Canon VT De Luxe
The Canon VT De Luxe was an improved version of the Canon V system of 35mm rangefinder cameras that was launched in 1956 (two years after the Leica M3) to compete with Leica's dominance in the market. The VT De Luxe models were produced in 1957 and 1958 and would be succeeded by the VL and VL2 versions.
The Canon V system as a whole features a number of remarkable improvements over previous Canon rangefinders and a VT De Luxe is an excellent alternative to a Leica. Like previous Canon rangefinder cameras, the V series uses the M39 thread mount, otherwise known as the "Leica thread mount", so these Canon cameras can use all the M39 lenses made by Canon as well as Leica - and all the other manufacturers who made M39 lenses - giving these cameras access to a truly overwhelming selection of glass.
The VT De Luxe has several other nice additions, perhaps the most notable being a bottom-mounted lever action film advance in the same design as the Leicavit. The big advantage to this mechanism is that it allows extremely quick film advancing, many times faster than the previous knob advance and faster even than the more common top-mounted lever advance.
The VT De Luxe also features three separate viewfinder prisms that can be changed between 35mm, 50mm and "RF" for magnified focusing. This selection actually changes the magnification of the viewfinder as opposed to simply dropping frame lines into the original finder, though it should be noted that these prisms do not allow for parallax correction.
Last but not least, the VT De Luxe also has a hinged back door similar to what is commonly seen on modern film SLR cameras, as opposed to earlier Canon and Leica cameras that required loading through the bottom of the camera, making the VT De Luxe as easy to load as your Nikon F or Canon AE-1.
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