Interesting website, Max, and apart from the photographic aspects, I like the writing style. I've recently read Roger Hicks' book on rangefinder cameras. It covers elements of technique, history, collecting and just about everything. Like all of Roger's books it's a very entertaining and informative read. However, from the position of one who by my own admission has very little experience of rangefinder cameras (yet), I came out of the book unconvinced by many of the arguments in favour of RFs vs. SLRs. In the 1950s, size, weight and quietness might have been valid arguments as indeed may have been optic design, but with more modern SLR designs, the areas where rangefinders had the upper hand are perhaps less pronounced than they once were. Take, for instance, the Pentax MX, which is pretty small, pretty quiet, has some fine M-series lenses and neat split-image focussing on a bright screen - quite a package for a rangefinder to compete with. I'm also not at one with the rangefinder focussing by converging images that is supposedly so good in poor light. My two RFs are getting on a bit and I'm sure that their finders aren't as good as they once were, but without a good, sharp vertical edge to focus on, life gets hard, whereas with the SLR there's often the choice of the split image, microprism and ground glass focussing all on the same screen. Another argument by the RF proponents is the non-loss of viewfinder image during the exposure, but is that so much of an issue except in very long exposures where the subject may have moved? As for close-ups, long-focus lenses, parallax errors.....
Don't get me wrong - I admire rangefinders and hope to get a lot more use out of mine in a retro kind of way, but I regard them as "of their time" and see the pleasure to be gained from them in much the same way as the pleasure I get from driving an old car - the crankiness is part of the appeal!
Steve