NickTrop
Veteran
Ah... cameras. From, say, the 50's (when Japan got in on the act) - till this day, scores venerable suppliers - Pentax, Olympus, Yashica, Nikon, Canon, Leica, Kodak, Fuji, Contax, Minolta, Mamiya, Panasonic, Sony, (now) Samsung, Hasselblad, Bronica, Cosina, Casio... etc. have been beating each others brains out - some to the death (RIP Yashica), in the pit of pure monopolistic competition, each trying to win the hard-earned dollar of those wanting to take pictures... Consumer manufacturers struggled to introduce quality and features to compete with higher end models, while struggling to make a buck off their products. Higher end camera makers struggled to stay ahead of consumer and prosumer products to justify their higher prices. Some, seemingly, relied mainly on marketing and "perpetuating the myth" to give the illusion of superiority and price justification.
Overlooked - at least initially, with the advent of digital, was that segment of hobbyist who posts on this forum. Folks who are into "street photography" - those who want to take candid documentary-style photos of their environment unobtrusively, were largely ignored. This type of photography requires good high ISO performance, a fast fixed lens, a quite shutter, and a reasonably unobtrusive camera. These requirements were largely met by the overlooked and abandoned decades ago "rangefinder" camera, which was supplanted by SLRs in both the professional and consumer market. SLRs worked with both primes and zooms, and the availability of powerful and inexpensive flash units was enough to "do in" the rangefinder system. Except, even going back the this era, these tools were the antithesis of what a tool for street photography should be.
Likewise, digital tools - for quite some time, were simply inadequate for street photography. In a sense, they "picked up where the film SLRs left off" from the git'go. In conjunction with the fact that many of the digital tools didn't initially match film quality, poor high ISO performance (requiring over-reliance on flash use), insistence on manufacturing slow zoom lenses, tenancy to be too large and noisy, they were also initially priced too high for many amateur budgets. This meant that many of us were quite happy to continue to shoot film. Many of us, rediscovered the forgotten "rangefinder" cameras as street photography tools with their quiet shutters, fast lenses, and unobtrusive designs.
Digital simply didn't give us what we needed. Didn't matter, the vast majority of consumers - and it's this "vast majority" that suppliers are mainly concerned with, abandoned their 35mm cameras - from point-n-shooters to SLRs (rangefinders had largely already been abandoned) in favor of filmless digicams and DSLRs. However, something happened over the years. In efforts to improve their products, the introduction of incremental technological improvements, and in seeking ways to further differentiate their products - monopolistic competition is a wonderful thing... perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, a few of these cameras are starting to meet or exceed the requirements of the street photographer. One of these is the recently released Samsung NX10. Another recently introduced camera that fits the bill is the Nikon D5000.
So good, in fact, are a few of these cameras that the question must be posed... are these actually better tools for street photograhy than rangefinders? Consider...
1. Unobtrusiveness - Does Size Really Matter? Yeah, to a Degree.
Poor Oscar Barnack. Going hiking as an asthmatic with a giant accordian-sized large format camera. Had to be tough. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so he designed a camera for himself that used 35mm movie film in a small body, and soon after came fast lenses. And so, the "street photography" tool was born. But are we obsessed with size? And how much does size matter with respect to unobtrusiveness? To me, cameras come in sizes comparable to coffee cup sizes at Starbucks: 1. Shot glass 2. Small 3. Medium 4. Large. In camera terms: 1. Pocketable/shot glass (you can slip it in a pocket comfortably) 2. Palm-sized/Wrist strap-able/small (not pocketable but light and easy to carry with a wrist strap) 3. Neck-strap/medium (requires a neckstrap, too heavy for wrist strap) 4. Tripod/studio (Kiev 60's, large format, larger full frame DSLRS)
The best cameras for street photography fall into categories 1, and 2. A camera on a wrist strap is less obtrusive than having a camera dangling from your neck setting comfortably on your beer belly (- and I did say you beer belly. I don't have one of those, as I take care of myself. Most of you, however, have this...I'm sure.) To argue over the slight weight and milimeter differences between cameras that fall into this category is like the Samgung NX, the 4/3'ds cameras, or even a baby DSLR like the D5000 is silly. They all fall into category "2". Small/wrist strap. This is like arguing over the "small" coffee cup at Starbucks being 3 mm larger than the small of some other coffee shop and claiming some advantage. They're both "small". Can you comfortably walk around with it on an unobtrusive wrist strap? Too big to fit in a pocket? Then it's "small". The ergonomics of this camera, overall, is terrific. I knew it as soon as I picked it up and thought it handled better than the Oly 4/3's in the camera shop. No surprise it won the 2010 RED Dot award for product design: http://www.nikon.com/about/news/2010/0330_reddot_01.htm
Unobtrusiveness Revisited - the Swivel Screen
... So, the D5000 is "small" like most rangefinders. But the most obtrusive thing about a camera is not its size. It's the act of putting the camera to your eye that draws attention. The D5000 is one of the few cameras that has a swivel screen. Flick it out, shoot from the waist (or other odd angles). I adore the swivel screen on this camera. It not only allows for much less obtrusiveness, it opens up compositional capabilitys that traditional film cameras simply don't have, can't have. Some have criticized the slow (and it is) contrast auto focus of this camera when using the Liveview/swivel screen. Bah! The fools! Haven't they ever heard "f5.6 and be there"? Pre-focus out to 10-20 feet or so, set the lens to "maunal focus" so the camera doesn't refocus, set the aperture to a lower setting - 5.6, 8 for larger DoF - shoot.
