Wide Angle Finder M

As someone who came straight into photography to the digital medium with the Olympus 4/3rds E1 DSLR camera system three years ago, I am really interested in the M8 (in an 'as well as' capacity and not 'instead of') and am reading with interest the very helpful threads posted here (excluding the trolls of course).

I am very excited about rangefinder photography but am in the process of educating myself about it.

Can anyone throw some light on the Wide Angle Finder M posted here http://www.dpreview.com/news/0609/06091411leicalensesfinder.asp#finder on the site and how and why one would use this.

Sorry, I know that this will be very basic to those of you already using the Leica system but I would be very greateful to any replies.

Thanks in advance.

The device fits into the flash shoe. Has two knobs, one for the focal length lens you are using and the other to adjust for parallax error to correct for the alignment of the viewfinder in relation to the lens. Not so important at a distance but more so doing close-ups.

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

If I use the tri focal lenses ie the 28,35,50, do I have to use the m finder or can I just use the bright frame in the view finder?

BTW, would the full frame in a standard viewfinder in a M8 represent the 21mm view?

I hope someone can answer your question.

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

saylav said:

If I use the tri focal lenses ie the 28,35,50, do I have to use the
m finder or can I just use the bright frame in the view finder?
BTW, would the full frame in a standard viewfinder in a M8
represent the 21mm view?

Click to expand...

the m8 has frame ines for those focal lenses, so you won't need an external view finder.

the widest view on the m8 viewfinder is 24mm (eq. to 32mm). It maybe possibel to use 21mm (eq. to 28mm) lenses but we'll need to wait for the camera to hit the market to know for sure.

--
Regards,

António

no conversion needed for crop

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

On the original question: The viewfinder built into the M8, or any Leica M camera, only covers the fields of view of some of the lenses. Roughly speaking, from the traditional view of a 28mm lens on film, and narrower.

Thus any lens wider than a 28 requires its own viewfinder mounted in the hot shoe, for framing. Focusing is still done via the internal view/rangefinder.

Owing to the crop factor, the M8 now frames internally for any focal length from 90mm down to 24mm. But for 15-16-18-21 lenses, some kind of accesory viewfinder is still needed - thus the "universal finder".

The original 28-35-50 Tri-Elmar does NOT need an accesory finder with the M8 - the 28-35-50 framelines are already included in the built-in finder.

The new Superwide 16-18-21 Tri-Elmar requires the universal finder (or some other external framing device) for all its focal lengths, on film or on the M8.

The back dial on the new finder is for "parallax correction" - to tilt the finder down slightly at close focusing distances. This corrects for the fact that the lens is "seeing" the world from a point 2 inches below the finder's viewpoint.

... especially Greg and piperphoto for your very helpful replies. Much appreciated. This is a learning curve for me but an enjoyable one!

Greg, fascinated following this thread. I have a Tri-Elmar 35-28-50 which obviously puts up the corresponding 28/35/50 bright lines in the viewfinder of my M6. Am I being daft, but if I use the same lens on the M8 will I get bright lines that correspond to the lens's field of view, or to the cropped output of the sensor? I probably need to re-read Phil's preview a bit more carefully... Thanks anyway.

if the bright lines are contained with in the M8, why would they not correspond to the R8 sensor. This would be a rather simple thing for Leica to do and I can not believe that it is not this way. The lines are in the viewfinder of the camera and not the lens.

I would be very dissapointed if not. As far as this viewer M, unless it has an adjustment for emulsion Leicas vs M8, the will have to be some mental adjustment for one of the users.

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

Will this M finder's bright lines be for the cropped M8 view or the FF view of the Leica emulsion cameras.

The bright lines in the view finder of the M8, would take into consideration the 1.33x crop but I can't see the M Finder soing the same. If so I would have to allow for the difference when using on my M7. UNLESS there is another setting that we do not know about.

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

Simon Graham said:

Greg, fascinated following this thread. I have a Tri-Elmar 35-28-50
which obviously puts up the corresponding 28/35/50 bright lines in
the viewfinder of my M6. Am I being daft, but if I use the same
lens on the M8 will I get bright lines that correspond to the
lens's field of view, or to the cropped output of the sensor?

Click to expand...

The M8 will always show the correct "cropped" framelines for the lens used.

For example every Leica 28mm lens will show up framelines which correspond to the 1.33 cropping factor (= 37mm), hence the Tri-Elmar 35-28-50 will show up respectively 47-37-67 mm framelines.
In the end there are a total of 6 framelines which show up in pairs:
24 - 35 mm (lens focal lenght) which have the "correct" fov of 32 - 47 mm
50 - 75 mm (lens focal lenght) which have the "correct" fov of 67 - 100 mm
28 - 90 mm (lens focal lenght) which have the "correct" fov of 37 - 120 mm

Btw I'd have preferred a single frameline, like in the R-D1, but this is in line with Leica tradition.

Greg Gebhardt said:

Will this M finder's bright lines be for the cropped M8 view or the
FF view of the Leica emulsion cameras.

The bright lines in the view finder of the M8, would take into
consideration the 1.33x crop but I can't see the M Finder soing the
same. If so I would have to allow for the difference when using on
my M7. UNLESS there is another setting that we do not know about.

Click to expand...

Greg,

the M finder is designed to be used both on the M8 and on film M's.
As you can see from the image below, there are two marks on the selector wheel.

If you use the finder on film you can set it to any any of the marked focal lenghts (16, 18, 21, 24 or 28 because you might potentially work with any of these focal lenghts).

On the M8, you can only use the 21, 24 and 28 settings, as these are the widest focal lenghts available in Leica line. The second mark on the selector wheel shows the correspondence between focal lenght used and effective fov in the M8.

Obviously if you put a 12 CV on the M8 you could use the 16mm setting on the finder M to frame...



Ciao

Marco said:

On the M8, you can only use the 21, 24 and 28 settings, as these
are the widest focal lenghts available in Leica line.

Click to expand...

I mean widest "effective" focal lenghts using the Tri-Elmar 16-18-21.

looks like I need to ad it to my list at my dealer

Marco said:

Marco said:

On the M8, you can only use the 21, 24 and 28 settings, as these
are the widest focal lenghts available in Leica line.

Click to expand...

I mean widest "effective" focal lenghts using the Tri-Elmar 16-18-21.

Click to expand...

--
Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida
D Two Xs
Leica M7

Thanks. I guess anything other than this just wouldn't make sense.

Marco, many thanks for your additional input here.

António said:

saylav said:

If I use the tri focal lenses ie the 28,35,50, do I have to use the
m finder or can I just use the bright frame in the view finder?
BTW, would the full frame in a standard viewfinder in a M8
represent the 21mm view?

Click to expand...

the m8 has frame ines for those focal lenses, so you won't need an
external view finder.

the widest view on the m8 viewfinder is 24mm (eq. to 32mm). It
maybe possibel to use 21mm (eq. to 28mm) lenses but we'll need to
wait for the camera to hit the market to know for sure.

--
Regards,

António

Click to expand...

Thanks.
A digital range finder has been on my wih list.