The Voigtlander Vito series cameras are simple ones, very cheap and easy to find on sale, but they are fun to use and capable of good images.
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| Voigtlander Vito CL |
The Vito hearth is the coated 50mm F2.8 Lanthar lens, a triplet made with lanthanum glass that takes 32mm snap-in filters. It's an honest lens, with decent performance if stopped down from f8 to f11 but quite soft at wider apertures. This weakness can be used to obtain quite nice effects, for example, softness in portraits. The camera above has a five-blade iris. The blade number can vary depending on the camera, shutter and lens model.
Some 35mm Voigtlanders can be found with other lenses, like the much better Skopar, a four-element Tessar like lens.
Do yourself a favor and get a 32mm snap-in lens hood, conical style because the front lens rotates.
The shutter is a Gauthier Prontor 500 LK shutter, with speeds from 1/15s to 1/500s plus B. It has no slow speeds. This shutter is an intermediate cost one, but it's very reliable.
Some 35mm Voigtlanders can be found with other lenses, like the much better Skopar, a four-element Tessar like lens.
Do yourself a favor and get a 32mm snap-in lens hood, conical style because the front lens rotates.
The shutter is a Gauthier Prontor 500 LK shutter, with speeds from 1/15s to 1/500s plus B. It has no slow speeds. This shutter is an intermediate cost one, but it's very reliable.
The Albada type viewfinder is BIG and very clear. There's no rangefinder in this model, but the CLR has (R is for rangefinder and L for light meter).
It has a coupled selenium light meter visible on the viewfinder and also on the camera's top. All you need is to "guesstimate" and set the distance using a very nice focus and depth of field scale and adjust the exposure using the built-in light meter by matching the meter needle with a circle, by adjusting the aperture and speed.
There's also an ASA/DIN setting ring for proper film usage.
There's also an ASA/DIN setting ring for proper film usage.
The camera feels very solid in hands.
Key features:
Some people say that Voigtlanders are lower quality than Kodak Retinas, but the fact is I rarely get a non-working Voigtlander in hands and probably 9 in 10 Retinas needs some repair.
Also, the quality depends on the lens. Voigtländers lenses can come in many flavors: Vaskar, Skopar, Lanthar and the absolutely superb APO-Lanthar, not available on Vito and Vitorets.
Key features:
- Single coated 50mm F2.8 Lanthar triplet
- All mechanical shutter speeds (1/15 to 1/500s)
- Built-in coupled selenium light meter, visible from the top plate or the viewfinder
- BIG, LARGE and crisp viewfinder
- Takes 32mm snap-in filters
- Manual focus, by scale.
Some people say that Voigtlanders are lower quality than Kodak Retinas, but the fact is I rarely get a non-working Voigtlander in hands and probably 9 in 10 Retinas needs some repair.
Also, the quality depends on the lens. Voigtländers lenses can come in many flavors: Vaskar, Skopar, Lanthar and the absolutely superb APO-Lanthar, not available on Vito and Vitorets.
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