Back to the Brilliant

I took a nice morning walk through my neighborhood down to Tiguex Park, something I haven't done in some time. The camera was one of my favorites, the little Voigtländer Brilliant.  In describing the use and qualities of the finder the manual says:

"If you now look down vertically at this lens from a distance of about 10", you will see the finder picture (fig.3) the limits of which coincide exatly with those of the picture thrown on the film.  It is the right way up, is very brilliant and measures 1-9/16" square, i.e. two thirds the size of the picture."

The manual then goes on to describe a method for estimating focal distance using the image of a standing man in relation to pointers in the finder.  The man imaged in the finder is stated to be 5' feet 5", an interesting specification related to the average height of European and American males in 1932. 

There were no 5'5" men in the pictures I shot on the street and in the park, but I am pretty good at estimating distances and since it was a sunny day permitting the use of the f22 aperture setting, the resulting depth of field provided a good cushion for distance guesses.

I shot Fomapan 100 and developed it in the last of my bottle of Ilford DD-X.  I thought the tones and grain of the resulting images were pretty good.  I'm going to shoot another roll of Fomapan 100 in the camera and I'm thinking I'll try it in Rodinal next, which has given me good results in the past.

I remembered that a previous use of the Brilliant showed a light leak on one side of the images.  I put some black electrician's tape over what I thought was the right place on the back, but still had a bit of a leak this time.  So I'll be more generous with tape on the next use.  I have also added a bootlace neck strap as a aid to holding the camera steady at the 1/50 available on the shutter.  

The 7.7/75mm lens on the Brilliant is uncoated, but well corrected and capable of yielding good sharpness if one is careful to brace the camera solidly.

I have a couple fancy twin-lens cameras with a wide range of apertures and speeds as well as focusing through coupled taking and viewing lenses, but for me that brilliant view provided by the modest little Voigtländer along with its light weight and diminutive size make it a contender.