What new Voigtlander RF or SLR product would you like to see?

A full frame CV body with no LCD to keep cost and size down. Basically a mechanical RF with all the settings accessible through switches or through your computer with presets.

Mechanical film advance with a 12 mp full frame sensor.
 
I really like the idea of panoramic Bessa. Xpan compares price-wise to 617 cameras.

But I would be perfectly fine with a folding 6x12 camera too - for the beginning with 65 mm lens (version with 115 mm would follow later 😉 ). Let's call it "Bessa the Fourth" 🙂
 
I've always been fascinated by the Zeiss Contarex range of lenses. Supposedly they're amongst the best lenses ever made. The Contarex bodies, however, are very unattractive to me - too big, too quirky and too expensive. I don't think that there are any adapters available for using the Contarex lenses on another body without loosing infinity focus. How about a Bessaflex for the Contarex lenses?
 
N.delaRua said:
A full frame CV body with no LCD to keep cost and size down. Basically a mechanical RF with all the settings accessible through switches or through your computer with presets.

Mechanical film advance with a 12 mp full frame sensor.
Click to expand...

Bulls eye. :angel:
12 MP full frame also has larger pixel size than 37 MP so we can go down beyond F11 and avoid mechanical unsharpness (I don't know the name for it now but it seems the diaphragm gives a dispersion effect, blurring the plane of focus). Then with 1200 Asa we get real TRI-X effects if we want.
12 MP - sharpness is better than pixel count, maybe.
albert
 
Off the wall, but how about a 55mm f2 Nokton in Mamiya M645 mount. I'd kill for a fast wide MF lens and it's never been done in a common system. A fast portrait lens (110-120 at f2) would be awesome as well.

There's a pretty large community of M645 shooters out there and it would also be usable on the modern 645AF and PhaseOne bodies as well.
 
I have a weird idea that I think *could* work for CV. The M9, besides being overpriced, has problems with wide-angle lenses due to the lens being too close to the sensor, as it's a Bayer array sensor.

If CV were to license Foveon technology for a full-frame 12-16 MP sensor, put it into a digital Bessa (RD-2?) camera, I'm curious if the more film-like (three layer) technology will better suit rangefinder lenses, especially wide-angle ones. I don't know too much about the actual technology, but I think that would be pretty neat. Sigma's newest camera has an *actual* 15MP sensor (as in 15MP for each layer)... or I think it does =].

Seeing as "film-style" digital cameras are niche, rangefinders more so, I don't think many people would be too upset by a lack of an LCD screen, raw-only capture in colour (or perhaps B/W button on the back?), etc. to save on costs. Obviously, it wouldn't need the fastest processor, advanced metering, wouldn't have AF, etc. Could also have a mechanical film advance.

Sell it for maybe $2,500 and watch Leica cringe.

Seeing as that is very, very far-fetched, some things I'd actually like to see.

A 21mm f/2.8 or f/2.0 lens, maybe $850 (more for the f/2.0)
A 50mm f/2.0 lens, M-mount, maybe $350-450. Would be compact, similar to the 40mm Nokton size. I'd like to see this the most.
A 90mm f/2.8 M-mount lens, maybe $800.

As for bodies, the Bessa series really has everything covered in terms of film. Perhaps add 28mm lines for the R2 series, and 35mm lines to the R3 series? Maybe a 1/4000s shutter speed option, and a 2s/4s/8s option as well.

Also, change the damn typeface on the camera. The Voigtländer logo is fine, but needs to be engraved and made a bit smaller. The model type needs to be engraved and the font needs to change. Either make it a classic-style font or a modern one, but not the plain font it is now. Also engrave the frame line selector numbers.

If CV goes digital, I think they have to go FF. There seem to be two directions with digital cameras today, the consumer-oriented crowd, more and more heading to mirrorless-style interchangeable-lens compact cameras, and the prosumer crowd, more and more heading to FF SLR bodies with higher-end lenses.

People buy the M8 because they can't afford an M9, and the M9 is overpriced. CV can really capitalise on this by releasing a sub-$3,000 camera. Especially if they catered to the various shooting styles, similar to the three current Bessa lines. The hardware is the same, the only difference is the rangefinder.
 
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A compact (pocketable when folded) reasonable height (4.5'+) folding tripod capable of holding a Leica M steady for night-time long-exposure city shooting.

A very small flash with a movable head for bounce, which is capable of a "fill" setting on semi-auto (where you specify aperture & ISO). Doesn't need to have GNC/TTL.
 
Yhbv24 said:
I have a weird idea that I think *could* work for CV. The M9, besides being overpriced, has problems with wide-angle lenses due to the lens being too close to the sensor, as it's a Bayer array sensor.

If CV were to license Foveon technology for a full-frame 12-16 MP sensor, put it into a digital Bessa (RD-2?) camera, I'm curious if the more film-like (three layer) technology will better suit rangefinder lenses, especially wide-angle ones. I don't know too much about the actual technology, but I think that would be pretty neat. Sigma's newest camera has an *actual* 15MP sensor (as in 15MP for each layer)... or I think it does =].
Click to expand...

Foveon sensors are in fact more sensitive to angle of incidence issues than bayer sensors are due to the use of deep stacked sensor wells.

The issue that is encountered with the M9 is due to the topology of CCD and CMOS sensors in general (ie sensor wells being sensitive to angle of incidence issues and microlenses being an imperfect fix), not Bayer sensors in specific. The symptoms (colour shifts) are due to the Bayer design (when light passes through the microlens some makes it to adjacent wells, causing colour shifts), a Foveon sensor would merely end up suffering from extreme vignetting and blue-shift instead of the generally greenish shift bayer sensors get.
 
I would second the 35/1.4 re-designed to have softer OOF highlights and a little better flare control. The 35/1.2 was a masterpiece, but too heavy as a "walk around lens". The 35/1.4 is supremely small and light for the speed, but falls short in terms of ultimate optical quality IMHO. The 35/2.5 looks to give great results and is very small, but is perhaps a little too slow for meaningful control of depth of field on a moderate wide angle lens.
So there we have it, CV offer us three 35mm lenses that each have two of the following three properties, but none with all three:
- small
- fast
- nice out of focus rendering

Perhaps the compromise many of us are waiting for is a smaller redesigned CV 35/1.7???
If they get it right, they won't need to manufacture any other 35mm for a while!

I still want the 135mm too... this would be such an easy lens to design and they would sell quite a few I think.
 
Here's an idea: a telephoto-design 50mm f/2. That should make it a flat/pancake type RF normal lens, the only of its kind.
 
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