Cheap old 35mm rangefinders

bobfowler · Aug 5, 2004

My favorite "pocket" rangefinder is the Retina IIa. It doesn't have a built in light meter, but the 50mm f/2 Schneider Xenon lens is fantastic.

k_jupiter · Aug 9, 2004

Retina II with 47mm Ektar. As sharp as my Nikon AIS lens (at f8-f11). Small, easy to use, 15.00 at a photo show. Since all the leather has been stripped (giving it a retro industrial look), nobody's gonna steal it.

tim in san jose

titrisol · Aug 9, 2004

I like My contessa LK, LB and SLKs.
While they have Tessars only (4element/3 group) the camera itself is well made, durable, easy to adjust and clean (Thanks Mike Elek).
The light meters go bad afer a while, but I've found that compensating (i.e. setting the ISO 2 or 3 stops higher) helps a lot.

Here a pic with that cheap rangefinder.

EDITED

vazquez · Aug 9, 2004

Titrisol: The Tessars are 4 element/3 group designs with very good contraste
and high resolving power, your contessas have great optics

Andy K · Nov 6, 2004

I bought a 1962 Voigtlander Vito CLR on Ebay last week for £22. So far it seems a very capable camera.

It has:

2.8/50 'Lanthar' lens. (The version with the Skopar lens is more desirable but harder to find) f2.8 to f22.
Built in metering (needle match).
Prontor LK between the lens leaf shutter (so it is very quiet).
Speeds: B 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250 and 1/500.
Film speeds: 10 ASA (!) to 800 ASA.
Coupled rangefinder focusing from 3.5 feet to infinity.
PC connection and flash sync at all speeds from 1/15 to 1/500.
Cable release socket.
Self timer.
Dimensions are W= 5 1/8", H=3 1/4", D=2 7/8" (W=130mm x H=82mm x D=72mm).

Find a good one and you've got a very solid little camera.

Attached is a test shot I took last week. I messed up the development, but as you can see its a good lens.

mfobrien · Nov 6, 2004

Well, nice to see someone else recommending an Argus..typically a C3 can sell from $5 - $20, depending on the source. One that is properly functioning will amaze you with the results. Do a search on google for the Argus World Argosy and follow a C3 that has traversed North America and is now in France, I believe. Also, The C4 is a very capable camera...one that I have used quite a bit. However, the shutter noise will scare small children. The Canon QL 17 gets my nod as one of the best choices, though. Compact, silent, great optics, and generally inexpensive. Alas, if you find one, it will also need to have the foam light seals replaced.

Woolliscroft · Nov 6, 2004

bjorke said:
Canon GIII QL17 - you can typically buy 3 of them for the cost of a Leica lens cap. Pick your favorite. I got a pretty nice one for $30, smelled like cigars for a while but sharp as a tack and much quieter than an M6. Nice finder too.

I'll second that. I had one for 20 years until it wore out and must get round to looking for another. The shutter is virtually silent if you like candids and it had a nice quality 40mm f1.7 lens. (try: www.snaphoto.co.uk/Stock/Canon.html)

David.

Andy K · Nov 6, 2004

Ps, I ordered a light seal kit from Interslice last week. 3 days from order to it dropping through my letterbox here in the UK.

The kits are very good quality and the instructions are comprehensive. In fact when I mentioned I was re-sealing my Olympus OM10, he emailed me a word file purely on replacing OM10 seals.

A very good product being sold by a very professional and friendly person, at a knock down price! Total price including postage from the US to the UK was $6.80, thats about £3.60 at current rates.

I can't recommend this guy highly enough!

wdemere · Nov 8, 2004

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Yashica GX. I've been using a Petri 7S for about a week now and really like it. The winder for the film is about 2x louder than the shutter!

This site: http://www.photoethnography.com/equipment.html has some great pictures and reviews of old rangefinders.

Best,

William

elekm · Nov 8, 2004

Rollei 35 cameras are great. No seals to go gummy on you. You need to adjust your ergonomics slightly, but no big deal. Very pocketable. Great Tessar or Sonnar lens. Not a rangefinder, however, but not a big deal.

