Vario Manual
Hildegard Lobach
I have searched everywhere for a data sheet or manual for my II Kern Paillard, Vario Switar, 1:2,5, F-18, 86mm, EE, H 16 RX lens. I believe Bolex made it (?) and it was called the Vario Switar 86 f2.5 18-86mm EE, but I am not sure of this.
I know this lens takes a battery but I have no idea where the battery is located. Can anyone give me a clue? Also, I would like the manual for this lens if one was made and if not, maybe a data sheet talking about this lens.
Your lens seems to have been modified to fit that camera. The run plunger/auto diaphragm selector is missing (the short plain black cylinder part) and the back has been machined flat (normally there is a protruding part that fits over the Bolex run button).
Thank you so much for the above information. I will explore the links you have posted. Just an hour or so ago, I found the Bolex manual for this lens. I live in the US, and the company selling manuals is in the UK. Here is a link:
The manual I just bought was for the Bolex Vario Switar 86 EE (18 - 86/f ). I think this is the closest match to the lens on my camera. I suspect the manuals are photo copies. I hope they are clearly printed.
It will probably take a while for it to arrive in the US from the UK, but it should tell me a great deal about the lens. I gather from the links you posted that the lens can go to automatic mode (I need the battery first), or manual mode. I suspect the manual will tell me how to do this.
Hopefully the auto aperture works OK when you test it. This is a nice, sharp lens that can be highly useful when the lighting changes during a shot, as you pan or zoom etc. I much regret getting rid of mine.?
Hello Doug... I think I am really going to like this lens. As a past owner, you know that it takes a 1.35V battery to power the auto. It used a mercury battery in the old days. I have faced this issue before with a built in light meter in one of my Super8 cameras. I found a very nice, but slightly costly solution. I bought this little guy out of Japan:
You buy off the shelf hearing aid batteries and drop one into this device. The hearing aid batteries are called a silver oxide 386 battery. I bought a 5 pack on Amazon for very little money. I bought Everready brand, but they sell many off brand 386 batteries for much less.
The short stubby lens that has the ASA window in it. Is that suppose to to be able to turn with your hand to set the ASA? Mine is stuck and will not move. Maybe I need to wait until my battery arrives? The manual from the UK is a good week or more away.
I am new to the X Vario and Leica in general. One purpose I have purchased the camera for is for general walk about and street photography. I have the EVF2 as I am used to looking through a viewfinder with my DSLR D810. I have had a SLR for 44 years now and admittedly this camera will take some getting used to.
I have found AF to be the weak point on the X Vario. For snap decisions such as your 'fleeting moments' it is likely to be found wanting. If you rush exposure before you get the green light you might be disappointed. In such situations work out a preset manual procedure, based on reasonable depth of field. (lens stopped down to f/8 and focus to your normal shooting distance for candid work. For personal locations it is easy to measure a good mid point for manual focusing. Experiment with Face Detection which can work surprisingly well in social situations or street. (Your points 1 and 2)
I think is very easy to get correct focus using AF because of the wide depth of field of the slow lens. Foe example, if your subject is at 3feet from the camera using the lens at 23mm @f4 -which is the wider it can gets- your depth of field will be 1feet. Plenty of room to miss pin-point focus. So if you set the aperture at f5.6 and the focal distance at 4 mt. (12 ft) basically everything in the frame will be in focus so you only need to check the finder for framing.
As Daniel Martin found out (inspired by the noises that the focus motor creates during zooming), you can focus manually at 70 mm (46 mm) and then zoom to the wide end without touching the focus ring. The results seem to be more consistent that those obtained by focusing manually at the desired (wider) focal length. ( _faq_e.php#imp_mf)
That is, I reported an observation that someone else (namely, Daniel Martin) had made and that I was able to replicate. So, I am not alone with this observation... But I will try to confirm this -- and all this was long before firmware update 1.1 (which might have changed this).
Basically, my remark says that the manual distance value is kept when you focus the lens. Using this for focusing at the long end is just an application of it. Distance is, of course, not kept when you turn the zoom ring, but as far as I remember, the camera adapts focus when zooming has stopped. I cannot remember how long adapting the focus takes -- it is not instantaneously (maybe about a second).
Thank you all for the input. The following image is one I took this morning using the EVF2 with the image set up "zoomed in detail window" to gain accurate focus. I "think" I saw the shimmering others talked about when in focus. I will try this technique by zooming in ... focusing ... zooming out to frame the image on a tripod where I can more sure I am not changing focal points with a hand held picture. Lots to learn. Thank you again for your help.
I'm new to the X Vario and have been having some issues getting good focus on landscape shots. I've been trying to use this technique and find it to be very useful. I'm still trying to find the best settings but I feel that this method really takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. Thanks for posting.
Depending on how fast you turn the zoom ring, you can see that the camera adapts focus (you can see this better if you turn the ring as fast as possible, otherwise the camera can nearly keep up). This takes about 0.1 to 0.2 seconds, but that's just an estimation...
Be careful at 70mm. Even though the lens is fairly stopped down at that point when "wide open" the depth of field is still fairly shallow. I was manual focusing on a model the other day and even though it appeared I was in focus, I was actually off...
Setting distance to infinity ensures that your photos are indeed sharp at infinity, whereas setting distance to the hyperfocal distance would only ensure that your photos are "acceptably sharp" at infinity, which may not be good enough for you, depending on your viewing conditions.
After a few months now with the camera, I am getting used to the manual focus with the EVF. It's isn't the fastest, but not the slowest either, and it makes me slow down, which is probably a good thing.
The X Vario is a very underrated camera in my opinion, and I find myself being able to use it for many different applications. The manual focus is very satisfactory; the only thing I am getting used to is trying to determine DOF, something which is much easier on my DSLR.
Using my SL2 with m-lenses has been a joy. Lately I've been shooting some wildlife with the Leica Vario-Elmarit 24-70 mounted for a bit of extra flexibility. Shooting in an area where branches etc. sometimes makes using AF impractical, I find I need to switch between AF and MF quickly to keep the subject in focus. Before I bought the 24-70 I read several reviews that mentioned something like
Apparently I have somehow disabled this feature on my SL2/24-70 because moving the focus ring on the lens has no effect when the SL2 is set to AFs. I can't find anything in the SL2 manual, so I'd appreciate any help from the group to get this feature working again.
Just a further note: you can change the amount of rotation of the focus ring by going to the Focusing menu, MF Setup and change the setup fromStandard to your preferred amount of focusing ring rotation, I find that 90 is best for me, that is similar to that of most M lenses.
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