Re: Voigtlander Bessa L 15mm

[Willem-Jan Markerink <w.j.markerink@xxxxx>]

On 24 Mar 99 at 22:30, Henning J. Wulff wrote:

> Steve Morton wrote:
> 
> >This camera with its 15mm lens looks like grest value for money if
> >the lens is nice and sharp. I know someone testing it at the mo.
> >Maybe interested parties should band together and buy a bunch of them
> >for an even better price (?)
> 
> I'm supposed to get my 15 Heliar within a week through a friend in
> Singapore. Another local friend got one through an aquaintance in Japan a
> month ago, and seems quite happy with it. He inconsiderately took off for
> Italy for a month without telling me more about the performance of the
> lens. The camera is a stripped down FM-10 (also sold under other names)
> without mirror box or prism, but the 15 will fit on my Leica M's with the
> bayonet adapter. Eveneness of illumination of the 15 is supposed to be
> quite good, but 'quite good' for a 15 is at best a relative term; also
> distortion is supposedly very low. How they compare with the two 15's I
> have or the other very wide stuff will be checked out shortly. I am
> optimistic.

A German mag (FotoMagazin) rated it close (as in 1/10th's different 
rating) to the Distagon 15mm/f3.5, and as the ultimate 
(price/quality?) alternative to a Hologon 16mm/f8.0. 
On price, it's comparing apples with oranges, at US$3k and 5k 
respectively....
It has become far less easy to justify those Zeiss exotics....;-))

PS Noblex: does anyone know if an early model (150, there were no 
135's at that time), with serial number 0000018 has any collectors value? 

I also discovered that while early models (at least up to 0000794) 
have 1/30s as the shortest time, later models (000027xx) have 1/15s 
as longest time....does anyone know exactly when this changeover took 
place, or at what serial date? (samples #'s are welcome!). I know current
150's have 1/15s default, but the one I found still had the early Tessar 
lens, while I though 1/15s & Noblar lens were introduced at the same 
time....


--                 
Bye,

Willem-Jan Markerink


      The desire to understand 
is sometimes far less intelligent than
     the inability to understand


<w.j.markerink@xxxxx>
[note: 'a-one' & 'en-el'!]