon F and presaged Leica’s retreat as a camera sales leader. The damned SLRs were winning, and worse, those damned SLRs were not made in Germany.
There was also a Visoiflex IIa listed in the E. Leitz New York catalog of 1962, that offered a choice of automatic mirror reset or mirror locked up when finger pressure on the release was relaxed. To achieve this, the mirror reset lever on the Visoflex II was replaced with a knurled knob engraved with black and red dots to indicate the selected mirror setting. You could have your Visoflex II converted to a IIa, and there were Micro VisoflexII and Endo Visoflex versionsoffered for photo-microscopy and endoscopy applications respectively, both with interchangeable viewing screens.
The Visoflex III of c.1963-1984 was the final M-mount iteration of the Visoflex. Its chief selling point was that its thumb operated mounting leverallowed it to be mounted on or detached from the camera body as easily and quickly as any Leica lenswithout having to remove top-mounted accessories such as viewfinders beforehand. Similar in appearance to the Visoflex II, it provided a choice of 3 different mirror actions, all controlled by setting a knurled knob on the side of the housing. In “yellow dot” position, the mirror flips upward and then returns very quickly, approximating the action of an SLR with a built-in instant-return mirror. In “black dot” position the mirror goes through the same sequence, but much more slowly and gently, to minimize impact vibration when shooting long exposures. An in “red dot” position the mirror remains in the up position, facilitating vibration free closeups, etc. A special top-mounted magnifier is required for 90-degree viewing but other Visoflex II finders fit and function perfectly.
All of that said, the Visoflex III is undoubtedly the best reflex housing system ever constructed for 35mm rangefinder cameras. The competing reflex housing from Zeiss, Nikon and Canon were not even in the same ocean, forget the ballpark. The Visoflex III wins the best Frankenstein Builder award for outrageous design in the face of questionable logic. It was and is the BEST of its type ever, which can make for a lot of fun for those who find using and collecting this stuff amusing.
Note: The late, ever ingenious Norman Goldberg, longtime tech guru at Popular Photography, devised the “Motor-M Coupled Viso,” a Motor-M compatible version of the Visoflex III where the upward movement of the shutter-actuating arm trips an attached Motor-M to advance the film, and a “Pellicle Viso,” a Visoflex III with a fixed pellicle mirror that eliminated both mirror vibration and image black-out as the shutter fires. Neither one was ever listed in an official Leica catalog.
Why woud anyone use a Visoflex today?
The most enduring legacy of the Visoflex system is clearly the extensive range of outstanding lenses Leitz made specifically for it –from the coveted 65mm f/3.5 Elmar Macro to the humongous 800mm f/6.3 Telyt—and the detachable rangefinder lens heads ranging from the 90mm to 135mm, all of which are eminently usable on the PLOOT and Visoflex. You can also throw in a passel of unique Visoflex accessories from bellows focusing systems and lens hoods, to one-of-a kind finder attachments and a plethora of adapters, all part of the elaborate Visoflex “plumbing” that’s still readilyavailable on the used market
Lens Chart on back of late Visoflex III brochure of 1974 shows extensive range of compatible lenses including the then new 400mm and 560mm f/6.8 Telyts.
Despite its charms as an exquisitely crafted, artfully articulated opto-mechanical contraption that can transform a rangefinder Leica into a large, heavy, slow operating somewhat primitive SLR,it really doesn’t make much sense to mount a Visoflex on a modern digital camera such as full-frame Mirrorlessor DSLR, because you don’t have to. Indeed, any of the glorious Leitz lenses alluded to above can be mounted directly on a many populardigital cameras using the robust precision Visoflex lens adapters available from CameraQuest, These adapted lenses not only retain their original functionality, but add capabilities such as focus confirmation and aperture priority auto exposure that weren’t even dreamt of when these lenses were created.
The Visoflex to Leica connection: the joys of ground glass focusing
Using a Visoflex I or a PLOOT on a screw-mount analog Leica is certainly inconvenient and slow, and it’s definitely an acquired taste, but overcoming all the “inertia” built into the system can be rewarding and fun. And for traditionalists there’s something uniquely fulfilling about focusing a real image on a ground glass screen as opposed to an EVF, which provides live feed taken off the image sensor. If you’re so inclined it’s definitely worth a try, and it can yield great results with relatively static subjects like portraits or landscapes, but remember, it was designed as a tripod-mounted rig and it’s not really hand-holdable.