The Retina IIS is an often overlooked camera. Nice fixed Xenar lens, and roughly the size of the folding Retinas but a bit easier to handhold.

The Olympus XA gets mentioned a lot, and another zone-focus camera is the Minox 35 series.

titrisol · Nov 8, 2004

what is the difference between Soonar nad Tessar lenses?
Tessar is usually a 3 element (AFAIK), is Sonnar a 4-5 element 40mm lens?

Ole · Nov 8, 2004

The Tessar is a four-element lens - four elements in three groups.

The Sonnar is a bit more variable - there have been four- and five-element versions, and probably others as well. The F:2 and F:4 versions are of different design...

Glenn Mathison · Nov 8, 2004

I picked up a Minolta Hi-Matic 7 at a market here in Sydney for $10 AUD. The seller had no idea if it worked. Basic operation seemed OK so I took it home, CLA'd it and it works great. Nice lens, quiet operation and if I drop it in the water or out of a moving car window, no big deal for $10 ;-)

Not the smallest RF though...

elekm · Nov 10, 2004

I'm certainly no student of lens design. On the Rollei 35, you just get an extra 1/2 stop of speed. From the results, I've not found a clear advantage of one lens over the other.

From what I've read, the Sonnar uses Rollei's HFT (High Fidelity Transfer) multicoating, while the Tessar doesn't (although it is a coated lens).

buendia · Nov 10, 2004

My two cents

Can anyone recommend any old, cheap 35mm RF's

Hello,
I'd like to add my two cents on this topic...

It's been a while that I'm using Russian RF cameras such as Kiev, Fed and Zorki..

The first thing that I have to say is that Im very happy about the results, the second is that.. finding a good Russian camera is quite difficult!
Lens optical quality is amazing for certain lenses, but it's less than fair for other ones..

So.. the main point is spending some time (and money..) trying to get a good camera; once you'll find it.. you won't be able to stop using it!

In case you want to start searching remember that the older the better.. so look for some camera made around 1955/65.

Just as example, all the pictures in the following folder (my 2004 vacations) are made with a Kiev 4A from 1959:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=434736

Best wishes,
Rob.

isaacc7 · Nov 11, 2004

Konica rangefinders...

I really like the Konica I rangefinder, it's got a great viewfinder, is built well, and has a nice sharp tessar lens. It's got the camera geek factor on high as well because the lens is collapsible and it says "Made in Occupied Japan" on the bottom. They're realitivly cheap, and you may be able to find one for sale (cough cough) on a link in this message :rolleyes:

Isaac

Solinar · Nov 11, 2004

Cheap and old, let me mention the Agfa Super Solinette and its twin the Ansco Super Regent.

They feature an unbelieveably sharp, unit focused, f/3.5, 50mm Solinar, which is a Tessar-type lens, a Synchro-Compur shutter with a full range of shutter speeds and the camera folds to fit in your pocket. The Super Regent sells for in the US for as little as $15.00. The down side is they all need their helicoid grease replaced, as the Agfa grease gets pretty stiff with age and there is no built-in meter.

Another couple of pocketable folders, which get passed over, but have a superb Scheider Kreuznach, f/2.0, 50 mm Xenon, is the Kodak Retina IIc and IIIc. These are well under $100 in the US. The IIIc has a built-in meter and is similar to the over-priced IIIC, but with a slightly smaller viewfinder.

Mike Elek's recommendation for the Retina IIS is good one. The IIS has the same large, bright viewfinder as the over priced Retina IIIC, but without the busy framelines for the auxillary 35mm and 80mm focal length lenses. The IIS is a non-folder, without interchangeable lenses, so it does away with the annoying frame lines for the tele and wide-angle lenses.

Having a folder is nice, but the big selling point on the Retinas should be that the Schneider Xenons and Rodenstock Heligons are amazingly good renditions of the Zeiss Planar. Again, you get a Synchro-Compur, which features a full range of shutter speeds from 1/500th to a full second.

