"SLR is more versatile" or is it?

If anyone gets into the Washington DC area, look up "Huntley Meadows" park in Fairfax County. It is a wetlands preserve just outside of Alexandria Virginia. I have seen many National Geographic photographers up there. I have not been there in a while, but will be returning now that Nikki is done with all of her surgeries. I will post a few photo's in this thread. It is 500mm territory. I will be taking a 500mm F4 Nikkor up there on the next visit. BHL= Big Honkin Lens.
 
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Originally posted by Laika
I'm wondering how many RF users have older Nikon SLRs as well?


I use 2 Nikon F3HP's with MD4 Motor drives and 3 Nikon FA's one with a MD15 drive. Plus several Nikkor lenses I even (horror of horrors) have an 80-200mm zoom that almost never gets used.

Wayne
 
To Illustrate where I use an SLR over the RF.

I use the SLR's for wildlife shots, mostly birds.

This was taken at Huntley Meadows; Nikon F2 Photomic with 500mm F8 Reflex-Nikkor. Monopod on the lens for support. No Motor.

Bet you thought that I did not take any pictures other than Nikki!
 
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And Airshows; same lens; Nikon F2a with Motor Drive. The weight keeps the camera steady. Really. Hand-Held.
 
Here are the photos of the Shintaro painted SP. Note that the black trim on the body is original. He paints all of the surfaces that can be removed; unless the trim is really bad, he prefers to leave it alone. Note how closely the paint matches the 40+yr old original.

Also, the "big-honkin dent" in the top plate is gone and bezel looks perfect..

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 1

You can see the VF haze in that picture. I took the Bezel off to calibrate the RF. The flat glass over the VF and RF prism come off with three screws each. The haze cleaned right-up. Most of the haze in the SP's, S3's, and S4 seems to accummulate there. It is about a 30 minute job IF the bezel screws don't stick.

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 2

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 3

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 4

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 5

Shintaro Painted Nikon SP; 6
 
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Oh, on the original subject, I used a Nikon 8008s with 60mm F2.8 Micro-Nikkor (set to manual focus) and SB29 ring-light to photograph the SP. Now that I have established myself as an unbiased user of SLR's, AF-SLR's, Digital SLR's, and RF's let me just say for my Number 400 Posting:

RF's are just way better.
 
rsilfverberg said:
Brian, holy crap - is that a black SP?

Can I have it?

Please.
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I am really beat after 5 days of driving and theme parking. I am glad to see though that Richard is keeping the group's priorities straight. I was zoning out reading the responses, rangefinder or SLR. Load up some film and snap the shutter, both work.

So, I am with Richard,

Brian, Sweeeet.
 
In answer to Laika's question I plead guilty to using my Nikon SLRs too. The rangefinder bug bit when I got my S2 and it is growing ( the bug not the S2). I like both types and use what I want when I want as they both take fine photos. Now, if I only could get the guy behind the camera to do so i'd be off to the races.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
Okay, how many people choose the SLR in this picture over the RF?
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OK Brian, Uncle Sam sent me to a school where I was lucky if I could get on the net, much less read and post, so you have to give me another chance!!! I choose the SLR on the left (you know, the Super Lovable Rangefinder). :D

Sweet.
 
The SP has got to be the "coolest" looking camera of all time, and in black... Well, the only thing better would be a Black SP sitting in the passenger seat of a '57 T-Bird.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
The SP has got to be the "coolest" looking camera of all time ...
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I agree that the Nikon SP is one of the most beautiful cameras of all time, but Nikon should not get all of the credit for this. The external styling of the early Nikon rangefinders was largely copied from the Contax II. It is true that Nikon made some changes in their models, such as copying Leica's horizontal focal plane shutter design instead of of the vertical roller blind shutter of the Contax, and they moved the focusing wheel more inboard than the Contax. Also, the SP has a much more sophisticated viewfinder system than the Contax II. But the overall looks of the Nikon rangefinders are Contax inspired.

If you like this "Contax look" (personally, I love it) and don't want to spend an exhorbitant amount of money, you can get a Kiev 2 or 4a in excellent condition for less than $100 (sometimes much less). And these Kievs have excellent lenses that are capable of first class results.
 
