Advice on medium format rangefinders for a newbie

[Roger Hicks]

Forget TTL and there's lots of choice. I like the Graflex XL.

Insist on TTL and there's very little choice indeed.

Cheers,

R.

 

[al1966]

I recently got a Fuji GS645s, I went through all the options and though the mamiya 6/7 have a lot going for them I wanted as little weight as possible. The Fuji is light and from the results I have got the lens appears to be very sharp. You dont need an internal meter and as others have noted it will give you a lot more options the Mamiya press cameras go for good prices and a good meter can be had fairly cheaply. There are an awful lot of options open to you with a separate meter, the whole world of older folders for example. That being said the non ttl meter of the Fuji is accurate, as long as the meter is reading from the area being photographed it should do the job just as well, my mother shot loads of Kodachrome 25 with a camera that had a selenium meter on top, the slides are perfectly exposed, as good as the ones I shot using a Canon AE1p with TTL.

 

[mholody]

I appreciate everyone's advice. I now see that having a good TTL meter is not really important at all. I don't want to close myself off to strong cameras just because of that. Thanks!

 

[whitecat]

One comment on the Mamiya 7.........it's loud!

 

[Neare]

A more expensive option is the Bessa III, it has AE mode if that is what you're in to.

 

[mgilbuena]

If you don't mind an autofocus camera with the ability to use manual focus, check out the Fuji GA645zi. This is a medium format 6x4.5 camera with 35mm equivalent zoom range between 35 and 55. It has aperture-priority, total auto and manual focus modes.

It is a scale focus camera when in manual focus mode, however.

If you can forego the meter, you can check out the excellent Texas-Leicas. I have a Fuji GW690II which spits out beautiful negatives.

 

[deirdre]

There's also the other models in the FujiGA645 series, too.