Does anyone have details of the new Voigtlander Bessa-L camera, as mentioned in Amateur Photographer 10 April? In particular, the quality of the 15mm and 25mm lenses.

And is it a pure coincidence that it looks somewhat like the Yasuhara camera?

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), April 07, 1999

Answers

I would also be very interested in any responses about the Voigtlander, as I was recently given a Voigtlander Vitomatic from the late 50's. It has a 50mm lens and uses a seperate range finder (included)complete with original guarantee and 2 yellow filters for B&W. I've checked thru the threads here and MF Digest but with little result. Sorry to intrude on your post Alan, Voigtlander info seems very difficult to come by.

-- Jeff Thomsen (jesper@mozart.inet.co.th), April 08, 1999.

Check out Stephen Gandy's page at http://www.cameraquest.com/voigtbl.htm !

-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@pgh.nauticom.net), April 08, 1999.

The Voigtlander Bessa-L is Cosina made - actually a Nikon FM10, Olympus OM2000, etc., without the mirror box. The body is die cast metal with TTL metering though without rangefinder focus. Focusing is done by hyperfocal which is fine given the DOF of 15mm and 25mm lenses. Several friends of mine already has the 15mm aspherical and mine is on order. The optics approaches Leica quality though the barrel is more like aluminum Fedka quality. It has a Leica screw mount and I will skip the body and use it on my M6 with an appropriate adapter.

The Yasuhara is a completely different animal. I can't wait for this beast to become available!

-- ray tai (razerx@netvigator.com), April 08, 1999.

Stephen Gandy just updated his Voigtlander Bessa-L (and lenses) page at http://www.cameraquest.com/voigtbl.htm .

-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@pgh.nauticom.net), April 22, 1999.

the bessa-l with a 15mm lens can be seen as a 35mm version of the hasselblad swc camera.

i would only get it for that purpose. where else can you get an ultra wide 15mm lens for the price of the bessa-l setup. the 16mm zeiss hologon for the contax g series is over $1500 somewhere.

-- nhat nguyen (nhat@lowrider.com), June 20, 2000.