Further ramblings of a novice!
For weeks now every time I walked into Russell's shop a
particular camera confronted me. Russell likes it so it's front and centre! I
myself wasn't overly fond of it and hoped someone would buy it ASAP. No such
luck – Week 3 the Voigtlander Vitessa. Another rangefinder but at least this
one had the overlapping image to pinpoint focus...nope! This was, along with
what also transpired, the automatic parallax correction (I am certain they are
the same problem, and will be fixed!) Anyway where was I? Yes, the first thing
to take me by surprise was when I depressed the shutter to open the double barn
doors, was the energetic way it did it. It was like Arkwrights till! TBF, once
you have done it you get used to softening it with your fingers as directed in
the manual but it is a bit aggressive. The manual will feature as we go on!!!
I read said manual and had it sorted, loaded and advanced using
the innovative plunger (cool feature) to 2? Hmm, when weather permitted I got
through a roll of Agfa Vista pronto and went for the rewind, press button –
yes- rewind ye....twang! I tore film from cassette! Once home I re-read
instructions and slapped myself promising to read instructions properly in
future! I extracted film successfully in darkroom, phew!
Once processed it was clear that its' depth of field was
relative to its' settings and was capable of quite narrow. My distance
judgement wasn't great and on closer shots it was clear I was out a tad and
everything was about 20% to the right. The lost 2 images did appear, both of my
forehead, both out of focus and a bit to the right.
I decided to only commit to another Vista roll given my start,
It loaded great, ran well and unloaded perfectly. All my fault then. I ran the
second roll using the EV system and as with the manual settings of first roll
exposers etc. were all good. Once I had gotten used to the beastie (read the
instructions) it was a fairly straight forward camera to use with just a
different load and unload. Build quality was Germanesque and with it's black
and silver classic look with many trick features it is a nice looking camera,
but I just didn't click with it! Nothing wrong with it, but it didn't float my
boat.
My apologies for the rather dull pics, weather left little shoot
time and I struggled with focus issues.