Quiet
Like the Konica Hexar, the D5000 has a "Quiet Mode". Well it works. Ken Rockwell raves about it (though it's not as quiet, imo, as he thinks - YMMV). My camera is always set to "quite mode".
"The D5000 in Quiet Mode is even a tiny little bit quieter than a Leica M7, which is the cloth-shuttered rangefinder camera used by modern journalists when they need a quiet camera... The D5000 in Quiet Mode is far quieter than any digital Nikon SLR...and even a little quieter than the Nikon SP and Leica M3 mechanical cloth-shuttered rangefinder cameras from the 1950s. I'm not just making this up..."
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000.htm
Finally! A Fast Affordable 50! Yeah!!!
I've waited a long time for DSLRs to start coming out with a 50mm equiv. fast 50 prime. This is what intially attracted me the the Samsung NX - its 30mm prime. Finally, last year, Nikon came out with a 35mm f1.8 lens that gives me a 53mm fov. This lens is reasonably priced at $200. (I bought the camera body with this prime lens. It might be the only lens I ever use for this camera, though the lure of the old used Nikon portrait glass is calling...) Simply, this is the best lens I've ever used wide open. It's much more flare resistant than old glass, thanks to modern coating, sharp, good contrast, and good (but not the best) bokeh. Autofocus is instant and completely silent. The build quality, however, doesn't compare to the classic lenses of yesteryear. This lens was Nikon's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Henri Cartier-Bresson's birth". (Rolls eyes, shameless marketeers...) Lots of reviews of this lens, here's Rockwell's take, since I have his site tabbed: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35mm-f18.htm
Quality
The D5000 won the DIWA Gold Award in 2009. It uses the same sensor technology as the D90. DXOMark rates the camera as follows, compared to other cameras in their lab tests:
-------------Leica M8----------Leica M9----------Nikon D5000
DxO Sensor ----59.4-------------68.6-----------------72
Color Depth ----21.1-------------22.5-----------------22.7
Dynamic Range-11.3-------------11.7-----------------12.5
Low Light ISO - 663--------------884-----------------868
I, of course, proved these as basis for comparison not to Leica bash. But this camera, which I paid $470 for refurbed (body only) compares quited favorably - image qualitywise, to the Leica M8 and full frame M9, at least according to these lab tests.
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image-Quality-Database
Low Light/ISO
Simply great. Especially with an F1.8 prime.
... this f/1.8 lens on a D40 gathers at least as much light at ISO 1,600 as a 50mm f/0.90 lens would on ISO 400 35mm film with about the same noise or less, and not even Leica makes an f/0.90 lens. If you have ten grand, Leica does make a slower f/0.95 lens would be a fair compromise, except that there is nothing in focus at f/0.95 due to the nonexistent depth of field. A 35mm lens at f/1.8 has much more depth-of-field.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35mm-f18.htm
One of the key innovations of digital is variable ISO. ISO in the film world is fixed, so aperture and shutter speed is "a slave" to whatever the film speed is in your camera. Not so with digital - a big, overlooked advantage, in favor of digital over film. This would not be such a huge deal if ISO 1600 or even 3200 was unusable. It isn't - it's quite good imo, definitely usable.
The other advantage is auto white balance for color. Color film requires color temp filters that have 2-4X filter factors, cutting your 1600 film speed down to 400. This is also a fixed setting. White balance is variable, adjustable to whatever the color temp is for whatever setting and without filter factors cutting down the film speed.
Motion Capture
I posted about this capability here. Is it time to redefine the decisive moment?
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87639&highlight=Decisive+moment
This is an important capability to me, and Nikon did a fine job with its implemention with standard MJPEG codec and 24P...
