Yes, no doubt a Rangefinder camera runs on a technology that is 75 years old I believe? Starting with Zeiss Contax & Leitz back then.
Well there has to be a reason why a 75 year old technology is still a live today wouldnt it? With the most prominent manufacturer, Leica still manufacturing it up till today & a big group of following of Rangefinder fans.
Collectors love the mechanisms of the Rangefinder cameras, owning one is just like owning a mechanical time piece.
Photography on it on the other hand is a fully different issue. I think photography on a Rangefinder is a test of one’s photographic skill. The most modern Rangefinder comes with at the most, aperture priority & a center weighted metering. Everything else is decided by the user.
There is no zoom, focusing is manual, exposure is manual. Such manual tool with no other assistance can only be operated by a user with in depth understanding of photography. I like the fact about Rangefinders being manual because when the picture screws up, it aint the camera’s fault, it is the user’s fault, simple fact being that it was all manually set by the user.
Manual photography like this really pushes the user to fully apply his/her knowledge of photography into shooting. Basically, you only worry about 3 things when shooting on a Rangefinder, shutter speeds, aperture, focusing. I like the fact that you just take it out of your bag, load the film, hey, ready to shoot. When shooting with an Rangefinder, the user is more concentrated on shooting rather then his settings. You know what the Rangefinder is doing, it is all you, set by you, shot by you not by some processing chip. There isnt a million buttons you have to go through punching before you are ready to shoot or sit through an entire weekend at home reading the manual trying to remember where are the settings are.
For a Range finder, be it Leica, Voigtlander, Zeiss, Konica etc. You just take it out of the box, load the film or memory card(in the case of the M8/M9), hey you are ready to shoot, you dont need a damn manual, you just apply what you know.
I dont understand why I need a brand spanking new product from Canon/Nikon/Sony/Pentax/Olympus to actually fantastic pictures. I shoot street, monsieur Henri Cartier-bresson shot street back in 1930s & his pictures still create an impact in the year 2010. I dont see why you need a modern day Boeing 747 outfitted controls camera to take excellent when this man, used a “stone age” photography tool back in the 1930s & created a wave. If he was able to do that, shouldnt we sit back & reflect on ourselves rather then heading out to purchase the latest gear that we think aids in photography? Stop the placebo. Get real.
Lenses for Rangefinders are generally optically in higher performance compared to DSLRs. I’ll leave Ken Rockwell from the below link to explain more in depth of that… Btw, for those tech junkies, yes, film is sharper than digital, there is no doubt about it.
The other thing I dont understand about users these days, I called this the “LCD Syndrome”. Apparently, most users just cant shoot without an LCD telling them how the picture turned out to be. F**k sake, there wasnt LCD’s 10 years ago but people still shot better than the crap that is going around these days. What makes you think that an LCD will aid you in anyway if you didnt have a good grounding on understanding photography?
Of course being a 75year technology, a Rangefinder does have its limitations like tele lenses or macro photography handicap compared to modern DSLRs but hey, doesnt your penis have limitations as well? Think about it……….
More from Ken Rockwell:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/rangefinder-vs-slr.htm
