Why are rangefinders so expensive?

About 6 or 7 years ago, I picked up a Pentax K1000 manual SLR in tip-top condition, with lens, and fully serviced, for about $300 Canadian from a local camera repair shop. Recently, I thought it'd be fun to add a rangefinder camera to my arsenal, but I'm discouraged by the prices I've been seeing. Leicas are out of the question; this is just a hobby and no 35mm still camera is worth that kind of money to me. Someone suggested some of the Voigtlander rangemasters might be good "entry-level" models, but from what I've seen, even those are quite expensive ($800 and up). The old Soviet cameras I've seen on eBay and elsewhere seem reasonably priced, but as some have put it, buying one of these is a bit like playing "Russian roulette"; you may get a good one, or you may not.

Why are rangefinder cameras so much more expensive than SLRs? It's counterintuitive to me, since the rangefinders seem mechanically simpler than SLRs. Is there a rangefinder equivalent to the Pentax K1000?

Try looking at compact 35mm rangefinders that don't have interchangeable lenses. The Olympus XA, the Canonet series (the QL17 G-III is "in vogue"), the Yashica Electro 35 G/GS/GT/GTN/GSN/CC, Olympus Trip/35RC, etc. are all good, inexpensive choices.

Hear, hear - go for a fixed lens. The Olympus 35SP is an excellent camera with a fast lens, and I picked up mine from a dealer for £80 (a K1000 with 50mm goes for around the £120 mark - this model is always overpriced, especially when compared with the better MX)

From your Post I assume you are asking about 'used' rangefinders and 35mm specifically.
The simple reason is that it is supply and demand. The rangefinder was never a big seller and the company that sold the most 35mm's was Leitz/Leica. These cameras and especially the M series were extremely well made, did not have as many moving parts as SLR's and have surpassed the test of time.
A new Leica costs lots even if had at a substantial discount so that causes the value of used Leica equipment to remain high. As the man once said, they aren't making anymore and for Leica that may well be true in a few years when demand for the M7/MP finally ends.-Dick

There's no simple reason to explain whey some cameras cost so much, but in general those systems that were made for the pros carried higher price tags. Initially, it was the Leica and Zeiss Ikon Contax and later included the two Japanese cameras that began as copies of them (Canon and Nikon S).

German made cameras still tend to cost more than their Japanese counterparts, even used. The Nikon S is an exception, as they are sought by collectors, as well, which usually results in the prices rising.

There are other rangefinders that are more reasonably priced, and as others suggest, look for a fixed-lens cameras. Note that many of these will need to be serviced, and the Japanese cameras will need to have new foam seals. There are many smaller cameras from the mid-1970s, while those will manual-exposure controls tend to come from the 1960s.

Igor_P said:

Why are rangefinder cameras so much more expensive than SLRs? It's counterintuitive to me, since the rangefinders seem mechanically simpler than SLRs.

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That's actually one of the main reasons. There are many mechanically simple (and therefore reliable and also maintained) RFs that date way back fifty years or more that are still in routine use.

Another reason is inherent to simple RF lens design... there are many fabulous RF lenses that date way back, and the more high-quality lenses you can mount on a camera body, the higher will be the value of the camera (generally speaking).

There are of course also some less rational factors affecting the price of certain RFs... suffice it to say that a camera is worth what people will pay for it. That's just the way the market works.

Anyway, as noted above, there are plenty of very low cost, excellent RFs, ranging form the ~$50 XAs and canonets etc. Then there are the coupled-RF graphic 4x5 press cameras, currently running ~$200-400 or so. I have many RFs, ranging in price from $25 to $2k, and I love 'em and use them all.

Inexpensive interchangeable lens rangefinders were common in the last half of the 50's.

Most were Japanese - Minolta ("Super A"?), Konica (?), Walz, Longines (?), Aires (?) - but the only ones still found in quantity are the American Argus C3 and the German Agfa Ambi Silette. The lens mounts were proprietary and most had only had 3 lenses available for them. Generally they had a behind-the-lens leaf shutter in the body. Towards the end of this mini-era fixed-lens cameras were being advertised as superior to interchangeable-lens cameras.

The interchangeable lens feature went away for several reasons; Most buyers never bought another lens - explaining the rarity of accessory lenses for these cameras; Coupled light meters came on the scene, along with some sort of automatic exposure, and the linkages were much more easily done if the lens wasn't interchangeable; Large aperture lenses, f1.7 or so, became the norm making behind the lens shutters no longer feasible.

The result was the fixed-lens rangefinder of the 60's from Minolta, Konica, Yashica & Co.

Retina IIa is a fantastic little folding fixed lens rangefinder... (Or a II/III C/c).

