Hello Readers. Is the 0.85 Mag.finder really enough for 50mm. and up photography? Could Leica gone to 0.91 instead of the other way to 0.58,shelved the 1.25 magnifier and reintroduced a 35mm bright line finder?

-- Sheridan Zantis (albada60@hotmail.com), May 04, 2002

Answers

The 0.85 works well for me with the 50, 75 and 90 frame lines. I would not want a higher viewfinder magnification because I wear eyeglasses and the 0.85 50 mm frame lines are tight for me and as far out as I can conveniently view without eye searching a lot. I expect when I purchase a 135 mm in the future that I will also purchase the 1.25 magnifier at that time because that focal lengths' frame lines are bit small for composition.

-- Doug from Tumwater (dbaker9128@aol.com), May 04, 2002.

Is the .85 good enough? As far as I can tell, the .72 finder is good enough for 50mm and up. For that matter, the .58 is perfectly fine for 50mm, except for the Noctilux.

Could they have gone to .91? Yeah, I guess they could have done anything, but I'm glad they didn't: as a glasses wearer and a frequent 28mm user the .58 is my body of choice. If you want more magnification what's wrong with the 1.25 magnifier? If you're that concerned about the longer lenses you're probably better off with an SLR anyway.

I don't know what you mean about reintroducing the 35mm lines. As far as I know, they're not missing.

-- Mark Ciccarello (mark@ciccarello.com), May 04, 2002.

The M3 has a 0.91 magnification viewfinder...try one and enjoy.

-- C.L.Zeni (sal3060@yahoo.com), May 04, 2002.

I think what Sheridan meant was that the M6/7 could have been made with the M3's .91 magnification; and he wonders whether that might have made it more ideal, as far as focusing accuracy, for using 50, 75, 90, and 135mm lenses. The answer has to be yes, it would have, at least slightly. It wuld probably benefit Noctilux and 75mm Summilux users. It wouldn't please everybody, because of the eyeglass issue and the inconvenience with 35mm lenses. But as a dedicated camera specifically for normal and longer lenses, it would have a place. The question is, would enough people buy it to make it feasible to produce? I thought I just saw something about the .58 finder being dropped for lack of sales. I suppose a .91 M6/7 might suffer the same fate.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), May 04, 2002.

Thanks for the responses.Yes Bob,that was gist of my question.

-- Sheridan Zantis (albada60@hotmail.com), May 05, 2002.

As a matter of fact, you can get .9 magnification by using the .72 camera with 1.25x magnifier.

In response to someone's comment, I'd be very surprised if the .58 finder suffered from lack of sales. It seems the ideal "all round" camera for glasses wearers using lenses in the 28 - 50mm range, e.g. the 3E. My 3E stays on my .58 body permanently.

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), May 06, 2002.