In conclusion, the Nikon D5000 is an affordable, small, very quiet camera with a swivel screen that allows for "shooting from the hip", motion capture abilities, auto white balance, variable ISO that's usable to 3200. In conjunction with a fast 35mm prime, and ability to shoot 100's of shots at "near 35mm" film quality... have cameras like the D5000 and Samsung NX10 finally eclipsed the venerable rangefinder we all adore as photographic tools for street photography? Is the appeal of the rangefinder, at this point, mostly an emotional, rather than practical one?
Overlooked - at least initially, with the advent of digital, was that segment of hobbyist who posts on this forum. Folks who are into "street photography" - those who want to take candid documentary-style photos of their environment unobtrusively, were largely ignored. This type of photography requires good high ISO performance, a fast fixed lens, a quite shutter, and a reasonably unobtrusive camera. These requirements were largely met by the overlooked and abandoned decades ago "rangefinder" camera, which was supplanted by SLRs in both the professional and consumer market. SLRs worked with both primes and zooms, and the availability of powerful and inexpensive flash units was enough to "do in" the rangefinder system. Except, even going back the this era, these tools were the antithesis of what a tool for street photography should be.
Likewise, digital tools - for quite some time, were simply inadequate for street photography. In a sense, they "picked up where the film SLRs left off" from the git'go. In conjunction with the fact that many of the digital tools didn't initially match film quality, poor high ISO performance (requiring over-reliance on flash use), insistence on manufacturing slow zoom lenses, tenancy to be too large and noisy, they were also initially priced too high for many amateur budgets. This meant that many of us were quite happy to continue to shoot film. Many of us, rediscovered the forgotten "rangefinder" cameras as street photography tools with their quiet shutters, fast lenses, and unobtrusive designs.
Digital simply didn't give us what we needed. Didn't matter, the vast majority of consumers - and it's this "vast majority" that suppliers are mainly concerned with, abandoned their 35mm cameras - from point-n-shooters to SLRs (rangefinders had largely already been abandoned) in favor of filmless digicams and DSLRs. However, something happened over the years. In efforts to improve their products, the introduction of incremental technological improvements, and in seeking ways to further differentiate their products - monopolistic competition is a wonderful thing... perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, a few of these cameras are starting to meet or exceed the requirements of the street photographer. One of these is the recently released Samsung NX10. Another recently introduced camera that fits the bill is the Nikon D5000.
So good, in fact, are a few of these cameras that the question must be posed... are these actually better tools for street photograhy than rangefinders? Consider...
1. Unobtrusiveness - Does Size Really Matter? Yeah, to a Degree.
Poor Oscar Barnack. Going hiking as an asthmatic with a giant accordian-sized large format camera. Had to be tough. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so he designed a camera for himself that used 35mm movie film in a small body, and soon after came fast lenses. And so, the "street photography" tool was born. But are we obsessed with size? And how much does size matter with respect to unobtrusiveness? To me, cameras come in sizes comparable to coffee cup sizes at Starbucks: 1. Shot glass 2. Small 3. Medium 4. Large. In camera terms: 1. Pocketable/shot glass (you can slip it in a pocket comfortably) 2. Palm-sized/Wrist strap-able/small (not pocketable but light and easy to carry with a wrist strap) 3. Neck-strap/medium (requires a neckstrap, too heavy for wrist strap) 4. Tripod/studio (Kiev 60's, large format, larger full frame DSLRS)
The best cameras for street photography fall into categories 1, and 2. A camera on a wrist strap is less obtrusive than having a camera dangling from your neck setting comfortably on your beer belly (- and I did say you beer belly. I don't have one of those, as I take care of myself. Most of you, however, have this...I'm sure.) To argue over the slight weight and milimeter differences between cameras that fall into this category is like the Samgung NX, the 4/3'ds cameras, or even a baby DSLR like the D5000 is silly. They all fall into category "2". Small/wrist strap. This is like arguing over the "small" coffee cup at Starbucks being 3 mm larger than the small of some other coffee shop and claiming some advantage. They're both "small". Can you comfortably walk around with it on an unobtrusive wrist strap? Too big to fit in a pocket? Then it's "small". The ergonomics of this camera, overall, is terrific. I knew it as soon as I picked it up and thought it handled better than the Oly 4/3's in the camera shop. No surprise it won the 2010 RED Dot award for product design: http://www.nikon.com/about/news/2010/0330_reddot_01.htm
Unobtrusiveness Revisited - the Swivel Screen
... So, the D5000 is "small" like most rangefinders. But the most obtrusive thing about a camera is not its size. It's the act of putting the camera to your eye that draws attention. The D5000 is one of the few cameras that has a swivel screen. Flick it out, shoot from the waist (or other odd angles). I adore the swivel screen on this camera. It not only allows for much less obtrusiveness, it opens up compositional capabilitys that traditional film cameras simply don't have, can't have. Some have criticized the slow (and it is) contrast auto focus of this camera when using the Liveview/swivel screen. Bah! The fools! Haven't they ever heard "f5.6 and be there"? Pre-focus out to 10-20 feet or so, set the lens to "maunal focus" so the camera doesn't refocus, set the aperture to a lower setting - 5.6, 8 for larger DoF - shoot.
