Bye bye, rangefinders

Using a rangefinder camea brings back memories.

My first camera was a Kodak Pony II. After I got married I purchased a Minolta Hi-matic 11 and used it for years before going to Nikon and Nikkormat SLRs.

That is one of the main reasons I use my Leica IIIf.
 
Frontman said:
There are a lot of people trying to half-justify using a rangefinder by suggesting
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I don't know....

I tried but had no love for a lot of iocnic cameras (including Rolleis, Hassies etc.) RFs on the other hand are, for me a better tool. I feel more comfortable using them, seing around the frame, not going dark when you take the picture etc.
I would LOVE to have it the other way around,because these days, good SRL gear is dirt cheap, but I simply prefer RF's.
 
I don't half-justify rangefinders for any reason.

I Fully-Justify them with the fact that I like using them.
 
Right now I'm down to 2 cameras, a Bessa R2a rangefinder w/ Summar lens, and a Nikon SLR w/ a Leica R 90 Summicron lens. They're nothing alike, and the SLR w/ that Leica lens on it is big and heavy. Still, the 2 cameras can't compete w/ each other as they are for 2 different things. The rangefinder is for out and about, the SLR is for portraits. If I had to get rid of one it would be the SLR due to it's weight and size.
 
I can't imagine myself swapping lenses on RF, at least, anything longer than 50mm. Several framelines or add-on finders are...ummm, people who used them in their young years, still love them. For me RF is no-slap no-whirr tool, preferably small.

Regarding obsolescence, sometimes I feel whole photography is obsolete now - trend is to take snaps and clips and sometimes get rid of them even before reviewing or sharing.
 
BillBingham2 said:
Several reason, perhaps one of the best was because of capitalism. (;->
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Original question was anyone know reason why SLRs won. (Wilson Picket)

While there's no doubt that camera companies exist to sell you a camera, and this forces them to keep changing the camera they sell you... I think you're over-analyzing it (or maybe not...) Capitalism worked because people flocked to SLRs. If SLRs didn't offer some kind of advantage over rangefinders, they would have sat on a shelf, discounted, and it would have been a failure.

I don't know for sure, but I'd say zoom lenses had a lot to do with the SLR winning more than anything. The general public - even many pros, prefer to shoot with a zoom lens. This has carried over to the digital age. The shift was that you don't shoot indoors in ambient light with a fast lens wide open and slow shutter speeds with grainy high-speed or pushed film, silly! You shoot at f 5.6, at 1/125 with a flash. So expensive fast lenses didn't matter so much - and hey, you can have all those focal lengths rolled into one with a zoom! No carrying 5 lenses around with you, fumbling to take one off and put a new one on... just use a zoom! A RF focusing system can't accommodate zooms - so that was that...

But the switch to SLRs - with their slow zoom lenses and blinding indoor flash systems, really set photography back... A leap forward in technology, a leap backwards in aesthetics. Suddenly, instead of those evocative candids (even if they were by accident) taken in natural light with an unaware subject and a nice blurred background... you got awful posed shots with blown out foreground objects and everyone all uncomfortable and nervous...

Later, when rangefinders and fast primes were so out of fashion great kit could be had as cheap as chips, they were "rediscovered" along with fast primes, selective focus, black and white, D76 and Dektol - helped greatly along by the internets and sites like RFF....

Leica - philosphically at least, was right all along. The best photographs are made with natural light, with an unobtrusive quiet camera, and as fast and as good a piece of prime glass that you can get... a 35, a 50 ... (and really just one of these based on your personal preferences...) "maybe" something longer for the occasional portrait. That's it. That's all you need. (And why I sometimes laugh at the ridiculous lens collection some people have for the same camera system...)
 
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NickTrop said:
I don't know for sure, but I'd say zoom lenses had a lot to do with the SLR winning more than anything.
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Agreed! I wouldn't touch SLRs if there weren't zooms. I will confess -- 28-100/4 is my favourite zoom, incredibly versatile. Has anything I need for 90% of shots, well, except superwide and bright 50mm.
 
Leica - philosphically at least, was right all along. The best photographs are made with natural light, with an unobtrusive quiet camera, and as fast and as good a piece of prime glass that you can get... a 35, a 50 ... (and really just one of these based on your personal preferences...) "maybe" something longer for the occasional portrait. That's it. That's all you need.
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This philosophy is mostly where I am at this point with my photography.

I began as a high school yearbook photographer in the '70s shooting Pentax and Olympus SLRs. I had my own darkroom at home and was really into the photographic process. Life, career, and marriage intervened and I was away from photography (other than snapshots) for a long time. A change of careers brought me to education about 10 years ago; this coincided with my children becoming involved in organized sports. I picked up DSLRs (Nikon D70, then later D300). These cameras are in my opinion unequaled for sports and action photography.

In the last year a fortunate turn of events brought me to both film and digital rangefinders. I have fallen in love with the process of photography all over again. Beyond sports, my photography is mostly candids in low light and relatively tight quarters. (think schools). I appreciate that rangefinders are less intimidating and intrusive for my subjects. I love their size - it is not insignificant that 2 bodies and 6 lenses take up less space for me than 1 DSLR body and 2 zooms.

Now when I pick up a camera for fun, travel, or candids, it is a rangefinder 95% of the time.
 
Really, why one or the other? There are things RF's do better and things SLR's do better as well as things that View Cameras do better. So?

Once you run into the limitations of SLR's, I'll be glad to help...

;)

William
 
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