S3 2000

>>mmm.... not in my manuals<<

Your manuals must be out of date. Mine's from an S3-2000, not an S3-1958.😎

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Well, yeah. My manual also warns you won't be accurate. No mechanical camera or film is accurate within half or one-third of a stop anyway. When I'm doing low light, I'm just balancing how slow I can hold the camera for a given lens. Setting the shutter speed halfway to the next lowest one gets my brain into a "go steady" mode.
 
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Wow that intermediate shutter speed hack is so cool! Now if only I could find some rolls of Ektar 25 to take advantage of it...

It "appears" to work on the F also.
 
Does the S3-2000 has an improved coating on rangefinder prizm, compaired with the old S3? I find my S3 is harder to focus than the SP in low light situation. The focus spot is lighter and much easier to fade away. Anybody used both?
 
>> I find my S3 is harder to focus than the SP ...<<

Welcome to RFF!

In general, the S3s have aged better than the SPs. My SP is hard to focus compared to my vintage S3, and my S3 2000 is even easier to focus (as is my S2). I think it must depend on how the individual cameras were treated by their owners over the decades, and could even be related to climate and amount of sunlight.

I don't know if the prism coatings are better than the originals. My first impression, when I got the S3-2000 last year, was how well the original S3 finder had aged. It was quite close in contrast and brightness to the new camera. Brian Sweeney, another forum member here, reported similar results. So I think you have a particularly faded S3.
 
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VinceC said:
>> I find my S3 is harder to focus than the SP ...<<

Welcome to RFF!

In general, the S3s have aged better than the SPs. My SP is hard to focus compared to my vintage S3, and my S3 2000 is even easier to focus (as is my S2). I think it must depend on how the individual cameras were treated by their owners over the decades, and could even be related to climate and amount of sunlight.

I don't know of the prism coatings are better than the originals. My first impression, when I got the S3-2000 last year, was how well the original S3 finder had aged. It was quite close in contrast and brightness to the new camera. Brian Sweeney, another forum member here, reported similar results. So I think you have a particularly faded S3.
Click to expand...

I find my SP 2005 easier to focus, especially on moving people outdoors, than my S3 2000. And unlike the S3 2000 finder, the SP 2005 finder is flare-free. That said, I still prefer using a 35mm lens on the S3 rather than the SP for the 1:1 view. On the vintage cameras I've handled, it really seems to be case by case. Finders on cameras such as the S3 may win on brightness, but for ease of focusing the SP 2005 can't be beat!

Jon
 
I feel the S3's bright finder is why the patch can be hard to see sometimes. There's less contrast between the viewfinder and the patch. On my S2 the slight green tint of the viewfinder contrasts more strongly with the patch. I put a thin film over the viewfinder and the patch really stands out. I'm sure there's a sweet-spot between finder brightness and seeing the patch for low light.
 
Eyeballing the shutter-speed dial halfway between two posted speeds is a wonderful antidote for digital meter readouts that are "accurate" to the first decimal.

Even the most sensitive slide film can only detect changes within a third of a stop or so. If I'm shooting negative film, cranking some Kentucky windage into the shutter speed dial is all but meaningless from an exposure point of view.
 
Fred,

It must have been the bottle of red wine I drank last night 😕 😕 😕

I thought you were talking about the expression "The following table may be of some assistance in visualizing the relation between F-numbers and shutter speeds, as explained above" from page 17 of the English manual. There's no equivalent to this in the Japanese.

Regarding setting shutter speeds in-between click-stop shutter speed settings, the Japanese says the same as the English i.e. you can do it, but the shutter speed may not be accurate.

Jon
 
Here's a quick translation of the Japanese (the part up until the B bulb explanation) on page 18.


The shutter speed can be set before and after the shutter is wound. The numbers on the shutter speed dial indicate the shutter speed, for example 1 means 1 second, and 60 means 1/60th of a second. These numbers are marked around the outer edge of the shutter speed dial.
The shutter speed dial can be rotated in either direction to set the shutter speed. The shutter speed dial stops in each click stop when rotated. The shutter speed dial can be set in between click stops, but the shutter speed achieved may not be the exact intermediate shutter speed.
 
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I don't know if the prism coatings are better than the originals. My first impression, when I got the S3-2000 last year, was how well the original S3 finder had aged. It was quite close in contrast and brightness to the new camera. Brian Sweeney, another forum member here, reported similar results. So I think you have a particularly faded S3.
 