Leica's have been pricy, allway's.

If you want cheap look at the russian ones and keep some money at hand for CLA and repair.
Some are good, some are bad, you need to be lucky, but at least you would have interchangeable lenses.....
And other wise, as mentioned, the fixed lenses RF's with good lenses.
I have a Rollei 35S and an Olympus XA2 that I realy like.
I bought the Rollei 35S new over 25 years ago, it traveled with me all over the world.

Peter

Leica has been always expensive even used. Check out Konica Auto S and some of the Yashica RF's.

Jeff

Igor_P said:

Someone suggested some of the Voigtlander rangemasters might be good "entry-level" models, but from what I've seen, even those are quite expensive ($800 and up).

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That's insane. They are not that much new. Shop around and you will find used C/V RF's for $250 - $350....new ~$550.

Good luck.

Bob

rpsawin said:

That's insane. They are not that much new. Shop around and you will find used C/V RF's for $250 - $350....new ~$550.

Good luck.

Bob

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I'm not sure what a rangemaster is, but C/V doesn't make the only Voigtlander rangefinders. There are many classic Voigtlanders, and several models of their older medium format folders are easily $500 and higher on the used market.

I think people need to clarify terms and models before talking prices. BTW, I bought a couple of Cosina Voigtlander Bessa T bodies new for $185 a few years ago. That's not very expensive in my book for a decent manual M-mount body, even if they do need auxilary finders.

Lee

budrichard said:

From your Post I assume you are asking about 'used' rangefinders and 35mm specifically.

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Used and new. Yes, 35mm specifically. I wasn't aware there were rangefinders in other film formats.

Lee L said:

I'm not sure what a rangemaster is...

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It's a typo, that's what it is. I meant rangefinder.

rpsawin said:

That's insane. They are not that much new. Shop around and you will find used C/V RF's for $250 - $350....new ~$550.

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That's $550 US, I assume (I'm in Canada and our dollars are worth less, though the chasm seems to be closing right now).

$550, and not including lenses, shipping, or sales tax. I don't believe you can buy a C/V RF new with lens for under $1000 US (if you can, I'd sure like to know where).

I thought that SLRs were mechanically simpler. I read somewhere that they were cheaper to build, contained less parts and were easier to maintain. I would think a rangefinder, especially with it's prisms and things, would be very complex.

In Boston two years ago I picked up a Leica screwmount camera (body only) for $240. A Nikon N80 was $250, and K1000s were a little less. To me, at least, the choice was obvious.

Maybe it's only in Japan, but Leica LTM gear has really come down in price recently. I picked up a IIIa for $190 the other day. I agree about Voigtlander prices: $800 is too much for me. M mount gear will always be expensive as it's so popular. According to the local camera stores, the Chinese and Koreans are getting into Leica now.

Lee L said:

I think people need to clarify terms and models before talking prices.

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Yes, reading over my original post, I wasn't as clear on that as I could've been.

When I mentioned the C/V RF's, I meant the models that are currently available new.

As far as Russian RF's, well, you can only buy used ones AFAIK, so there's no need to specify it.

And as far as Leica, used or new, it's out of my budget, so there's no need to talk about their prices.

I guess I'm just surprised that with several decent entry-level manual SLR's from companies like Nikon and Cosina selling new in the $200-300 range, there isn't an RF camera that costs the same.

archphoto said:

Leica's have been pricy, allway's.

If you want cheap look at the russian ones and keep some money at hand for CLA and repair.
Some are good, some are bad, you need to be lucky, but at least you would have interchangeable lenses.....
And other wise, as mentioned, the fixed lenses RF's with good lenses.

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How easy is it to get RF's -- either the Russian ones or the fixed-lens ones from the 70's -- fixed? I know a few shops that will fix just about any 35mm SLR you can bring in, but they won't touch RF's.

Igor_P said:

Is there a rangefinder equivalent to the Pentax K1000?

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Zorki

The link below is for a site that mainly deals with the different Olympus models, but it has info on other brands as well.

http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~yue/misc/rangfndr.html

Oh, and you have to remember to take the lenscap off and remember you've got a filter in place when you are metering, both mistakes I made only last week!

Igor, if you're looking to buy some used cameras in Montréal, have a look at that antique store that's on the North side of Sherbrooke just east of Bleury/Parc (right in front of the stop for the 80 bus). It's got a yellow sign. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but if you go inside, you'll find a smorgasbord of cameras. AAMOF, it's perhaps the biggest lot of used cameras I've ever seen in Montréal, and I've scrounged high and low for a few years. The condition is decent, and it could help you with your camera choice, since they have so much stuff. I've never bought from them, but it's worth a look.