Quiet
Like the Konica Hexar, the D5000 has a "Quiet Mode". Well it works. Ken Rockwell raves about it (though it's not as quiet, imo, as he thinks - YMMV). My camera is always set to "quite mode".
"The D5000 in Quiet Mode is even a tiny little bit quieter than a Leica M7, which is the cloth-shuttered rangefinder camera used by modern journalists when they need a quiet camera... The D5000 in Quiet Mode is far quieter than any digital Nikon SLR...and even a little quieter than the Nikon SP and Leica M3 mechanical cloth-shuttered rangefinder cameras from the 1950s. I'm not just making this up..."
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000.htm
Finally! A Fast Affordable 50! Yeah!!!
I've waited a long time for DSLRs to start coming out with a 50mm equiv. fast 50 prime. This is what intially attracted me the the Samsung NX - its 30mm prime. Finally, last year, Nikon came out with a 35mm f1.8 lens that gives me a 53mm fov. This lens is reasonably priced at $200. (I bought the camera body with this prime lens. It might be the only lens I ever use for this camera, though the lure of the old used Nikon portrait glass is calling...) Simply, this is the best lens I've ever used wide open. It's much more flare resistant than old glass, thanks to modern coating, sharp, good contrast, and good (but not the best) bokeh. Autofocus is instant and completely silent. The build quality, however, doesn't compare to the classic lenses of yesteryear. This lens was Nikon's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Henri Cartier-Bresson's birth". (Rolls eyes, shameless marketeers...) Lots of reviews of this lens, here's Rockwell's take, since I have his site tabbed: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35mm-f18.htm
Quality
The D5000 won the DIWA Gold Award in 2009. It uses the same sensor technology as the D90. DXOMark rates the camera as follows, compared to other cameras in their lab tests:
-------------Leica M8----------Leica M9----------Nikon D5000
DxO Sensor ----59.4-------------68.6-----------------72
Color Depth ----21.1-------------22.5-----------------22.7
Dynamic Range-11.3-------------11.7-----------------12.5
Low Light ISO - 663--------------884-----------------868
I, of course, proved these as basis for comparison not to Leica bash. But this camera, which I paid $470 for refurbed (body only) compares quited favorably - image qualitywise, to the Leica M8 and full frame M9, at least according to these lab tests.
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image-Quality-Database
Low Light/ISO
Simply great. Especially with an F1.8 prime.
... this f/1.8 lens on a D40 gathers at least as much light at ISO 1,600 as a 50mm f/0.90 lens would on ISO 400 35mm film with about the same noise or less, and not even Leica makes an f/0.90 lens. If you have ten grand, Leica does make a slower f/0.95 lens would be a fair compromise, except that there is nothing in focus at f/0.95 due to the nonexistent depth of field. A 35mm lens at f/1.8 has much more depth-of-field.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35mm-f18.htm
One of the key innovations of digital is variable ISO. ISO in the film world is fixed, so aperture and shutter speed is "a slave" to whatever the film speed is in your camera. Not so with digital - a big, overlooked advantage, in favor of digital over film. This would not be such a huge deal if ISO 1600 or even 3200 was unusable. It isn't - it's quite good imo, definitely usable.
The other advantage is auto white balance for color. Color film requires color temp filters that have 2-4X filter factors, cutting your 1600 film speed down to 400. This is also a fixed setting. White balance is variable, adjustable to whatever the color temp is for whatever setting and without filter factors cutting down the film speed.
Motion Capture
I posted about this capability here. Is it time to redefine the decisive moment?
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87639&highlight=Decisive+moment
This is an important capability to me, and Nikon did a fine job with its implemention with standard MJPEG codec and 24P...
In conclusion, the Nikon D5000 is an affordable, small, very quiet camera with a swivel screen that allows for "shooting from the hip", motion capture abilities, auto white balance, variable ISO that's usable to 3200. In conjunction with a fast 35mm prime, and ability to shoot 100's of shots at "near 35mm" film quality... have cameras like the D5000 and Samsung NX10 finally eclipsed the venerable rangefinder we all adore as photographic tools for street photography? Is the appeal of the rangefinder, at this point, mostly an emotional, rather than practical one?
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