The Visoflex II and IIa, available in screw- and M-mount versions are noticeably smaller and lighter than the PLOOT or VisoflexI, its controls enable handheld shooting and it’s compatible with a wider range of dedicated Visoflex lenses down to 65mm with infinity focus. The Vidofex II still requires mirror cocking, so the IIa which has a basic auto-return mirror is probably a better choice if you want to shoot handheld with a screw- or M-mount analog Leica.
Visoflex III with eye level finder on Leica M2 (?) with 90mm f/2.8 Elmarit lens head in focusing mount. Image on right, handheld with with 200mm f/4 Telyt.
The Visoflex III provides 3 distinct mirror action settings and mounts on the camera as quickly and almost as easily as a lens. It’sdefinitely the best choice for analog M-mount Leica users, and some have used it with satisfaction on the digital Leica M8, M9, and M10, but it’snot compatible with screw-mount models. The Visoflex III would be brilliant in combination with a rangefinder-less Leica such as the M1, or a rangefinder-less, viewfinder-less model such as the Leica MD, MDa or MD-2. Indeed, these might just be the “Leicaflexes” of my dreams if they were just a little less ponderous and clunky-
The Visoflex film system still fun, and still the best way to use SLR focusing with your film Leica M’s. Alas, the sneaky Leica marketing people salvaged the grand Visoflex name to shamefully describe a new lineup of digital EVF finders for Leica M240 and later cameras. I can hardly wait to see what they make out of the PLOOT.
Instead of turning your elegant Leica M or screw mount rangefinder camera into an antique SLR via the Leica Visoflex Reflex Housing System, why not use those magnificent Visoflex lenses on your modern multi-featured digital camera? That is the subject of my follow-up piece, “The Easy Way to Use Visoflex Lenses On Digital Cameras.” As we used to say back in radio days, stay tuned.
Leica’s 50-year love affair with the reflex housing, and its vicissitudes
By Jason Schneider
Even the most ardent fans of analog rangefinder Leicas (a cohort that proudly includes yours truly) would have to concede that they’re not the best choice when it comes to shooting with telephoto lenses longer than about 135mm or for capturing closeups in the near-macro range. To accommodate the needs of scientific and technical users, Leitz offered a variety of accessories, including the “MIKAS”microscope adapter with shutter (1933-1961), the OSBLO telescope adapter, and a variety of add-on closeup devices for Leica lenses, such as the “NOOKY” (1935-1955) that allowed you to rangefinder focus the 50mm f/3.5 Elmar down to about 18 inches, albeit without parallax compensation.
PLOOT Reflex Housing on III-series Leica with 135mm f/4.5 Hektor mounted on New Universal Focusing Bellows. Note double cable release, focusing magnifier.
In 1935, Leitz finally bit the bullet and brought forth its first Mirror Reflex Housing, unceremoniously designated “PLOOT” in its ever amusing 5-letter code system. Developed forthe newly released 20cm f/4.5 Telyt,in one fell swoop it overcame the limitations of accurate parallax compensation with a conventional optical or frame viewfinder, and also the fact that the effective base length (EBL) of III-series Leica rangefinders was too short to focus a 20cm lens with sufficient accuracy. Once on the market the PLOOT, which effectively converted the Leica into a heavy, clunky, but functional SLR, soon found much wider application for closeup, nature, and scientific work, and was subsequently developed into the Visoflex system, culminating in the M-mount Visoflex III, which is still ponderous but functionally almost elegant compared to earlier iterations.
Unfortunately, Leica was out PLOOTED a year later by the Kine Exakta of 1936, the world’s first successful 35mm SLR. Basic but still a fine first effort, the awkward Exakta required manually stopping down the lenses and pushing the focusing magnifier of its fixed waist level finder directly onto its plain ground glass screen, was still vastly superior for the photographer than being PLOOTED. In deference to Leitz, none of its mirror reflex housings, even the Visoflex III, was really designed to be an alternative to an SLR, but to provide Leica shooters with a workable add-on method of through-the lens viewing and focusing while remaining within the Leica system.
The PLOOT, which was listed in the catalog from 1935-1951, consisted of a cube-shaped housing with an optical thickness of 62.5mm that screwed directly onto the Leica body, thereby placing a manually cocked reflex mirror in the light path. The lens then screwed into the standard 39mm Leica screw mount on the front of the unit, and the (laterally reversed, right-side up) image on the ground glass screen was viewed through a top-mounted vertical optical finder with an adjustable 5x magnifier. For critical focusing a built-in 30x magnifier could be swing in place with a projecting lever, but the 5x magnifier had to be removed first. The image had to be viewed with the optical finder tube in the vertical position, but you could shoot verticals by loosening the side-mounted locking lever and turning the camera 90 degrees, which automatically rotated the finder field mask to show the correct image area. Like its immediate successors, the PLOOT employed a dual cable release to swing the mirror up out of the light path and then fire the shutter. The PLOOT was certainly an inconvenient contraption and clearly wasn’t designed for handheld use, but it was beautifully made and good enough to endure for 16 years with only minor modifications until it was finally superseded by the Visoflex I.
