Struggling With Rangefinders

[RezaLoghme]

Great shot!

 

[BrianShaw]

You’re accustomed to Nikon’s 100 % viewfinder and probably not shooting color slides.

I was always envious of that (Pentax / Olympus don’t do more than about 97%).

Of several rangefinders I have, a few have framelines with parallax correction, that’s important to keep from cutting off people’s heads.

Even with parallax correction you have to be aware it pertains to the foreground and the background does not move (so you use framelines for your subject but keep the sliver of mountains where they were at infinity focus, outside the close-up frame).

These are things you can grow accustomed to, but I totally understand your annoyance.

A craftsman needs to understand how to use their tools!

 

[DavidClapp]

I think that my rangefinder journey has also been marred by the 50mm f1.2 LTM. It’s absolutely wonderful on digital cameras, but its contrast is less exciting on film.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

One issue that crops up with rangefinders is focus fishing. Since everything is sharp in the viewfinder it is difficult to know which way to move the lens to focus without a lot of experience. The key is to return the lens to infinity after each photo. You will always know the direction to focus then and it makes the camera much faster to focus. This is especially true with untabbed lenses.

I go back and forth between SLRs and rangefinders. I've been doing it my whole life though so I don't find it all that daunting. Rangefinders are nice since they can be so small, though some SLRs are small too. The one real benefit to rangefinders is seeing outside the frame. With fixed lenses on SLRs you need to move the camera around. I prefer zooms on SLRs for this reason. Another nice thing about rangefinders, at least in the Leica M mount, is choice for lenses.

The Canon 7 is a fantastic camera. I generally prefer using it to my Leica M3, though I usually use my Konica Hexar RF since I like the automation.

 

[ChrisGalway]

It is not the shutter, but the shutter actuations counter what makes a loud noise. Can be damped in some way but I never care about it.

Thanks for clarifying this ... but the noise is still rather loud, especially compared to the Retina iic which is whisper-quiet.