In the post WW2 years, Voigtländer expended a great deal of effort to provide the best viewfinders for their cameras, the optical viewfinder being almost universal for popular cameras and the limited number of SLRs available were still in their infancy at the time. The Kontur finder was one of their best products.
I re-discovered the 28mm focal length at 28 years of age, and it all seemed to fall in place. It was a strange sensation — analogous to a child opening a lock for the first time — but somehow familiar.
In the last few years there seems to have been loads of innovation around the democratisation of manufacturing, with 3D printing being – at least to me – almost the poster-boy for the movement. It consistently impresses me what people are able to churn out of these machines. Unfortunately for me, as an individual, I don’t find myself having have compatible skills – I can dream up ideas, but to bring them to life I need other people around me with the right skills in the relevant software etc. (Case in point, working with Steve Lloyd of Chroma Camera to help me bring pixl-latr to life).
I’m having all sorts of short-telephoto lens decision woes at the moment. I want to have a 90mm lens (or there about) within my selection of Leica mount lenses – primarily for use on my M9. The problem is, I increasingly find myself incapable of focusing properly, especially at wider apertures. I’ve recently found myself tempted into shooting autofocus cameras as an alternative, but find myself annoyed at the idea of having a whole other system just to solve a desire to once in a while take photos with a slightly longer lens.
The answer has for a long time seemed obvious. I need to try a good viewfinder magnifier.
I’ve had a couple of messages lately asking me about the Voigtlander 28/35 mini finder, specifically whether or not I think it’s worth the fairly large amount of cash they go for on ebay and the like. So to answer the question, I thought I would write a very brief review.
