page_title: 35 mm Bessa
section_title: Bessa-L and Bessa-T (finderless)
hierarchical_section_title: 35 mm Bessa / Bessa-L and Bessa-T (finderless)
caption_attribution_description: English: Bessa L
context_page_description: The Bessa family of cameras is manufactured in Japan by Cosina as a revival of the Voigtländer brand name.
  All the Cosina Voigtländer Bessa models have a double focal-plane shutter with two sets of curtains to prevent damage by the sun. Shutter speeds range from 1 to 1/2000 s and bulb, with flash sync at 1/125 s on hot-shoe or PC terminal. They all have TTL exposure metering, and manual exposure; the recent R2A and R3A also have an aperture priority automatic mode.
context_section_description: The first model was the Bessa-L, introduced in 1999. This was a finderless body with a Leica screw mount. It was introduced with a range of Voigtländer 39 mm screw lenses that were quite inexpensive and said to be of excellent quality. It could of course mount all the wide variety of 39 mm screw lenses by manufacturers as diverse as Leica, Canon, Nikon and even cheaper but often excellent Soviet lenses.
  The Bessa-L was mostly intended to be used with ultra wide angle lenses, with which the absence of a focusing device is not a problem. Most notably Voigtländer introduced a 15 mm and a 12 mm lens, the latter being the widest rectilinear full-frame lens ever marketed up to then.
  The Bessa-L has TTL metering with LED readout on the back edge of the top plate with an ASA range of 25–1600 and an EV range 1 to 19 at ASA 100. The readout consists of two red arrows pointing to a green light in between that enables use of the camera as, effectively, a shutter priority, aperture priority, or totally manual camera.
  On some markets, the Voigtländer Bessa-L was sold as the Cosina 107-SW.
  The Bessa-L was supplemented in 2001 by the Bessa-T, which used the Leica M-mount, could receive a trigger advance design, and had an integrated rangefinder with high magnification, but no viewfinder. It was sold in silver or black; from 2002, also in gray or olive (at a higher price and perhaps only in Japan). It is now discontinued but some stock is still available.
  In 2001, the Bessa-T was sold in a special kit, called Heliar 101st Anniversary (in short "T101"), with a 50 mm f:3.5 collapsible Heliar lens, for the anniversary of the Voigtländer Heliar lens design. It existed in black, grey, olive and blue: five hundred numbered examples were produced for each color.
caption: Bessa-L
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