How is a old film Nikon F rig...no meter...not a "rangefinder?"

raid said:
Isn't this similar to a rangefinder camera?

nikkor0.21.4-X5.jpg
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Just to be overly pedantic about it;
That has become a 'focus by scale, viewfinder camera.'

For instance, my Olympus Pen is the same type, it has a reversed Galilean viewfinder with projected bright frame, and focusing by scale down to 2 feet.

The Holga 120n is a viewfinder type 6X6 with focusing by symbols on the lens.

As I said, overly precise definition.

Edit; If I hook a 50 ft. tape measure to my camera's strap lug and measure the distance to the subject, has it become a 'rangefinder' camera because the tape measure is attached to the camera?

I know....stir the pot.
 
LOL! Wacky thread.

The Nikon F is a single lens reflex camera. Stripped of its metering prism finder and fitted with a 21mm lens that requires mirror lockup to fit, and the matching viewfinder, it's ... still an SLR camera that you've disabled the reflex mirror and focusing system on. :)

The Nikon F can never be a rangefinder camera. It just isn't. It doesn't have a rangefinder ...

I think I'll take the Polaroid One-Step that my friend gave me out for a walk now. It *must be* a rangefinder camera, eh? :D

G
 
Weren't some of the early Alpa 35mm reflex cameras also equipped with a built in range/viewfinder?

Alpa experts, stand and be recognized.
 
"Answer likely someplace; just too lazy to search." Clearly BobBill does not understand what a "rangefinder" camera is and is too lazy to search (his words). Really? Is he suggesting any camera you can focus is a rangefinder camera? Or is he just trying to start a flame war? This brings to my mind the head exploding mad world we live in at the moment where anything is what you define it to be, simply because that is what you want to call it.

But that aside here is the thing. Finding focus (AKA "distance" or "range" to the subject) is achieved in entirely different manner as between an SLR camera and a rangefinder camera. Sure they both "range" on a subject - they both focus and with an SLR if you wish to, you can also then read off the scale on the lens what the distance to the subject is. Just like you can with a rangefinder lens.

But that entirely misses the point because these different camera types do it in an totally different manner using entirely different technologies. One where it is done through a single viewing lens (this is what SLR refers to) and one which uses a separate view finder lens with a mechanical rangefinder sitting in the light path collecting light from two horizontally separate windows.

To say an SLR is a Rangefinder is rather like saying a monkey has two legs and a chicken has two legs, therefore a monkey is a chicken (and can lay eggs?). In other words it makes the most fundamental error of logic that can be made: i.e. Lumping two disparate things together and calling them the same simply because they share some common features - in this case, the ability to focus a lens.

PS What is the relevance of "no meter". It has no relevance whatsoever to the question of what is a rangefinder. As it happens back in the day rangefinders had no meters but neither did early SLRs. Simply because the technology to build a meter into a camera had not yet matured. Again it makes the "Monkey/Chicken" mistake but even more so as it's not even relevant to the question asked.
 
I think it was just a slow day and the OP was trying stir up the pot.

Apparently, it worked.

Anyway, I took his post with a large grain of salt, ie, non serious.
 
A battleship has a rangefinder for its artillery. I suppose that makes it a camera. Its a bit heavy to carry about though.
 
farlymac said:
And there is where the OP's question comes full circle, because to make an F, you have to remove the rangefinder from an SP.


PF
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Just like with Zenit (Zorki), which was released earlier than F.
And much earlier 135 format SLRs looks like they have same kind of origination.
 
i bet all the Nikon designers and engineers who sweated bullets over the completely different shutter, auto-return mirror mechanism, auto-return aperture diaphragm, new lens mount, new body structures to support those bits, et al, are delighted to hear that the Nikon F is "just a Nikon SP with the rangefinder removed".

There are perhaps three minor parts that interchange between a Nikon SP and a Nikon F.

G
 
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