Is the Ricoh 500 GX good for 47 usd approx?

[ferbert72]

Hi im looking for a rangefinder camera and I stumbled across a Ricoh 500 GX for 47 usd which is 800k idr in my currency since I live on Indonesia. The 500 GX is a bit common and cheap on online marketplaces like Tokopedia which is basically the Indonesian equivalent to either Amazon and Ebay. Mainly looking for one since Im trying to learn film with more manual controls. If not is there any other rangefinder cameras I should keep in mind?

 

[koraks]

I have one and at this point in time the price point you mention is probably quite OK for a camera in working condition. These are fairly straightforward cameras, but they can (and do) fail. I've had two of these and both have suffered minor defects which I fixed (I then let go of one because I didn't have a need for two). I don't recall exactly what I fixed on mine; I think it was the auto-exposure system, so the coupling between the light meter and the shutter system.

Image quality on these little cameras is OK-ish; don't expect anything particularly good, but they're also not half as bad as some of their contemporaries that seem to produce blurry corners to all photos etc. The lens is fairly prone to flare and it's not quite as sharp as most modern optics, but stopped down to f/8 or so it's a reasonable performer. The square/diamond-shaped aperture is a bit odd, but at f=45mm and f/2.8 it's not a bokeh monster to begin with, so don't worry too much about any oddly shaped out of focus highlights. Sun stars etc. you can pretty much forget about due to the proneness to flare and the aperture shape.

The viewfinder is small, but functional. You may have to re-adjust the rangefinder, so keep an eye on systematic focus problems. The mechanism can easily knock out of alignment one way or another.