Rangefinder ... why ?

[dee]

Simple musing - my Leica / Leica copies and kievs seem to provide a more direct window / connection onto my Autism deefused / deestorted world ... and I wondered why ?

It,s because the window is constant . It does not become blurred with focus , or change with different lenses - I have yet to buy a 35mm , but will simply allow for more around the picture ... and no zooms with their even worse '' changeability '' , which , for me = confusion and anxiety .

In a way , I prefer the separate '' magic '' split image rangefinder or the Leica II or my Fed Ig ''Leicas '' , just because one window is always uncluttered .

O.K. , ASD is wierd in that i don't resolve stuff properly , but I wonder if this simplicity and constancy is the general appeal of the rangefinder ?

dee

 

[BillBingham2]

I would add to it control. Simplicity, constancy and control I think are the three pillars that the industry is very lacking these days.

They will say that in DSLRs or PHDs you still have all the control that you had and they are right, but they sacrifice simplicity (over and over and over again it seems). If you learned on a FED 2, you can pick up a Leica M4-P or a Canon 7 and do quite well. Perhaps moving to a Nikon S2 might hard, but only till you figure out the focusing wheel. After that, you can add a Kiev to the list.

RFF = SCC!!!

B2 (;->

 

[mike goldberg]

Aha!... a new why RF Thread; love it. What I'm about to say may sound profound, and is NOT meant to. The influences are right here from RFF and a year of searching.

For Reflection... call it pre-visualizing, Joy in the work with a mechanical marvel in my hands, and feeling a part of Photographic History, it is B/W in a rangefinder camera.

C'est tout?
Mike

 

[dee]

Somehow ... I can look around a Leica II as well as through it ... it's not a size thing , maybe psychological , but the SLR demands that I focus through it ... it's similar with TTL metering - slave to the tiniest movement of the needle , and worse , LEDs ... a coupled or separate meter alleviates this ... it's something which has dawned upon me in the last year of using my new Leica-like ''babies ''
dee

 

[dee]

I think that i am agreeing with you Mike -
dee

 

[oscroft]

It,s because the window is constant . It does not become blurred with focus...

and

I can look around a Leica II as well as through it ... it's not a size thing , maybe psychological , but the SLR demands that I focus through it

Yes, I think both of those contribute to why I really like RF cameras (I've only been using them less then 2 years, after 35 years of SLRs). Those two features give a greater immediacy, I think - as if it's just me and the subject, and the camera is not in the way. I also feel as if I'm being less intrusive photographing people with an RF than with an SLR.

 

[noimmunity]

Simple musing - my Leica / Leica copies and kievs seem to provide a more direct window / connection onto my Autism deefused / deestorted world ... and I wondered why ?

It,s because the window is constant . It does not become blurred with focus , or change with different lenses - I have yet to buy a 35mm , but will simply allow for more around the picture ... and no zooms with their even worse '' changeability '' , which , for me = confusion and anxiety .

In a way , I prefer the separate '' magic '' split image rangefinder or the Leica II or my Fed Ig ''Leicas '' , just because one window is always uncluttered .

O.K. , ASD is wierd in that i don't resolve stuff properly , but I wonder if this simplicity and constancy is the general appeal of the rangefinder ?

dee

Although you have phrased it very modestly, it seems to me that you have neatly encapsulated that quality so elusive that Leica had to make it into a branding trademark: "my point of view".

There is a lot of wisdom about the specificity of the rangefinder view on this site, for which I feel immensely grateful. The centrality of the VF is what finally pushed me to go way overbudget and sell my Bessa R3A for a Zeiss Ikon.

I would be interested to hear--and especially see--you develop more the connection between ASD and a particular way of seeing/photography. A very long time ago I knew a professional photographer who shot a series on children with ASD, but he was always very frustrated by not being able to experience it himself.

But this inability--if you will permit me to philosophize--turns out to be something that we humans all share in common with each other, isn't it? We can never be sure if we have had the same experience as other people? In fact, we can never be sure what our experience exactly was, until we go through a process of reduction, exclusion, and refinement after the fact. The experience itself is always multiple and partially beyond ordered knowing.

