Hexar RF - What a nice paperweight

[Pablito]

This thread cracks me up. Tell me about a camera that is perfect?

That's not the point. Even some owners of the most statistically unreliable stuff (cars, cameras, whatever) will never experience a problem. Individually your good experience is as insignificant as my own bad experience with the HRF (impossible to repair, and not for lack of parts...)

However, if you talk to professional camera dealers (those who cater to professionals) or pro level repair shops, or of you talk to long-time professional photographers who have tried to use this camera day in, day out for journalism or other pro work, you will find that the vast majority of these folks don't take the HRF seriously due to reliability issues. Statistically, the HRF is more likely to fail than the alternatives, though any individual's experience may not conform to the statistics.

IMO, the OP has found the best use for his HRF; a paperweight! 😀

 

[Pablito]

Asked a repairman here in Switzerland to adjust the RF vertically. Got it back with the comment that he cannot do better as the adjustment mechanism is not up to critical adjustment requirements (that is not stating a fact, just his opinion).

THAT IS WHAT THE KONICA FACTORY TECHNICIAN TOLD ME HERE IN THE USA

 

[raid]

I am happy with my Hexar RF. I do not see any focusing problems or any other problems with this camera. I sold a Hexar AF to get a Hexar RF.

 

[johannielscom]

I could never bond with the Hexar RF, so it had to go. It did not give me the feeling it would be reliable.

Asked a repairman here in Switzerland to adjust the RF vertically. Got it back with the comment that he cannot do better as the adjustment mechanism is not up to critical adjustment requirements (that is not stating a fact, just his opinion).

The camera seem to have been sort of quick shot of a company, which did not have long standing experience in the field of RFs. The whole story around the bayonet is just so awkward. Just like a lot of other consumer products no one really cares around mid-term to long-term service.

I knew the Hexar story of course before I bought one. But sometimes the guts feeling is just a guts feeling 🙄

@Tom: As you got it serviced by WvM: What did you ask him to do? How can he possibly adjust the flange distance and send the camera back without doing a focussing sanity check? That seems to be beyond me. I'd ask him to fix that, actually.

Cheers
Ivo

P.S. The Hexar actually got replaced with its antipole: an M3. Serviceable legacy ...

Untrue. Konica made the III, IIIa and IIIm in 1958 and they were serious competition for the Leica M3 at the time. They had a 1:1 viewfinder!

 

[Moriturii]

However, if you talk to professional camera dealers (those who cater to professionals) or pro level repair shops, or of you talk to long-time professional photographers who have tried to use this camera day in, day out for journalism or other pro work, you will find that the vast majority of these folks don't take the HRF seriously due to reliability issues. Statistically, the HRF is more likely to fail than the alternatives, though any individual's experience may not conform to the statistics.

[Source Needed]

"Confirmation Bias;
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias, myside bias or verification bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and remember information selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. "

If you want to prove that anything you say has any sort of validity, you should do a survey with users, and sample size should be no less then 5000-10000 "signatures" for good or bad. Good luck.

 

[Photon42]

Untrue. Konica made the III, IIIa and IIIm in 1958 and they were serious competition for the Leica M3 at the time. They had a 1:1 viewfinder!

... but no interchangeable lenses. To my knowledge they did not continue producing new models, apart from the late RF. That's what I meant.

 

[Mephiloco]

I just sold my M5 and still have a Bessa R and an M2, and somewhere I have a IIIc (left at a crawfish boil about a year ago and haven't gotten around to going to get it). I've been shooting with the M2 even though the R is a much better camera in my opinion.

Despite having an inferior rangefinder patch and being plastic, the Bessa R just works. It's louder, it has a faster shutter, a meter, superior rewind, weighs less, etc but it always works. My Leica's ALWAYS need work. It feels like every month or so the vertical alignment is off on my M2 (not a problem to fix, but a little annoying). There are some other issues that I fix on it but I can safely and reasonably attribute the majority of the problems to age (even though the whole RF assembly and viewfinder were recently replaced by DAG).

In short, I like my M2 despite it not being as reliable as a newer budget camera.

 

[Pablito]

[Source Needed]

"Confirmation Bias;
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias, myside bias or verification bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and remember information selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. "

If you want to prove that anything you say has any sort of validity, you should do a survey with users, and sample size should be no less then 5000-10000 "signatures" for good or bad. Good luck.

You must be right, I just went to the School of Hard Knocks. 😎