How did you get started in RF photography?

[ICU]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I was wondering how everyone got started in RF photography? For me its a long story I will try to make short. Six years ago I had family crisis that made look at life differently. It was time to stop talking about what I wanted to do/learn and do it. You know, a Live Like I was Dying thing. So, I took a basic photography class. That was two years ago; now I seemed to be obsessed. I got my first RF last month (Kiev 4) and now a third RF is one its way to me.

 

[chrish]

i have a tremor. my hands shake. i heard rangefinders were good for slower speeds because of the no mirror thing so i figured it would be even better at regular speeds for me. i had some money lying around so i got an R2a and the cv35/1.2 beast.

i have such a way with words. i should write a book or something.

 

[fuwen]

I am essentially a SLR man. Being a Rollei supporter was eyeing a Rollei 35RF at my friend's shop. Finally got the camera with the 40/2.8 Sonnar, which to me some sentimental feeling as had used the Rollei 35S before with the same lens and like the silky smooth effect very much. Now shooting wide and super wide on RF as they are of smaller size and better design due to lack of mirror hit restriction.

 

[proenca]

Mine is sweeter 🙂 The story that is .... eheheh

I started in film photography with a trusty Canon SLR ( T70 ) and after a couple of years I changed to a Fuji S2 PRO digital.. was a fantastic camera. Then I changed to a D1x, went Canon route ( 1d, 1Ds ) and back to Nikon D2x.

One day I was about to buy a lens on a big shop here in London when one of the shop guys tell me "hey, one day you should try a leica you know?". To which I replied "hey, whats so special about it?". Get a roll or two and we borrow you one and you will see.

Mind that at this point I love photography but I was starting to dislike it , that is, the sheer amount of items that I had to lug around to do a photo tour > 4/5 lens, memory bank, extra set of batteries, extra CF cards, cable release, most often a tripod, this and that. And the funny thing is everyone puts in your mind that without all those millions of extras, you are a crappy photographer.

So when I picked up a Leica M6 for the first time, it was all over again : small, compact , beautifull, "smelled" precision and quality. I felt in love with it. I never had used a RF before.

They laughed at me when couple of days later I went with a Nikon D2x and an array of lenses and said "hummm just out of the blue, how much is this worth for a trade in for a M7 + some lenses ? ".

Usually its the other way around, I know, people go from film to digital. I just made the inverse path.

One day I;ll change again. M8 is tempting, the magnification factor isnt. I could livfe with the problems ( all others ) but leica glass aint cheap, so changing lens to get the fov I get now aint cheap. And the M8 sure isnt. So I;m sticking ( and happily ) with the M7. I fell Im getting better and better as a photographer - alas, all the other digital SLRs are great cameras, but no camera is good if left home. And all that bulkiness was doing that. The m7 , couple of rolls and with a 35 F2 fitted fits in my big coat and its super light and super uncomplicated.

Plus theres another feeling that I had lost due to digital photography : if a picture is bad, its my fault. In digital , i dont know why, theres always 1239381209 parts to blame : or the CF was slow, or the focus was this and that, or bla bla. Here, if the picture was good, it was me. Not some fancy electronics. If its bad, its me to blame as well. That renewed accountability its nice 🙂

 

[oldrangefinderguy]

Twenty years ago, while in college, I took some photography courses. I bought a Minolta slr, but that wasn't prestigous enough so I quickly traded up to a Nikon Fm. While shooting a sequencial series of shots of a friend demonstrating a tennis serve for a class assignment, I backed up the Nikon with my brother's Argus brick C3 just for fun. Although I made my very patient friend go through the motions over and over, in the end the only usable shots all came from the Argus. I just couldn't time the exact moment of the exposure accurately enough with the slr. Almost as surprising; the Argus's triplet preformed well enough at f11 that no difference in sharpness could be seen in 5X7 enlargements between it and the Nikon. I was impressed. A Canonet 17 followed, then a Canon P and a set of lenses (wish I still had that!) Then a long line of rangefinders followed. The latest has been a pair of twin Kiev 4a cameras. Went through a few slr's as well, the only difference was that I really never got around to using any of the slr's. They just sat and gathered dust. Now I don't even own one slr. An slr records, a rangefinder interupts.