Reading about ASD, its principal features are a series of unconventional boundaries between senses and types of behaviour. In this context, the split between RF and VF that many people (including myself sometimes) might find annoying could be something that just "makes sense".

As the world and our experience gets more and more ordered and structured by binary code, we are probably going to need more and more reminders of what experience is in the first place.

I just bought as a second body on ebay a camera that forces me to use separate VF and RF. But maybe it is going to be a lot more than a cheap second body to protect my investment in a Zeiss Ikon. Come to think of it, when I've used separate RF/VFs in the past, I've often gained something from it unexpectedly. The assurance of focus in that RF patch can be quite a lure(English)/leurre(French). Thanks for reminding me of this.

Jon

 

[ruben]

Ceirtainly I love zooms, but in terms of viewing the SLRs tend to isolate me from the surroundings. This can be thought as good or bad according to the user. For me it is bad.

Then the blackening of the mirror when moving, further isolates me from the scene at the crucial moment of firing.

At to this the kind slap on your cheek and ears, and you have an OM4Ti sleeping for years.

cheers,
Ruben

 

[amateriat]

You might need a calculator to tabulate the number of times I've used this word here, but I say it's the gestalt of the RF experience that keeps coming back to me: the "constant" viewfinder, yes. The elemental controls versus your usual morass of "features" on most any digital camera (even though I'm well-versed in dealing with most of them, I'm not crazy about them). Zoom lenses start out as seeming "convenient", but eventually get in the way more often than one might imagine (not true for everybody, of course, but I speak as someone who was a True Believer in zooms for a while in my SLR days). Knowing most of the characteristics of the film I'm loading in my cameras beats the gantlet of menus I usually have to hurdle in getting a digital body to do my bidding; it's usually easier for a casual snapshooter who knows of nothing but the desire for something "recognizable" in a captured image...this might be, in a way, what Tennessee Williams was getting at about artists versus common folk, and the apparent less-tortured state of the latter).

Put plainly: the RF experience, to me, is more direct, less distracting. (There's a "tastes great, less filling" joke here somewhere, but I'm ignoring it for now.)


- Barrett

 

[dee]

Autistically , rather than artistically , i love the deeliberation and ritual of my Leica , together with the continuity back to the beginning of miniature photography , freeing so many from the bulk of older cameras ...
I have deeficulty with any sense of belonging , or family etc - the Leica somehow links me , maybe not to ''people '' [ who seem kinda not real just movement / shapes / confusion to me ! ] but to the idea of snapshots in time - i seem to read an entire cultuer / language in old photos .. don't ask me what this means please ! Also , that my companion can be fixed almost indefinately helps settle me - many of my old friends are now silent shells or meter needles lay dormant , like the camera is hurt / dead ... can't cope with that ...
It has to be SAME , minor variations create both fascination - dee'sbelief ? and a little anxiety ... but ''NOT SAME '' - different shape feel pattern = anxiety and dee'stress - Zorki 1 , even Zorki S /Zenit S = same enough [ pick each up - it's SAME - it's not just eyes but all senses ]

Zorki 3 / 4 Fed 2 / 3 etc = NOT SAME = anxiety .

It gets worse !

Unfortunately rather awkwardly for collecting USSR cameras - my dee'slexia can't make sense of Cyrillic words ... so , my Leica pretenders are real , but my Zorki ! / Fed 1 are not real !!!

However , the breathtaking variety of re-imagined Leica - likes extends my oasis of quiet in , what to me , is noise / chaos .

... and I love the magic slide shows the cameras create ...

Sometimes i think that ASdee is just an extreme form of what is automatic to most .

dee

 

[mnmleung]

I was tossing up between getting a Fed and a Fed 2 and my Fed 2 arrived a couple of days ago. Having read this thread, I would like to try out a Fed where RF/VF are separate. I need to shoot with my new camera first ...


The mention of ASD reminded me of a documentary I saw on Dr Temple Grandin http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html

Thanks for the thread! Ming

 

[350D_user]

I was tossing up between getting a Fed and a Fed 2 and my Fed 2 arrived a couple of days ago. Having read this thread, I would like to try out a Fed where RF/VF are separate. I need to shoot with my new camera first ...

