Voigtlander Bessa T Heliar 101 Edition Unboxing Photos

Recently I have been shooting black and white film and developing it myself (see earlier post), and have mainly been using a cheap and cheerful fixed lens rangefinder from the ’70s, the Ricoh 500G, which I obtained from a fellow member of a good photography forum for next to nothing. It’s a fun camera with a good lens, and small enough to fit into a jacket pocket. But its main flaw, which is common with these inexpensive rangefinders from the era, is that the rangefinder patch is small, fuzzy and hard to see well. I found myself doing a combination of zone focusing and checking against the small rangefinder patch most of the time – with more confidence in the zone focus than the RF patch.

I decided that, while the 500G will stay with me, I wanted to look for a rangefinder with more confident focusing. The Leica is well outside of my budget, but I found myself looking at Voigtlander’s rangefinder models from the early 2000s. The Bessa T kept drawing my attention, since it can be had for less than the other models and takes M mount lenses (or Leica Screw Mount lenses with adapter). Particularly, I found myself looking at the olive green Heliar 101 special edition sets, with the interesting collapsible Heliar 50mm f3.5 lens, a lens said to be one of the sharpest 50mm lenses, period. It’s a terrific looking kit, but I knew right away that the lens might be a bit limiting for me, both in terms of focal length and the slightly slow maximum aperture. Still, the Bessa T body in olive, now that’s pretty nice. I bit on a set on eBay, waited for Japan Post to get it to the US and the postal service to slowly get it to my local branch (seriously, they don’t provide very helpful updates on international packages once they get into the USPS system! As it has just arrived, I decided to share some photos of the set, unboxing-style.

The camera is well-made, and a treat to look at with lots of attention to detail. The quality of the lens is immediately apparent (not simply the fact that it is the first M mount lens I have used), with beautiful finish and buttery-smooth operation. I am simultaneously impressed and disappointed by the viewfinder, which is solid and well-made, crisp and clean (and 1:1) to look through, but very difficult to see the framelines with glasses. It may not be the right viewfinder for me.

Due to stormy weather, I won’t be taking the camera out for a spin today, but I will be doing so as soon as I can. I would like to experience the storied sharpness of the Heliar 50mm lens, but have a sneaky suspicion that it will not be the lens I ultimately end up with for snapshots, street and walkaround use. Fortunately, there are many options, especially in the screw mount, which are small, light and fast. For now, I just have to admire the engineering of this beauty.