In terms of cheap rangefinders, my Kiev 4a is a sweet little thing that cost me peanuts at Fedka and works like a charm. Plus, I used to put my Zeiss-Opton Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 on it for a while, until I had a moment of weakness and went for a nearly mint Contax IIa.

Also, Minolta Hi-Matic have great, luminous lenses (f/1.9), and can be had for a song (I had mine for 12$ !!). Most Japanese fixed-lens RFs are very cheap, and some Voigtlander RFs are not too expensive as well. If you prefer more modern ergonomics, used Bessa R can be had under 250$, and will take any M39 lens.

IloveTLRs said:

I thought that SLRs were mechanically simpler. I read somewhere that they were cheaper to build, contained less parts and were easier to maintain. I would think a rangefinder, especially with it's prisms and things, would be very complex.

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No, I think as a baseline it's rather the opposite. An SLR has the complexity of having to move the mirror, then release the shutter, wait for the shutter to close, then drop the mirror again; if you look in the guts of an SLR to see the mechanical linkages involved in doing that, they get pretty weird. The only thing that has to move in a rangefinder when the shutter is released is the shutter itself.

Obviously everything gets more complex as you add more bells and whistles, but in my limited experience, if you compare a basic manual SLR to a basic manual coupled RF, the RF has much simpler mechanics.

Maybe it's only in Japan, but Leica LTM gear has really come down in price recently. I picked up a IIIa for $190 the other day. I agree about Voigtlander prices: $800 is too much for me.

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Me too. I wish they'd bring back the Bessa-R or something close---it's almost exactly the camera I wish I had.

-NT

I think Keith (with others) has got it in terms of supply and demand. It also seems counter-intuitive to me that rangefinder lenses should be so expensive, particularly in the second-hand market, given their essential simplicity of design in comparison with SLR lenses, having no need of auto diaphragm control mechanisms or peculiar meter couplings. Interchangeable lens rangefinders are not mass market products in the way that SLRs are, and the range of focal lengths is more restricted at the tele end with 90-135 beginning to stretch it a bit.

That said, the R/F shooting experience is sufficiently different from the SLR experience to make it more appealing in spite of some of the apparent constraints. Chief among these appeals must be the absence of mirror slap, generally quieter shutter, and persistence of the viewfinder image through the exposure. If your favourite focal length is <= 90mm and close or macro is not your thing, then the appeal of a good R/F can be irresistible. I know from my own experience that the tyranny of reflex viewing held sway over me for far too long.

The suggestion to try out a fixed lens R/F is a good one, and better than it might appear at face value. In some ways, the constraint of a single lens choice can be more liberating than restricting. There's an embarrassment of riches in terms of choice from the 'golden age' of the seventies for this type of camera. I have no experience of the Canons or Minoltas or Konicas in R/F, but I know enough to take seriously the recommendations of others who do. Those I have experience of are the Olympus and Ricoh and Yashica lines, and you'd have to fight me to take my Oly 35RC away -- and I'd fight dirty over it. The Ricoh 500G/500GX is very similar, with the advantage of an extra slower shutter speed (8-500 compared to the 15-500 of the Oly). The Oly's lens is bitingly sharp, and the Rikenon has plenty of its own teeth. The Yashicas are physically bigger, and have lenses that can make many a modern P&S look like a toy. It was playing around with these compact R/Fs that introduced me, or rather re-introduced me, to the R/F as a shooting style, and I now use a Bessa R3A ; not a Leica perhaps, but the lens range is.

You can investigate a fixed-lens compact R/F for very little, with your only risk that of being reeled in.

Igor_P said:

That's $550 US, I assume (I'm in Canada and our dollars are worth less, though the chasm seems to be closing right now).

$550, and not including lenses, shipping, or sales tax. I don't believe you can buy a C/V RF new with lens for under $1000 US (if you can, I'd sure like to know where).

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Cameraquest.com

http://www.cameraquest.com/inventor.htm

They have a Bessa R2 body for $450, that leaves you with $550 to get a lens, which is easily done. You can get a 35mm f/2.5 for about $350, leaving you at about $800. I agree that it is a lot of money, but if K1000s wouldn't exactly be selling at $100 if they were still being made new.

As for why used rangefinders have not dropped down to nothing like used SLRs, supply and demand. There were never as many made and folks still want the things. Kinda like why large format gear has kept its value much better than medium format and 35mm SLR gear.

Oh, and here is a fun little fact. Based on the consumer price index, a Pentax K1000 priced at $299 when it was introduced in 1976 (including lens) would be equivalent to it costing $1118.85 in 2008. Just a little food for thought. Makes me realize how generous my father was when he dropped a couple hundred for a Pentax MX for me in around 1980.