VinceC said:
>> I find my S3 is harder to focus than the SP ...<<

Welcome to RFF!

In general, the S3s have aged better than the SPs. My SP is hard to focus compared to my vintage S3, and my S3 2000 is even easier to focus (as is my S2). I think it must depend on how the individual cameras were treated by their owners over the decades, and could even be related to climate and amount of sunlight.

I don't know if the prism coatings are better than the originals. My first impression, when I got the S3-2000 last year, was how well the original S3 finder had aged. It was quite close in contrast and brightness to the new camera. Brian Sweeney, another forum member here, reported similar results. So I think you have a particularly faded S3.
Click to expand...


Thanks Vince,

Actually my S3 was in better condition when I got it some years back. Like Mike mentioned the entire viewfinder is brighter and the patch is less contrasty. I’ve had some reading, which said both S2 and SP using gilded coating and S3 using silver coating. When it’s new, they are similar in contrast but different in hue, green vs. grey. Silver coating normally gives a brighter view but proven lot easier to fade, because of oxidization. My impression seems agree with these readings. Of cause, like you said, history of each individual camera would make big differences.
Gold coating has a very interesting property, when light pass through, it showing a greenish hue, but turned to reddish when the light reflects from the surface. For a range finder focus optic system, these two merged into a bright patch near sun light spectrum in the viewfinder. It was first innovated by Zeiss in early 1930’s. Both Nikon and Canon followed, then both transferred to silver coating prism, which has the grey hue. At the time it might be considered an improvement, because it’s not only cheaper to make but brighter to look through. For an emerging color film age, it gives neutral visualization. My personal experiences is that you never seen a faded Contax II or IIA viewfinder. I prefer Nikon for its bigger, more developed view finder plus some other advantages. My curiosity is, after 50 years, what would Nikon do on their S3 & SPs?
 
I have never handled an SP. Some of the history of the SP and S3 is confusing. I have read (I think in the discontinued Hove Nikon Rangefinder book) that people complained about the SP viewfinder being too dark. The S3 was to fix this. Now, if the S3 made a brighter viewfinder that washed out the focusing patch, that was definitely a compromise.

Does this seem to be the issue with SP and S3 viewfinders/rangefinder patches?
 
Yes, I tihink he meant S3.

>>...since I cannot imagine trying to use a rangefinder for telephoto work,...The beauty of a Nikon RF is you can really get fast wide angle lenses in focus. Anyone who has ever tried to focus a Nikkor 28 F 1.4 will attest to the difficulty.<<

That's all fine and well. But a real strong point of the Nikon RF system is its unsurpassed telephoto lenses (85/2, 105/2.5 and 135/3.5, not to mention the 85/1.5) and its unsurpassed ability to frame them accurately using a 1:1 viewfinder. I don't use Leica but have looked through them. I know the central viewfinder patch it very visible on Leica. It is not as well defined on a Nikon (just a goldish blob). On the other hand, the lifesize viewfinder magnification compensates for this design shortcoming. I consider the reduced-image Leica finder to be a shortcoming of that system that makes it unpleasant to use good telephoto lenses.

>>The beauty of a Nikon RF ... fast wide angle lenses <<
Beauty and Achilles heel. The ONLY fast wideangle in the Nikon RF system is a 35/1.8, which most shooters consider too expensive to buy at $600-$800. The other wides are: 28/3.5; 25/4; and 21/4. The wides are where the age of the Nikon system really becomes apparent. And, except for three or four test lenses, Cosina never adapted its fast wides (28/1.9; 35/1.2) to the Nikon mount.
 
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The M6 patch can be more problematic to me than the S3 patch. I usually shoot in subdued light and rarely even attempt to shoot in broad daylight. The M6 patch requires that I get my eye squarely in the right place or it will show up as a white patch. Under my shooting conditions, the S3 doesn't.
 
the rf flare problem on Leica M's seemed to have to have showed up with the middle production run of the M4-2, along with the matte finish lens mount with the red dot lens release. I read that Leica omitted a light condenser along the rf path that it had always used before. ( I do not know if the light condenser is back on the new MP or M7).
previous M Leicas had fine flare free rf patches, some of the best of any rf camera in my opinion .
 
I assume the Contax II/III have well defined gold RF rectangles. My Kiev II has an extraordinarily good RF patch, bright gold and never flares out. Zeiss Contax had this in the 1930s, so the Leica M3 was in this respect playing catch-up more than 15 years later.
 
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