Having started on rangefinder cameras with a Leica Standard (no rangefinder, just a viewfinder), I was able to try a Leica IIIsumat (I can't remember the exact model). I took a quick dislike to the twin viewfinder/rangefinder setup it had. Look through one window, focus, look through the next... ugh, no thanks.

The all-on-one view/rangefinder cameras will do me nicely. If anyone's wondering how I cope with the Standard, hyperfocal focussing and the KMZ turret viewfinder setup works a treat.

 

[jky]

Recently brought both a DSLR and a RF to San Francisco. Usually just bring one or the other on a trip, but thought I'd play with both just for fun...
As much as I enjoy the DSLR (K10D) and the features it has (shake reduction & the ability to change ISO especially), I still prefer the M6 much more. I guess it's the experience really - the bright vf, instantaneous shutter, size, handling, no shutter black out, no tunnel vision.
Don't get me wrong, the K10d was (is) a great tool, but the process of taking photos with the RF is much more enjoyable.

 

[dee]

thanks for the Temple Grandin link , Ming - I tink in picture too - i can tell when a spse room is ''happy '' or not - and have made a career as an Interior Designer doing just that !!! Though it's not quite how it works ... i am deestubed by broken patterns - whereas normals can overide this or not notice this , I can't - to me , a Leica IIIc is a broken Leica II - 'cos the L II is the imprinted correct model !!! OOPs !!
if the Leica II has wrong , ie , nonesense Cyrillic Zorki / Fed ''writing '', it's broken , but a Leica engraved Zorki or Fed is accepted !!
Just an example as to how ''reality '' can be twisted inside out !

dee

 

[dee]

Dave - you don't have to USE the rangefinder !- but with a combined one , the irritation is there all the time [ I can block out the spot on my Kiev very easily ! ]
Though the Leica standard has a kind of minimalist simplicity , I can't judge distance at all !
dee

 

[literiter]

There is something about the esthetic of a Leica rangefinder camera. No question. That is why the prices have become almost exclusionary.

I attended a gathering of like minded "photographers" a few years ago. It was at a gentleman's home In a nice part of the city. We were pretty well into some brandy and had consumed a good portion of the cheese and crackers when the conversation turned to the inevitable discussion of rangefinder vs slr.

At one point the host brought out his prize, a Leica iiif. A very nice one, with a case and a extra lens. It was set on a table where it could be admired.

We all admired the thing, no one even touched it. It sat resplendent on the host's table. We became quiet and perhaps a little reverent. Oskar's ghost hovered above it like glowing cigar smoke.

Then the host's lovely young daughter came in. She was about twenty years old, well educated and quite brash. The young woman looked around the table at us silly old farts and asked "Do you guys get excited over other tools too, like maybe electric drills?"

The wretched child.....

 

[Jocko]

If you'd been looking at a shoe, she'd have understood

 

[dee]

I have recently been fortunate enough to aquire 2x black Leica II nickel Elmars , 3 x Leica IIIc and 1 x Leica III f bodies , from selling old toy cars on e-bay ... OK it's so OTT , but they calm my dee's order - evn if the IIIc / IIIf are not as real as my llovely 1932/3 1st / 2nd batch Leica IIs . All are very good , but have minor dints etc which mean collectors let them alone for me !!!
I actually have very little income , but somehow , money gained from e-bay does not
seem real - and it's recycling anyway
dee

 

[350D_user]

Dave - you don't have to USE the rangefinder !- but with a combined one , the irritation is there all the time [ I can block out the spot on my Kiev very easily ! ]

True. Having grown up with an SLR though, I'm used to having some focussing aid in the one and only viewfinder.

Though the Leica standard has a kind of minimalist simplicity , I can't judge distance at all !
dee

I'm hopeless at guessing distances, I have to use a known working hyperfocal setting. Using a 3.5cm lens, setting the lens to 10m or 20m, setting the aperture to around f9 or smaller, I get results that are in focus.

 

[dee]

I started with a simple camera with no rangefinder but aperture / shutter control , the went on to SLRs - initially Chinon / Prinxflex , the Minolta SRT to XD7 [ XD 11 ] , then it all got confusing / electronic / plastic ... I get what you mean about SLR focusing though - it is easier ...

But there was always something in the way of the view ... and , I think that the smaller '' window '' of my Leica II and pretenders helps with this ...

dee