Most Reliable Rangefinder?

M6 & Canon P. Once you use a different rewind crank, the M6 is more sturdy than any Leica before or after.
 
I agree

I agree

about the M6. If I didn't have a backup, I'd get the tools and a spare washer around to carry with it on trips.

The M6TTL (and MP) and M7 have more advanced/complex meters, but also break more frequently.

ferider said:
M6 & Canon P. Once you use a different rewind crank, the M6 is more sturdy than any Leica before or after.
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The Nikon Rangefinders get my vote, the SP and S3 being the most likely to just keep on working properly. Those with Titanium foil shutters are even better.
 
Any post S2 Nikon RF takes the cake. After that, any Barnack Leica with a good curtain.
My $.02
**still drooling over a Nikon S2 with 50mm f/1.4, but just can't buy it yet**

Phil Forrest
 
The Argus C-3 is awfully dependable, due I suppose to its simple design and heavy construction. If lens sharpness isn't an issue just reliability.
 
Dogman said:
I wouldn't argue with this at all.

Given the same use and care, the electronically-contolled gizmos will hold accurate shutter speed and aperture settings without adjustments much longer than mechanically-controlled devices. Seems like the parts that fail on electronic cameras are usually the mechanical ones.

'Course there has to be a readily available power source.
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My Canon FTb (not a rangefinder) that I bought new in '71 has had hundreds and hundreds of rolls through it. I had it checked less than two years ago and its shutter speeds were "dead on" as my repair guy said. It has never had a CLA with probably over 100K shutter actuations. BUt I take care of my equipment. I have seen highly abused Canons, Nikons, and Leicas that have failed. I didn't know their history. You don't really know what how used equipment was treated before you bought it.

Any top end mechanical camera, when cared for will last for many years. My guess is that the Leicas, Nikons, and Canons would comprise the core of that group.

The problem is that you can't buy most of these cameras new. You don't know their history.
 
Here on RFF there is a concentration of users of old cameras so you are likely to hear more about things getting broken.

Even a pinhole camera can break if you drop it but my Hexar rf is still ticking nicely after 10 years and my M6 is 25 years old and works great.
 
M2! I will give the edge to my M2 over my MP because of the stuff that can go wrong with internal meter systems. Never had a problem with either camera so far....
 
What ain't there, can't go wrong. So: any high-quality mechanical leaf-shutter fixed-lens camera with no meter and no delayed action. As long as it's regularly used, it'll last forever: otherwise the shutter gums up. I'd back Konica as the best.

On the other hand, I prefer more versatility, so an M2 wins. I just gave away my Konica IIIS as I hadn't used it in several years.

Cheers,

R.
 
Old Voigtländer Vitomatics and Vitorets seem to be extremely reliable. I have some 15 different models, they don 't see much use, which is a pity, but when I pick one up and run a film through it everything is working. Same thing when I find one at a thrift store - hardly ever seen one that did not work (except for some of the selenium meters of course).
 
rbsinto said:
The only people who could possibly supply meaningful answers to Jeremy and Janice's question would be repair persons. Literally everyone else is speaking only from personal experience with a small set of examples, plus anecdotal information which they have gleaned from various sources.
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Using that logic, Consumer Reports is a useless magazine, Angie's List is a valueless service, since these organizations are not run my repairmen? If you were about to buy a Kia autombile and your neighbor warned you about them, as he had one that was always in the shop for repairs, you would of course tell him to buzz off, since he wasn't a mechanic, right? Sorry, that's ridiculous logic.
 
Well, there are certainly cameras that are less reliable or have known issues. The Olympus 35RD is known to have oily blade problems. The Canonet 17 GIII is known to have jam (and be a pain to get open). Any camera with curtains is known to have issues with holes (depending on when they were last replaced and how it has been treated). From recent experience, a particular soldered connection on Hi Matic 7sIIs looks like it fails from stress eventually.

I think it would be possible to bucket cameras into sets of functionality and identify various ways they could fail. Certain sets of features or design approaches would certainly be more reliable.
 
Oddly, my Barnack Leicas. Other than sending one of them in once for a CLA (which in retrospect it probably didn't need), they have never failed me yet. Every other rangefinder I have owned has devevloped some problem or other which required repairs.

Maybe it's the K.I.S.S. principle in action?
 
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