Angenieux Dogleg Viewfinder - no viewing angles?

[Janis Lionel Huber]

Hello 

I bought a Locam II Highspeed 16mm cam some time ago. Finally I have time to try to make it work. 

The camera has an Angeniexu 12–120 lens on it with a dogleg viewfinder (see picture atteched). What suprises me though is that i can only see a picture, when the viewfinder ist horizontol like on the picture. Set to a 45 or 90 degree angel (altough it swivels there), I just see black. Is this normal? If yes, this would be quite inconvenient. 

Thanks for the help. 

Best regards

[Brian Drysdale]

On any dog leg V/Fs I've used the lens was fixed. The longer V/F probably rotates up and down so that you can access the camera mechanism for threading the film, rather than operating the camera. This would fit with the common operating style during the period that these lenses were used.

[Janis Lionel Huber]

I see. Makes sense with the swivel and loading. 

Too bad...makes it rather inconvenient. Do you know / have you headr about a conversion from the long swivel to a shorter one (see attechment)? Would make it much more usable.

Thanks for your help. 

 

[Brian Drysdale]

This is all old technology, if you can get a zoom lens with a shorter viewfinder(commonly used on CP16s) with a damaged lens section, you might get it cheap enough to just swap over the V/F.