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Looking for a manual optical rangefinder attachment in feet

fabulousrice

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Mar 19, 2020
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450
Location
Los Angeles
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35mm
I have a blik Russian rangefinder that is super helpful in measuring the distance between me and the subject.
It's a great invention, in the way that it works fast, doesn't use batteries and attaches easily to most cameras.
I can use it on almost any camera to focus quickly and get nice background blur even with antique cameras.
But the Blik is only in Meters, and I would like to have one that is in Feet as well.

I've only been able to find this one and this one, but the sellers couldn't tell me if they were functional or not, and the Kodak one I'm not even sure if it's in feet or not or why it has three different rulers along the wheel.

Strangely there seems to be very few of these rangefinders in Feet on eBay compared to how easy to find the Blik ones are (I wonder if they were just less of a thing in the US than in the old continent? Or made in lesser amounts? Or makers were pushing a battery-powered version?).

Of course I also have and use laser rangefinders, such as the LS-1 and a Bosch GLM-30, but operating them is very cumbersome (turning it on... changing the unit... pointing... panicking when the battery is low... etc), and they don't easily attach to a camera's hot-shoe whereas something like the Blik is extremely quick and easy to use (fit on the camera, go out, point, meter, done!).

Are there optical rangefinder attachments like the blick but in feet, and where would I find one?

Or - if anyone has a simple, not battery-powered solution to measure the distance between the camera and the subject, please enlighten me! (No, not a tape measure )
 
There was a company called Ranging, Inc that made a variety of optical rangefinders. Some models were in feet and some in meters. They are stand-alone devices and do not attach to a camera but they aren't very big and do the same thing. They look like an old Kodak 110 camera but wider. They are purely optical and work like most camera rangefinders with split-image patch. They are also cheap and plentiful on eBay. Search for "optical tape measure" or "M100 rangefinder" or "opti-meter" and you will see them. Distance ranges vary by model from around 100 to around 600 feet.

I have an M100 model and it is easy to get inside and clean up the windows and see how it works. They're basically the same as a camera rangefinder but with greater distance between the windows which, theoretically, should give greater accuracy as those tiny clip-on RFs.
 
Last edited:
Dan Fromm said:
Oh dear. Have you tried ...
Click to expand...

Oh, dear. Did you read the OP? He has tried looking for the ridiculously priced clip-on photo RFs on eBay and asked:

"Or -- if anyone has a simple, not battery-powered solution to measure the distance between the camera and the subject, please enlighten me!"
 
You can buy the US made Federals all day for cheap prices. I've owned a few, and they were just as accurate as the expensive ones. What I did was train myself to guesstimate the distances by setting up a few objects at different distances, and then checking it w/ the RF. After only a short while you can nail the focus, but if you don't shoot scale focus cameras regularly you sorta have to do a refresher course for a few minutes. I got more shots in focus w/ scale focus cameras than w/ SLR's and rangefinder cameras. Probably because I was shooting Retinas (great lenses!) w/ f3.5 50 mm lenses, and on SLR's I almost always have a f2 or f2.8 90 lens, which is harder to get focus when wide open.
 
I’ve bought about a dozen to find one that worked. But I misplaced it so will use a SLR to determine distance. I thought about looking into golf rangefinders but not sure if they cover short distances... plus they are expensive.
 
I have a basic watafmeter
You need a lot of contrast but it is accurate and the design is out of this world.
 
The chances are that the scale on the rangefinder will not be the same as that on the camera, so you will be interpolating anyway. I have a shoe mount Voigtlander one that I use with a Vito B sometimes. The scales on both are in feet, but they do not have the same marked distances. I don't have trouble switching between Imperial and Metric, but I was taught both in school.

(One thing I hate is measuring small distances in fractions of an inch - that's why millimetres were invented!)
 
The conversion from meters to feet is simple...3.3x is close enough! 30m is 98.425' and the 3.3x conversion says 30m = 99'.
Easy to make a table of distances which are actually on the meter scale, multiply all by 3.3, and know the conversions for marked distances on the scale!
 
The Voigtlander and Watameter are very nice.
Some Watameters have a mechanical read-out inside the viewfinder and iirc a close-up range on the rear dial.
That being said, Kalart made a clip-on with a very wide base for greater accuracy.
Channeling Precious Moments, "a good rangefinder is a found treasure"...
 
This one?
The Kalart Rangefinder (xs4all.nl)
 
I screwed up.
The rangefinder I'm thinking of is a Hugo Meyer:
 
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