I have been using SLR's since about 1971. I still have my well used and now retired Minolta SRT 101. I now shoot Nikon SLRs and Nikkor glass. I find that I can do anything I need to do with one of them. But there was a niche which needed filling. I just needed to be too careful with the Nikons. I needed a reason to take them with me out of the house. I tryed a one time use camera for in the car. But the quality I am used to in my shots left much to be desired. So I began doing a little searching and stumbled into the idea of range finder cameras. Oh, I knew about the Nikon S and the Lica but oh the price:rolleyes: There is another choice though. A 1970's FFL fast lens Range Finder. A FFL does not really bother me as I went years with only a 58mm f/1.4. So I won an ebay auction and soon had an Olympus 35 SP for its 7 element f/1.7 lens and spot metering. I usually go for the glass then the body. Beware of ebay. I had to dust off my old tool maker skills to get it all working right. Good thing I kept my tool box:p What I have discovered is that it is fun to shoot with it. At a recent wedding I attended, I saw that the 4 X 6 prints came out just as sharp and contrasty from the Olympus as they were through my Nikkors! Used the Olympus when I wanted to be more candid and the Nikon for its flash system. Used a lot of fill flash as it was a mostly outdoors event. The range finder goes along with me almost all the time. Even if I have no clue as to what I need a camera for. You never know. Might see a UFO some day:eek: I don't worry about it being in the car and I know that the images I will get from it will satisfy my need for quality. So both my SLR and RF cameras have a use. Photographically the SLR system has an advantage in versatility. Outstanding metering, great flash and many lens options from micro to out of reach for me telephotos including some excellent zooms. I find that I don't need the overhead for a day carry camera. And for that the humble RF is filling a need.
 
"If you like this "Contax look" (personally, I love it) and don't want to spend an exhorbitant amount of money, you can get a Kiev 2 or 4a in excellent condition for less than $100 (sometimes much less). And these Kievs have excellent lenses that are capable of first class results."

My $40 Kiev 4a gives great results, and has an accurate Selenium meter. The Russian seller actually tested it out, I was not so lucky on a prior one.

I think of a Nikon RF as a Leica camera with an "almost" contax mount. The shutter and RF coupling is Leica; the mount "Looks like a Contax", "feels like a Contax", but isn't quite a Contax. Of course this is because the Nikon tied itself to the Leica standard focal length of 51.6mm and not Contax 52.3mm. My personal theory is that Nikon thought the camera would flop and could quickly re-engineer it with a Leica screw mount. Just change the front plate; the RF mechanism and body could go unchanged.

What Nikon added to the "breed" was a life-size finder, lever advance, and fast fold-out lever rewind. Those items make the camera much "quicker" to use (for most) than the Contax or Kiev. I think that the "cruiser" top plate is what gave the SP/S3/S4 there "cool" looks, just set an S2 next to an S4. The two are almost identical in features, but the S4 just looks much "cooler".

I modified one of my S2's by "shimming" the mount out a bit to use the Contax 52.3mm standard lenses. Even the 13.5cm F3.5 lens in Contax mount focusses well on this setup. The Zeiss-Opton 5cm F1.5 Sonnar lives on it; a great lens. That way I can use the 1x finder and lever advance on the Zeiss lenses.
 
This is a continuation of a conversation that was started in the "Rangefinder Renaissance: your opinions?" in this thread

Rangefinder Renaissance: your opinions?


Doug said:
Stephen, thanks for your observations, and I largely agree. But I've been told that in general the modern auto-focus SLR focusing screen is optimized for viewfinder brightness at the expense of focusing ease. Makes sense, as the ubiquitous zooms tend to be slow, dimming the viewfinder, while the AF handles the focusing. Do you find this to be true? And doesn't this undermine the ability to use manual focusing?
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For consumer version lenses and cameras, I would pretty much agree with you. However, I generally use professional level equipment (Nikon F5, Fuji S2Pro, etc) and they are very very fast to focus, and only in a few circumstances do they tend to hunt. Then I just switch to manual and continue without issue. There are also additional viewfinder screens that one can use to aid in focusing if someone is having trouble with the split viewfinder, which I agree is hard to use with slower lenses. The matte screens make a big difference. I find that AF works in 95% of the situations that I decided to use for. The rest of the time I turn it off, and rarely have an issue with manual focusing. Granted, I still have better than 20/20 vision which may or may not be a factor.

I have no problem focusing any of my lenses with the exception of the Nikon 70-210mm f3.5/f4.5, which is the slowest lens I own, save a couple very wide angles which really don't need much focusing anyway :). I also have a consumer 28-105mm f3.5/4.5, but I have no issues with focusing this lens manually even though it is a slower consumer lens. Well call this one an enigma. I think the real issue comes in the longer f4 and f5.6 lenses which are indeed hard to focus as you point out. I tend to avoid the slower consumer lenses due to the reduced image quality anyway, and only have a couple wide range zooms for a light travel kit.

