Voigtländer Bessa-L Review: The Most Fun We've Had With a Camera in a Long Time

Voigtländer Bessa-L Review: Not a Rangefinder, Not an SLR

Words by Taylor and Griffin

We passed a Voigtländer Bessa-L back and forth for a few weeks this summer. Taylor had it first, then I took it on a trip down to Philadelphia and shot a roll on the way there and back. It is a hard camera to explain across the counter, mostly because it does not fit the two categories people expect a 35mm camera to fit into.

The Bessa-L is not a rangefinder and it is not an SLR. No focusing patch, no mirror, no prism, no viewfinder of any kind. What it has is a Leica screw mount, a mechanical shutter good to 1/2000, and a TTL meter with the readout on the outside of the body.

The Bessa-L body with the 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide-Heliar and its matching finder.

What a Bessa-L actually is

Cosina licensed the Voigtländer name in 1999, and the Bessa-L was the first body out of that arrangement. The design took a shortcut. Cosina was already building simple mechanical SLR chassis for other companies, so they used one, removed the mirror box and the pentaprism, and fitted a Leica screw mount (LTM, M39) to the front. Most of the depth in an SLR is the mirror, so what is left is thin.

Focusing is by the scale on the lens barrel. That reads like a compromise until you look at what the camera was sold alongside: 12mm, 15mm, 21mm and 25mm Voigtländer lenses, where depth of field at f/8 covers nearly everything you would point them at. A rangefinder would have been along for the ride.

Bessa-L specs at a glance

• Introduced: 1999, made through 2003 (also sold early on as the Cosina SW-107)
• Format: 35mm
• Mount: Leica screw mount, LTM / M39
• Focusing: scale focus. No rangefinder, no built-in viewfinder
• Shutter: fully mechanical vertical-travel focal plane, 1 sec to 1/2000 plus B
• Flash: PC sync socket, 1/125 sync. The accessory shoe is cold, not hot
• Metering: center-weighted TTL, three-LED readout on the back edge of the top plate, ISO 25 to 1600
• Batteries: 2x LR44 / SR44 for the meter only. Every shutter speed fires without them
• Self-timer: mechanical, about 10 seconds
• Size: roughly 135 x 79 x 34 mm
• Weight: around 330 g, body only

The size

Taylor works our camera bench and handles more bodies in a week than most people do in a year, so the size was the first thing that came up.

There's nothing to it once the mirror box is gone. The 15mm sticks out maybe an inch. I had it in a jacket pocket all afternoon and forgot it was in there.

The rest follows from that. No prism hump, no long barrel, nothing you have to plan a bag around. Against an SLR with a wide prime you get the same angle of view for a fraction of the bulk, and you are not trading away a metal chassis or a 1/2000 top speed to get it.

The light meter

The meter is the part I keep coming back to. With no viewfinder there is nowhere inside the camera to show a reading, so Cosina put it on the outside, along the back edge of the top plate. Three LEDs: a red arrow on the left for under, a green dot in the middle for correct, a red arrow on the right for over. It is the same readout as the Voigtländer VC shoe meters, built into the body.

The placement is doing real work. You can hold the camera at your waist, half press, and read the exposure without bringing it anywhere near your face. With a finder in the shoe the LEDs sit just under your eyeline, so you are not breaking away to check. Most cameras make you commit to the frame before you know what the light is doing. This one lets you meter first and decide after.

Zone focusing a 15mm

If the missing viewfinder worries you, the 15mm is the answer to it. At f/8 that lens holds focus from a few feet out to the horizon, so there is no distance to set. You pick an aperture in the morning and spend the day watching shutter speeds.

Framing is the part you have to learn. The matching finder shows you the coverage, but plenty of these frames were taken without looking through anything, on the assumption that 15mm takes in more than it feels like it should. It usually does. The framing stays loose, which suited the trip.

How the rolls came back

Some frames are smeared, and that is not the camera's fault. A wide lens indoors on a mechanical shutter means slow speeds, and 1/30 while you are walking will move. Two or three of those came back better than the sharp ones.

The Super Wide-Heliar is very good. Sharp into the corners, holds up shooting into bright windows, and straighter than you would expect at 15mm. Both rolls were black and white, developed in our lab, so this is what a Bessa-L roll looks like out of our tanks.

What to know before you buy one

• You will want a finder. The matching Voigtländer finders are worth tracking down, and they are not cheap next to the price of the body.
• The shoe is cold. Flash goes into the PC socket on the side, so a shoe-mount unit needs a cord.
• It sounds like a mechanical SLR. The vertical metal shutter is not quiet. If you want discreet, you want a leaf shutter.
• The top plate and back are plastic. Part of why it weighs nothing, but it does not feel like a Leica in the hand.
• Not the body for a 50mm. You can mount one, but scale focusing a normal lens at f/2 is guesswork.

Who it suits

If you already have LTM glass, this is the cheapest sensible way to put it on a metered body. If you shoot wide and shoot quickly, the rear LEDs and zone focusing make it one of the better hip-level cameras we have handled. And if you shoot a Leica, it is a small second body to leave a 15mm on.

Neither of us expected to like it this much. It is a plastic-topped box with no viewfinder that got passed around the shop for a month and came back with rolls we wanted to print. That is the only test that matters.

If a finderless scale-focus body is not where you want to start, our guide to the best film cameras under $500 covers easier options, and if you have a body that needs attention before your next roll, our repair studio is upstairs from the counter.