The Bessa T has no built-in viewfinder, but it has an excellent long-base rangefinder which has a longer effective base length than the Leica M6, and has the Leica M mount. I will, eventually, get around to doing a post about the Vitessa, when it’s had some necessary TLC (or CLA), but this post is about the Bessas. This is the camera in the middle of the bottom row of my header above. I have two Cosina Voigtlanders, with two of their lenses, and one original Voigtlander which is an engineering masterpiece of a quality rivalling that of Leica, the Vitessa L (with the Ultron lens). There is also a self-timer on the front of the camera.Voigtlander Bessa L with 35mm Color Skopar and viewfinder, Bessa T with 90mm Apo Lanthar and viewfinder, and the 50mm Jupiter-8 The ISO is set around the rewind knob, ISO from 25 to 1600 with no exposure compensation. I have found the meter itself to be very accurate. The meter is a simple right arrow, dot, left arrow, which is through the lens. Underneath and to the left of the accessory shoe is the meter. There is a PC sync on the side of the camera if you would like to use a flash, which, if this method is chosen, you will be using the accessory shoe and thus will not be able to use an external viewfinder. There is also a cold shoe on the top of the camera for accessory finders, which you will need to frame your images correctly. The camera is the most basic of cameras, shutter wind lever, shutter speed dial, shutter button, ISO dial. The extreme depth of field of these ultra-wide-angle lenses allow for a lot of errors in focusing the user does not have to be precise. I believe this camera was made for this lens or its even wider counterpart, the 12mm F5.6. On the version I used there was a Voigtlander Heliar 15mm F4.5 with the corresponding external viewfinder. The Bessa-L is a LTM or Leica Thread Mount camera, it lacks a viewfinder or any other means of framing. The frame of the camera is metal, everything else, including the rear door, is plastic. Part of this is due to its lack of a viewfinder of any sort but is mostly attributed to its construction.

It is much lighter than other 35mm cameras.

The camera, when compared to another in the Bessa lineup like the R4m/a is cheap. The first thing I notice when handling the camera is its apparent cheap construction.

Voigtlander bessa l