Looking for advice on which RF to buy

[sauerwald]

I shoot mostly B&W, mostly LF with a view camera. I also have a 6x6 SLR which I use for handheld stuff, and now want to buy a 35mm rangefinder. I had a 6x6 rangefinder (Iskra) which was a good camera, but somewhat more bulky than I wanted for that purpose. I travel a lot for my work, and I want a small camera that I can easily carry in a briefcase or pocket. I'd rather not spend a small fortune on this camera, but I am prepared to get something decent - budget preferably under $500 but I might go higher if I needed to.

What I want:
Primary lens of ~40mm - I can see myself using wider lenses, rarely ever do anything longer.
I could live with a fixed lens camera with a 35-45mm length.
Coupled rangefinder.
Coupled meter, allowing me to do metered manual shots.
Mechanical Shutter that works with no battery.
Small Physical Size

Things that I have looked at which came close


Various 70s era fixed lens rangefinders - Canon GIII QL17, Olympus 35 SP, Minolta HiMatic 7 SII - all seem to suffer from not allowing manual metered exposures, you can get auto exposure, or manual exposure with no meter. Also, often these seem to use batteries that are hard to get today.

Leica CL - This seems to come pretty close, my concerns are the meter not being reliable - these are all fairly old cameras now, and apparantly the meters are hard/impossible to repair, along with the PX625 battery. Slightly over my budget, but not horribly so.


Bessa 4M - Meets all of my requirements, but is more money than I would like to spend. I like the fact that I can get other, wider lenses with this.


What am I missing, any suggestions?

 

[shadowfox]

Various 70s era fixed lens rangefinders - Canon GIII QL17, Olympus 35 SP, Minolta HiMatic 7 SII - all seem to suffer from not allowing manual metered exposures, you can get auto exposure, or manual exposure with no meter. Also, often these seem to use batteries that are hard to get today.

What am I missing, any suggestions?

Hi and welcome.

You almost got it correct there except for this: Olympus 35 SP *will* meter (even spot-meter) in manual mode. The battery problem is not a problem because I can tell you where to get a $10 adapter that will solve it. 😉

The hardest thing to get into the 35 SP which, IMHO, the best fixed rangefinder out there is to find one in decent condition. But with your budget you can get away getting one off the bay and send it to zuiko.com to be CLA'd.

 

[alcaraban]

Many 70s fixed lens rangefinders, like my Ricoh 500 G, will meter in manual mode, don't need batteries to operate (except for the metering), have a ~40mm lens, and will work with widely available hearing aid batteries.

 

[BillBingham2]

Welcome Sauerwald.

Take a look at this site for a great review of many of the rangefinders of 70's +/-.

http://www.cameraquest.com/classics.htm

Many of us have our favorites, mine happen to be the Konica S3 and Olympus XA.

There is a specialist here in the US (Sherry Krauter) who makes a CL almost new again. Dead CLEs are lens donors these days, beautiful paperweights.

http://www.sherrykrauter.com/index.php

With a battery adapter the CL is a wonderful camera to start with. It will allow you to use a LARGE number of great lenses, new and old. Take a look at the classifieds here, CLs pop up from time to time.

Hope this helps, and welcome.

B2 (;->