All my main lenses are high quality glass, and very fast. Basically, from 2.8 to 1.4. None of these give me any trouble with focusing at all. The 70-200 2.8 VR lens is probably the best lens I've ever used, and the best Nikon has ever made. Its fast for a med-long tele zoom at 2.8, has vibration/motion reduction which lets me handhold down to 1/60th even at full zoom, and it snaps into focus very quickly and quietly. Its very sharp, and has excellent contrast and bokeh. I can manually override the AF when needed, and I believe I can focus this lens just as fast as any of my rangefinders. I really don't see the difference between the two as far as focusing except in very dim light. In that case I use AF with the illuminator, and get excellent results. And I don't even own the AFS lenses, which are even faster to focus that the ones I have.

Then again, this all comes down to what you shoot. Shooting still lifes, portraits, landscapes and the like, the AF is best turned off which is what I do. For action, sports, street, etc, the dynamic tracking AF can't be beat. It can give you 5fps tracking a moving object in any direction, even with the lens wide open for blurring the background, and give you a series of images all in focus and properly exposed.

I'd also like to apologize for my statement, 'for serious photography I'd grab my SLR'. I was actually referring to being paid for work by a client vs not being paid as in personal work. I certainly never meant to imply that work done on a rangefinder isn't considered serious work. I've done what I considered serious work on my rangefinder myself, and would feel slighted if someone stated otherwise. But for serious, I mean the following;

I recently spent 5 days in So Carolina on an editorial assignment for a 6 page spread. I shot just about 400 images per day, or 1823 images total (I would have shot much less if I was using film:). The conditions and subjects varied and were all over the map. I used extreme wide angles (14mm), to a 400mm f4. Night photography, time exposures, daylight fill flash, action, editorial portraits, general stills, some macro, and a couple panoramas. This is what I considered serious work. The need to bring back the goods, with no excuses, and not knowing exactly what will be thrown at you during your assignment. You need to be ready for anything. Only about 1/2 of what I did in SC I could do on my RFs. The rest would be a huge compromise, and some impossible at best. I never knew exactly what I would need to shoot, and thus needed to be very flexible and have the most versatile equipment I could. This is why I feel the SLR is far more versatile than a rangefinder. It handled everything thrown at me, did so with excellent results, and the minimum hassle on my part.

If you ask most medium format or large format users what is the most versatile format to use in all situations, they will most decidedly agree its the 35mm SLR. Portable, accessories galore, compact, lenses to cover just about anything including connections to microscopes, telescopes, electroscopes, high speed photography, 250 exposure film backs, Polaroid backs, data backs, you name it. Its a very versatile format. They may prefer their chosen format for their type of work, but if they knew they might be needed to cover almost anything from studio, macro, journalism, portraits, aerial, sports, scientific, technical, medical, etc, the 35mm SLR format is very hard to beat.

The following would be the question I would ask if someone had to decide which camera system was the most versatile for all round photography;

"If you were a professional and could only have one camera, with every lens and accessory offered for that camera, and would be required to adapt to just about any photographic situation you can conceive of, what camera system would you choose?"

My answer without a doubt, would be a Canon or Nikon 35mm SLR system.
 
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sfaust said:
And I don't even own the AFS lenses, which are even faster to focus that the ones I have.
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Huh, didn`t you just say you have the 70-200VR?
It`s AF-S, at least mine is;)
 
plexi said:
Huh, didn`t you just say you have the 70-200VR?
It`s AF-S, at least mine is;)
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:bang: Yikes! Since I called out the VR separately already, I was referring to the others lenses I have that aren't VR, and still focus very fast. I should have stated it differently. But hey, I haven't even had my first cup of coffee this morning! I'm surprised I managed to type all that and remain even slightly coherent.
 
Thanks, Stephen, for sharing your informed view. I think you're right that the versatility prize goes to the SLR. And SLRs need not be big, bulky, heavy and overly motorized. :)

I do now seem to prefer the operation of RF cameras in general, but there are times when the limitations are, uh... limiting! Most often the limitation is in close focusing, like only getting down to 1m with a medium format RF. Just reducing the limit to 0.7m would usually solve the gripe, as is possible with some other RF cams.

I like my 14 SLRs too, and don't hesitate to use 'em.
 
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