The Bright-Line Frame View- And Rangefinder - Leica MP Manual

Bright-line frame view- and rangefinder
(see also p. 9/90-91)
The LEICA MP's bright-line view- and rangefinder
is not only a very high-quality, large, brilliant, and
bright viewfinder, it is also a highly accurate
rangefinder coupled to the lens.
The size of the bright-line frames corresponds to
an image size of 23 x 35 mm (slide format) at the
shortest setting distance for each focal length. At
longer distances, the camera records more of the
subject than shown within the frames.
The bright-line frames are linked to the focusing
mechanism so that parallax – the misalignment
between the lens and the viewfinder axes – is au-
tomatically compensated and the image within
the bright-line frames and the recorded picture
are identically centered throughout the entire
distance setting range from 0.7 m to ∞.
The standard version* of the LEICA MP is equipped
with a viewfinder with an 0.72x magnification. If
lenses with focal lengths of 28 (Elmarit as of
* Within the Leica á-la-carte program, the viewfinder magnifica-
tion factors 0.58x or 0.85x can be chosen instead, and also the
bright-line frame set. For the possible combinations and the
respectively shown frame/s, and/or frame pairs, please see
the table on the next page.
serial no. 2 411001), 35, 50, 75, 90, and 135 mm
are mounted, the respective bright-line frame
will automatically be mirrored into the viewfinder
image (pairwise, i.e. 28+90 mm, 35+135 mm, and
50+75 mm).
The rectangular distance metering area, which is
brighter than the surrounding image field, is in the
middle of the viewfinder image. All lenses with
focal lengths from 16 to 135 mm couple with the
rangefinder when used on the LEICA MP.
When the exposure meter is turned on, the expo-
sure meter LEDs or the battery warning LED also
appear at the lower edge of the viewfinder image.
For more details about setting the distance and
the exposure refer to the relevant sections on
p. 92 and 94.
88