The Visoflex I debuted in 1951 and was listed in the catalog until 1962.Essentially a mildly upgraded PLOOT with esthetically rounded, cylindrical contours and somewhat improved handling, its optical depth and basic operation were unchanged. However, two new viewing magnifiers were available in addition to the existing 5x PAMOO—the vertical 5x LFVOO, and the 4x PEGOO with its eyepiece set at a 45-degree angle to provide a laterally correct viewing image. Over the course of the Visoflex I’s long production run improvements were added, including a provision for more precisely aligning the unit with the camera body, and another allowing it to be operated with a special single release coupler instead of a dual cable release. In 1955 an M-mount version of the Visoflex I was introduced that also had its accessory shoe mounted higher, enabling a wider range of accessories to be used.
Visoflex I on early Leica IIIf with 135mm f/4.5 Hektor lens head, ZOOAN focusing mount, and vertical magnifier.
The Visoflex I firmly established Leica’s Frankenstein style of endless confusing attachments and doodads for their customer’s buying pleasure, all the time pulling the unsuspecting photog farther down the dark bottomless well of endless expensive photo accessories. Most of Leica’s 90mm and 135mm rangefinder lenses had detachable lens heads. This allowed their use on the Visoflex by adding the proper focusing helical and usually an extra adapter or two to make it all work right. Getting the picture? The photog wanted to use their favorite Leica 90 or 135 lens on their Visoflex, while Leica made it possible by selling special focusing helicals and lens adapters. The Visoflex system is suspected of being especially popular with those who played with Erector Sets as kids or who took up plumbing as a hobby.
The Visoflex II first shown at Photokina in 1958 and produced from 1959-1963,incorporated a lighter, more compact reflex housing with its optical thickness reduced to 40 mm to accommodate lenses down to 65mm ( such as the acclaimed 65mm f/3.5mm Elmar) and still allow focusing to infinity. It was also the first Visoflex truly suitable for handheld shooting since its side-mounted release lever simultaneously flipped the mirror up and fired the shutter via an overhanging arm with an adjustment screw that pressed directly on the shutter release. Themirror still had to be manually reset to viewing position after each exposure, and the entire assembly had to be turned 90 degrees to shoot verticals. The Visoflex II was available in screw mount and M-bayonet configurations and was compatible with 90-degree, 4x right-way-round, or simple 5x magnifiers, the last giving a laterally reversed image. Starting with the Visoflex II, Leitz stopped engraving serial numbers on Visoflex units.
1959 saw the introduction of the Nikon F and presaged Leica’s retreat as a camera sales leader. The damned SLRs were winning, and worse, those damned SLRs were not made in Germany.
There was also a Visoiflex IIa listed in the E. Leitz New York catalog of 1962, that offered a choice of automatic mirror reset or mirror locked up when finger pressure on the release was relaxed. To achieve this, the mirror reset lever on the Visoflex II was replaced with a knurled knob engraved with black and red dots to indicate the selected mirror setting. You could have your Visoflex II converted to a IIa, and there were Micro VisoflexII and Endo Visoflex versionsoffered for photo-microscopy and endoscopy applications respectively, both with interchangeable viewing screens.
The Visoflex III of c.1963-1984 was the final M-mount iteration of the Visoflex. Its chief selling point was that its thumb operated mounting leverallowed it to be mounted on or detached from the camera body as easily and quickly as any Leica lenswithout having to remove top-mounted accessories such as viewfinders beforehand. Similar in appearance to the Visoflex II, it provided a choice of 3 different mirror actions, all controlled by setting a knurled knob on the side of the housing. In “yellow dot” position, the mirror flips upward and then returns very quickly, approximating the action of an SLR with a built-in instant-return mirror. In “black dot” position the mirror goes through the same sequence, but much more slowly and gently, to minimize impact vibration when shooting long exposures. An in “red dot” position the mirror remains in the up position, facilitating vibration free closeups, etc. A special top-mounted magnifier is required for 90-degree viewing but other Visoflex II finders fit and function perfectly.
