michael_darnton1

Boy! It sure took a long time to get THERE, didn't it! :-) (I'm

agreeing with the Exacta.)

Sounds like some kind of copy machine lens, doesn't it? Were you

intending to make it part of your 8x10 portrait setup? With a FL of

325mm and that size, it sounds like it should be more like f/3.6

instead of f/36. Sure you didn't miss a decimal point?

Do a web search for "bokeh" and you'll find out more than you ever

wanted to know :-)

Is this what you're looking for?

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=328578412

You follow LUG long enough (I see you there, right?) and you'll

discover that one of the preoccupations of Leica folks is trying to

figure out how to put those on lenses that don't come with them, so

you're pretty much alone in not liking it :-) Maybe you should try it

for a while. The real advantage from my point of view is that it lets

you move the focus to approximately the right distance while the

camera's still on its way to your eye. My Voigtlander Ultron doesn't

have one--want to trade, even up?? :-)

You use the rangefinder in the camera to focus. The finders have a set

of lines that roughly indicate the parallax correction at close

distances. In that regard you guess a bit. It all works in the end,

though.

I've got both the 15 and the 35. The 15 is amazingly good for what it

costs and what it does. I don't find it defective in any sense, and

it's a lot of fun. The thing you have to be careful of is putting

important objects near the corners, where they can get real pulled

out of shape (that's a function of w/a lenses which aren't fisheyes.

It's perspective, not distortion.)

<p>

The 35 is not quite good enough for me wide open, but I got it

thinking it would be OK at f/2, and it is. Stopped down just a bit

further it's great. Tests seem to place it ahead of the less recent

Leica lenses, and comparing shots to an old 35 Summilux I used to

have, the Voigtlander is definitely superior wide open.

<p>

Both lenses are built extremely well, and the finders rival the Leica

finders and are cheaper. If I buy a Leica 28 I'll probably buy the

Voigtlander finder to go with it.