On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Q.G. de Bakker wrote:

steven wrote:

Go for the 501. It's sliding mirror design is an improvement over the
500's:
brighter and no vignetting (granted, that's only on the acute matte, and
not
on the film).

for totally confusing you i suggest to buy the 500 C/M: compared to the
501 it has the very useful indicator if the body (and the lens) is cocked.
you can use the acute mate focussing screens (so far the 501 C/M is no
advantage). if you use a 150mm portrait lens the light darkening (if there
is any) in the upper area of the viewfinder-picture is not noticable while
taking pictures (at least i didn't notice it during sessions).

and: the 500 C/M is much cheaper and does it's duty.

beside that it is more beatiful in my opinion. the film backs don't have
that ugly slide-holder that looks a third party product glued to the back.

but: although it is great to work with a blad - the results (500 C/M,
planar 80 T* and sonnar 150 T*) weren't noticable better than pictures
taken with my psix* and my set of east-zeiss lenses (self enlarging) .
so i sold the blad and got me a second K6 body for less than the money i
got for a blad film back

berko

*kiev60 has much better focussing screen but you have to be lucky and
since my psix works...