I thought a brief report here might be in order. As noted above, I bought a Leitz Minolta CL with a M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 lens, for my OCOLOF challenge (see
here, now moved from Photos from Film to Personal Projects and Challenges... the first few months pics taken with the CL, all with the M-Rokkor). A few months later, I gave in to a bit of GAS and got a Voigtlander Bessa R3A off this forum. and most of the last part of the OCLOF was shot with that. The comparison was interesting.
The Bessa is a very nice camera to use, particularly with the grip which came with my model. Annoyingly, the grip doesn't have a tripod socket, so if you want to use your tripod or monopod, you have to take the grip off; in my case, one end of the strap was attached to the grip, so with the grip off it was very unwieldy. I've since bought a Peak Design cuff and leash set, which ought to work quite well, but have not fitted it yet. With the grip off, I did move the strap onto the Bessa's body; both the lugs are at the front, which seemed to me to put the camera at an odd orientation (the camera as a whole is a little more difficult for me to use without the grip).
As noted above, the CL's metering is slightly awkward, in that you have to wind the film on, leave the wind-on lever at stand-off position, and hold the camera in the landscape orientation (and some times give it a little knock with the fingers) before the metering kicks in. IIRC the Bessa also needs to be wound on before the metering works, but thereafter you can access it with a half press of the shutter. The CL metering is an analogue needle to the right of the OVF; if under-exposed the needle is above the centre, if over-exposed the needle is below, thoroughly counterintuitive! The Bessa's meter lights up one (or more) of the row of red shutter speed indicators along the bottom of the OVF. If in manual mode, the selected shutter speed and the "correct" shutter speed (as metered) are both indicated, one of them flashing (and I can't remember which).
I thought the Bessa's approach would be preferable, but after coming back to the CL, I think the analogue approach gives me a better idea of how far off the metered exposure I am, and lets me make better judgements. Somehow the difference between 500 and 1000 seems more significant than the equivalent amount of movement of the CL's needle, so the Bessa seems to be pushing me to use its metering, while the CL leaves it more up to me. Daft, I know, but that's the feeling I have.
Obviously the Bessa has the huge advantage of having aperture priority as well as manual, while the CL is manual only. The Bessa also uses LR44 batteries while the CL uses the more expensive Wein cells.
The Bessa's rangefinder became a little mis-aligned, and it's off having that fixed at the moment.
Yesterday, for the first time since January, I used my Pentax MX; I fitted it with the Pentax-M 35mm f/2 lens and a Hoya yellow filter, and took several shots on both the CL and the MX. First thing to notice is, 35mm is a LOT wider than 40mm! I had not expected there to be so much difference (I did try to compensate a bit by moving forward with the MX). I will be interested to see the shots when both films are finished and processed. I set the same shutter speed on both cameras, and (as far as I can tell) the same ISO (as noted above the CL is very unclear for intermediate ISO settings), and there was a fairly consistent one stop difference in metering between the two cameras; I don't know if this was due to the metering method, though I did my best to meter for darker areas in both cases. I did like my old friend the MX!
At the moment, I'm feeling this was an interesting and worthwhile experiment, but that the rangefinder experience isn't really for me, so I'm expecting to put both cameras on the classifieds before too long.
