Bill Pierce
Well-known
This being the Rangefinder Forum, I suspect many of us are bright-line finder addicts. I’m truly a bright-iine finder addict. I like to know what’s just outside my frame line and about to enter it, especially if whatever it is will improve my picture, ruin my picture or possibly do physical harm to me. I like the brightness. I like seeing the full range of shadow and highlight detail even in dim light. (And even in brightly lit landscapes because my TTL finders can sometimes be a little difficult to use in very bright, harsh sunlight. That’s right, I have actually put bright line finders in the accessory shoes of TTL cameras.)
What isn’t nice is the cost of many a bright-line finder. If you want it built into your camera, a Leica M10 will cost you $6895. If you are shooting outside of the range of frame lines built into the camera, say with a 21mm lens, an auxilliary Leitz 21mm finder will cost you approximately $900, a used finder a few $100’s less if you can pry it from the display cabinet of a collector who never uses it.
With auxiliary finders, you can save money with Voigtlander finders. Some are plastic; some, metal. If they are available in metal, I go with that. But all the finders are more than adequate. Frankly, if you are going for a new finder, this is where I would go. (Even cheaper are Russian made finders which are difficult to find even on Ebay - but they are not a great loss.)
When it comes to camera bodies, the film folks have an affordable path, used rangefinders, with the suggestion that they check the focusing accuracy of the rangefinder and have it adjusted if necessary. Us digital folks (Yes, I still have Leica film bodies, but to say they get little use is an understatement.), we have Fuji, the folks who gave us medium format film rangefinders, to thank for smaller, APS-c digital cameras with built in bright-line finders at a somewhat reasonable price.
Early in the game I got an X100, their small camera with both bright-line, optical finder and electronic finder and a fixed 35mm equivalent lens. The current generation of the series, the X100 F, is probably my most used camera (although my wife would prefer I did her portraits with a longer focal length lens). And the XPro 2, their bright-line/electronic finder camera with interchangeable lenses is probably my second most used camera and most used money earner.
Photography is about looking at things through a camera. It can be the upside down view of a large format ground glass, the wire frame of an old press camera, the optical finder, the electronic viewfinder, the LCD, the bright-line finder, the computer screen in a studio set up and, I’m sure, some I haven’t thought of. And, it’s through those finders that we make/create our pictures. It’s a big part of the picture making process, and it’s amazing how often many people purchase a camera without ever thinking about the viewfinder - which, of course, brings us to WHAT DO YOU THINK?
What isn’t nice is the cost of many a bright-line finder. If you want it built into your camera, a Leica M10 will cost you $6895. If you are shooting outside of the range of frame lines built into the camera, say with a 21mm lens, an auxilliary Leitz 21mm finder will cost you approximately $900, a used finder a few $100’s less if you can pry it from the display cabinet of a collector who never uses it.
With auxiliary finders, you can save money with Voigtlander finders. Some are plastic; some, metal. If they are available in metal, I go with that. But all the finders are more than adequate. Frankly, if you are going for a new finder, this is where I would go. (Even cheaper are Russian made finders which are difficult to find even on Ebay - but they are not a great loss.)
When it comes to camera bodies, the film folks have an affordable path, used rangefinders, with the suggestion that they check the focusing accuracy of the rangefinder and have it adjusted if necessary. Us digital folks (Yes, I still have Leica film bodies, but to say they get little use is an understatement.), we have Fuji, the folks who gave us medium format film rangefinders, to thank for smaller, APS-c digital cameras with built in bright-line finders at a somewhat reasonable price.
Early in the game I got an X100, their small camera with both bright-line, optical finder and electronic finder and a fixed 35mm equivalent lens. The current generation of the series, the X100 F, is probably my most used camera (although my wife would prefer I did her portraits with a longer focal length lens). And the XPro 2, their bright-line/electronic finder camera with interchangeable lenses is probably my second most used camera and most used money earner.
Photography is about looking at things through a camera. It can be the upside down view of a large format ground glass, the wire frame of an old press camera, the optical finder, the electronic viewfinder, the LCD, the bright-line finder, the computer screen in a studio set up and, I’m sure, some I haven’t thought of. And, it’s through those finders that we make/create our pictures. It’s a big part of the picture making process, and it’s amazing how often many people purchase a camera without ever thinking about the viewfinder - which, of course, brings us to WHAT DO YOU THINK?