Although they may be 50 years old, the above folders match or exceed the later Canonets and Electro 35 compact range finders in image quality. The build quality is first rate. In addition to folding to a size that allows them to fit in your pants pocket, these premium German range finders will never need their light seals replaced or require a difficult to source battery cell, because they didn't use them to begin with.

By the way, the above cameras are manual mode shooters, there is no automatic exposure feature.

Woolliscroft · Nov 19, 2004

You lot have got me so nostalgic about my once beloved but now long dead Canon GIII QL-17 that I have managed to track down another and am re-discovering why I liked it so much. Thanks everyone.

David.

Glenn Mathison · Nov 28, 2004

I picked up a very clean Canon GIII QL-17 at a camera fair in Sydney here today for $50 AUD (About $35 USD) Seems mechanically perfect so I can't wait to try it out....

Seems they are much admired by some on this site.

Glenn

FallisPhoto · Nov 30, 2004

Light leak

Snapper said:
The light leaks show up as fairly sharp vertical bands about 1/4 of a negative's width evenly spaced throughout the film. At first I thought I may have accidentally opened the film back, but I ran a whole film through with the lens cap on and got the same problem.

Any ideas? Is this fixable?

This is easily fixable and it is cheap. You have lost a light seal on either the hinge end of the film loading door or the end that opens (almost certainly the hinge end). A neoprene replacement seal kit can be bought from Interslice on ebay for $6. It has enough material to do a half-dozen cameras and a very good and thorough set of instructions. I prefer his kits to the ones Micro Tools sells because he uses a type of foam that doesn't degrade over time. It will take about 5 minutes to replace the seal in question and less than an hour to replace all of the door seals. If the one has gone bad, it's a cinch that all the rest have too and you need to do this.

FallisPhoto · Nov 30, 2004

I have three C-3s. Mine only cost about $5 or less each (ebay). Nothing wrong with the Matchmatic, if you don't mind putting a sticker on top with the equivalent shutter speeds and f-stops for its exposure value scale. The auxilliary lenses are easier to find (and less expensive) for it too. The one to avoid is the Autronic. I think Rube Goldberg must have had a hand in its design. I think there are actually pieces of string and pullys in there.

Frank Pouw · Feb 11, 2005

Konica C35

I bought this camera for $20 (Canadian) and love it. Pocketable, light, very crisp image, easy to see focusing image in the view finder. I don't usually like point and shoot but it does a very good job and has surprised me with some great images in low light conditions without a flash. (38mm 1:2.8 Hexanon lens).

Murray@uptowngallery · Jun 9, 2005

I too endorse the MatchMatic EV system. I got one and a Pentax analog 1 degree Spotmeter about the same time, encouraging me to learn and memorize EV numbers for range of f-stops. I now use it for all kinds of weird situations, like old shutter speed sequence (1/50, 1/100, etc). I hang a luggage tag with a chart on some old folders, but I need to look up the conversion less and less.

For pinhole I find it extremely useful too to have a pre-thunk chart on the back.

Murray

gnashings · Jun 9, 2005

The options are many, but first off - cameraseals.com will send you some sticky backed foam that looks like something that you can get at any hardware store... but apparently has better adhesives and stands up to temperatures better, etc. I don't know how true these claims are, but they do work great, take about 20 minutes to do a camera (the long part is removing the old grime)

Now, if you really want to go and buy one..and who doesn't, there is no such thing as too many cameras, especialloy RF's...
My nod goes to a QL17 GIII - you WILL love it, but hush... there is a whole thread bad mouthing them to get the prices down
they are easily found in the sub $50 range in good shape and other than the need for a mercury battery solution (I got the wien cells - works great), they are awesome! Tack sharp, too!

Want even cheaper? My bell&howell Canonet 19 cost me $15 Canadian, shipped I believe. Did not need a damn thing, works great, can double as blun weapon, whats not to love!

Hard to beat the Canonets for value for your dollar, especially given the plentiful selection and easy to find info on all aspects of the cameras. And what appears to be a border line psychotic fan following... yours truly included!

Gerald Koch · Jun 9, 2005

I second the Konica 35 and add that Ricoh also made some very nice small rf's under the name Ricoh 35 (quite a few different models).

Cheap old 35mm rangefinders

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