 

[popstar]

Good question. I'm a relative recent convert to rangefinders. I had been curious about B&W development for some time when I took a class during the summer of 2004. I loved it. As I studied black and white I studied more photographic history than I had really paid attention to previously. I started to notice all the cool photos taken with Leicas and began to research them and rangefinders in general.

Intrigued, I ordered a Bessa L early 2005, and promoted myself to a Bessa R about a year ago. I'm still learning by a large margin, but I love it so far. I'd love to have a Leica one day, but I'm still earning my stripes. I've only seen one in person a couple of times, so they still have quite a mistique for me. In any case, I really enjoy my Bessas and appreciate the new vigor they've given my photography. If I were to have a regret, it would only be that it took me so long to discover the rangefinder world.

I look forward to other's replies. Thanks for starting this thread! 🙂

 

[jamesj]

Like many teenagers in high school i took a photography class for 3 years. I learned the basics of photography, developing, shooting, all that stuff well we used to use the good old trusty pentax k1000's for shooting. Well i honestly loved and had my own k1000 but it was always to bulky for me and i really didnt take it with me as much as i would have liked. My little sister some years later wanted to borrow my pentax and well she took it to class and well that was the last time i ever saw it. It got stolen from her class or she left it somewhere, something like that.

Well i went years without a camera and i was looking into buying another one, i was looking at lomo's and all them little "cool" cameras but i couldnt see myself spending so much money on something like that while on the lomo sight they had a Yasuhara camera on the lomo site, and in the description it was talking about rangefinders, it caught my curiosity so i did a search on yashica, found a thread about the camera here on the site, started reading about rangefinders and Yashica's. Decided to make a thread about wanting to buy one Wayne Scott sold me a GT and from there i got the rangefinder bug...

im still thankfull to Wayne for all the help he has given me!🙂

 

[jamesj]

off topic i didnt know i hit my hundred post count! 🙂

 

[Joe Mondello]

43 years ago my 8th grade Social Studies class took a 4 day field trip to Washington DC.

My Dad put his M3 DS with 50 DR 'Cron around my neck and showed me how to use his new LeicaMeter! I was totally psyched! (I was 13).

That turned out to be the weekend of the assassination of President Kennedy.

I would eventually become a Nikon F shooter, but that Leica was always a fond memory. When I heard that Epson had refurb RD-1s available, I snapped one up. Very glad I did!

Nice to get back to my roots.

 

[JonathanA]

I actually have just recently become interested in rangefinders. I've been shooting mostly street photography over the past year and before that I always shot pictures on trips around the country with my family. I've been shooting with an olympus D-SLR which always left me feeling as though I wasn't taking the images I knew I could. Over this year I've seen my technological standpoint begin to backpetal...by this I mean that I had stopped taking my cell-phone with me, I stopped using my computer except for reading these forums among other things. I couldn't figure out why but I could see myself slowly changing and actually becoming less stressed. After taking stock I figured out this had all stemmed from my love/obsession with street photography of cartier-bresson, winogrand, etc.

SO...how did this lead me to want to pick up a rangefinder? Well I had been saving up for a brand new DSLR but I couldn't bring myself to spend my money on something I continued to feel wouldn't be a tool, but rather a bulky hindrence. This brings me to the last few weeks when I decided to order a Bessa R3A and a lens and am now waiting on it to arrive.

 

[shutterfiend]

About 13 years ago I packed up all my belongings and drove my truck across the country (USA) from California to New Jersey. I stopped somewhere in between to buy a camera so I could take some pictures. I found two used cameras for sale, a K1000 and a Hi-matic 7s. Since I had no idea what these things were I bought both. Took a crash course in Photography from the sales clerk and started taking pictures. I liked the pictures from the Minolta better.

About 3 months ago I dug my cameras out. They were filthy and the light meter on the Minolta was no longer accurate. Then I stumbled upon this forum. Since then I've purchased an obscene number of rangefinders. The only good thing is that I've taken a test roll or two with each purchase.

 

[xayraa33]

some 35 years ago I needed a decent camera while I was visiting Munich Germany, I was still a teenager but I had good tastes in cameras, so I bought a used Leica M3 with a 50mm M Elmar at a camera shop there, great camera , still use it to this day.