All of that said, the Visoflex III is undoubtedly the best reflex housing system ever constructed for 35mm rangefinder cameras. The competing reflex housing from Zeiss, Nikon and Canon were not even in the same ocean, forget the ballpark. The Visoflex III wins the best Frankenstein Builder award for outrageous design in the face of questionable logic. It was and is the BEST of its type ever, which can make for a lot of fun for those who find using and collecting this stuff amusing.
Note: The late, ever ingenious Norman Goldberg, longtime tech guru at Popular Photography, devised the “Motor-M Coupled Viso,” a Motor-M compatible version of the Visoflex III where the upward movement of the shutter-actuating arm trips an attached Motor-M to advance the film, and a “Pellicle Viso,” a Visoflex III with a fixed pellicle mirror that eliminated both mirror vibration and image black-out as the shutter fires. Neither one was ever listed in an official Leica catalog.
Why woud anyone use a Visoflex today?
The most enduring legacy of the Visoflex system is clearly the extensive range of outstanding lenses Leitz made specifically for it –from the coveted 65mm f/3.5 Elmar Macro to the humongous 800mm f/6.3 Telyt—and the detachable rangefinder lens heads ranging from the 90mm to 135mm, all of which are eminently usable on the PLOOT and Visoflex. You can also throw in a passel of unique Visoflex accessories from bellows focusing systems and lens hoods, to one-of-a kind finder attachments and a plethora of adapters, all part of the elaborate Visoflex “plumbing” that’s still readilyavailable on the used market
Lens Chart on back of late Visoflex III brochure of 1974 shows extensive range of compatible lenses including the then new 400mm and 560mm f/6.8 Telyts.
Despite its charms as an exquisitely crafted, artfully articulated opto-mechanical contraption that can transform a rangefinder Leica into a large, heavy, slow operating somewhat primitive SLR,it really doesn’t make much sense to mount a Visoflex on a modern digital camera such as full-frame Mirrorlessor DSLR, because you don’t have to. Indeed, any of the glorious Leitz lenses alluded to above can be mounted directly on a many populardigital cameras using the robust precision Visoflex lens adapters available from CameraQuest, These adapted lenses not only retain their original functionality, but add capabilities such as focus confirmation and aperture priority auto exposure that weren’t even dreamt of when these lenses were created.
The Visoflex to Leica connection: the joys of ground glass focusing
Using a Visoflex I or a PLOOT on a screw-mount analog Leica is certainly inconvenient and slow, and it’s definitely an acquired taste, but overcoming all the “inertia” built into the system can be rewarding and fun. And for traditionalists there’s something uniquely fulfilling about focusing a real image on a ground glass screen as opposed to an EVF, which provides live feed taken off the image sensor. If you’re so inclined it’s definitely worth a try, and it can yield great results with relatively static subjects like portraits or landscapes, but remember, it was designed as a tripod-mounted rig and it’s not really hand-holdable.
The Visoflex II and IIa, available in screw- and M-mount versions are noticeably smaller and lighter than the PLOOT or VisoflexI, its controls enable handheld shooting and it’s compatible with a wider range of dedicated Visoflex lenses down to 65mm with infinity focus. The Vidofex II still requires mirror cocking, so the IIa which has a basic auto-return mirror is probably a better choice if you want to shoot handheld with a screw- or M-mount analog Leica.
Visoflex III with eye level finder on Leica M2 (?) with 90mm f/2.8 Elmarit lens head in focusing mount. Image on right, handheld with with 200mm f/4 Telyt.
The Visoflex III provides 3 distinct mirror action settings and mounts on the camera as quickly and almost as easily as a lens. It’sdefinitely the best choice for analog M-mount Leica users, and some have used it with satisfaction on the digital Leica M8, M9, and M10, but it’snot compatible with screw-mount models. The Visoflex III would be brilliant in combination with a rangefinder-less Leica such as the M1, or a rangefinder-less, viewfinder-less model such as the Leica MD, MDa or MD-2. Indeed, these might just be the “Leicaflexes” of my dreams if they were just a little less ponderous and clunky-
The Visoflex film system still fun, and still the best way to use SLR focusing with your film Leica M’s. Alas, the sneaky Leica marketing people salvaged the grand Visoflex name to shamefully describe a new lineup of digital EVF finders for Leica M240 and later cameras. I can hardly wait to see what they make out of the PLOOT.
Instead of turning your elegant Leica M or screw mount rangefinder camera into an antique SLR via the Leica Visoflex Reflex Housing System, why not use those magnificent Visoflex lenses on your modern multi-featured digital camera? That is the subject of my follow-up piece, “The Easy Way to Use Visoflex Lenses On Digital Cameras.” As we used to say back in radio days, stay tuned.