 

[Athena]

I started in photography a number of years ago with a SLR - and I still use them. When I got my first camera I also got a "beginner's" book that had a short chapter on the history of 35mm cameras. So natuarlly, it discussed RF's - mainly as a precursor of SLRs.

You know, the way current "beginner's" books talk about film cameras as the precursors of digitals! 😉

Anyway, at the time I was intrigued about RF's (I'm was a History major in college and so have an affinity for "the past") but couldn't afford to buy one - particulary as it was considered to be a passe format.

Year's later an good friend of mine who used to come on this site reminded me about RF's and I started "lurking" here to learn more.

I now have several RF's and enjoy using them together with my SLRs.

I prefer film over digital even though I do have a couple of DSLR's. I'm not interested in a digiRF - my digi P&S is good enough for small-size stuff in that format .

So I'm not sure how much longer I'll be welcome here as this seems to now be a mainly digital RF site.

 

[OldNick]

In 1951, after some early adventures with a Brownie, I started reading the photo magazines of the era and decided on a rangefinder as my first camera investment. I looked at the Argus and Retina offerings at that time, but kept coming back to the Leica IIIa with a 50/3.5 Elmar and a strange flashgun that was for sale in the used camera section of the neighborhood camera shop. As soon as I saved up some money, I went for the Leica and still have it, although I prefer the IIIf that I now have.

Jim N.

 

[suckerpunch]

after lugging my nikon F2, with a 35mm, a 50mm, and a 105mm around mexico and europe for a year, i knew it was time for a smaller, lighter outfit. when i returned to the states i discovered rf, and it was truly a sad day when i sold my nikon outfit. 🙁

 

[mikxer]

I first got into photography in college, trying to document my college years. During that time I always used point-and-shoots, with reasonably good success. (Although all the pictures seemed the same: friends with beer grins on their red cheeked faces.) Anyhow, I inherited a Leica IIIf with Summitar from my grandfather and that is how my obsession began. I went to digital for a while but decided to get back into film when I discovered developing and printing. I still remember the very first b&w image popping up in the tray...

Well, today I mostly shoot with a Rolleicord and Leica CL. The IIIf is being CLA'd.

 

[BILLC]

36 years ago I was living in Italy with a Yashica Mat and a Canon FT QL-slr. I needed a lighter faster camera that was easier to travel with and got a QL17. It soon became the only camera I used. The irony is that when I bought the FT QL I passed over both the Canon and Nikkon rangefinders for the slr, live and learn.
I lost the QL 17 alone the way but have replaced it and more with more rangefinders than I care to count. Other camers too, all things in excess.
Bill

 

[GeroV]

A good friend of my parents gave me a Voigtlander Vitessa N when I was ten years old. Haven't used it in a while as it needs good CLA, but every once in a while, I pick it up and look at it, everything right there in one nice, solid collapsible package, and then I look at my camera backpack with my 1DmkII and all the lenses (they don't actually all fit...)

Now I am waiting for my M4-P to show up...

 

[Graham Line]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I was wondering how everyone got started in RF photography?

I got started in photography in the early 1960s. SLRs hadn't percolated down to the masses. It was an RF (Argus C3) or folder, or a Speed Graphic . . .

 

[bobkonos]

In 1979 I was doing a lot of backpacking, some climbing, and wanted a rugged outdoor camera. I bought a Nikonos III, selling my trusty Minolta SRT-101 in the process. Later that year, when a colleague at the haute climbing shop where we worked (who remembers the original Early Winters in Seattle?) asked what I used, I proudly said Nikon. He looked surprised and disdainful at the same time and asked if I had ever heard of a Leica, which I had not. A year later, I was holding my girlfriend's late father's 1933 black paint Leica II. Cut to the chase: she is my wife of nearly 25 years, her dad's Leica is in front of me as I write this, and it is sitting next to my chrome MP, black M6, M4, black M3, ...But it all started with a Nikonos III, and now you know the origin of my RFF "name."

BTW: the SRT-101? Yep, I missed it and now have one once again, the camera that really got me going in this wondrful activity.