When rangefinders bite

[dct]

Bite the bullet and buy an X100. 😉

Interesting, yes. With the hybrid finder of the X100 you should see exactly this problem switching between optical and electronic view. Any X100 user who might confirm these differences?

 

[Spicy]

Might be slightly off topic, but still has a lot to do with rangefinders and parallax error, but...

How come none of the manufacturers ever tried putting the VF/RF in the center above the lens, and moving the RF secondary window/prism to the left/outside? Is there some sort of spacing issue that I'm not accounting for? Seems like just swapping the locations would help quite a bit, though I guess you might just trade the parallax for lens intrusion into the VF...

 

[batterytypehah!]

Are those two example shots flipped?!

As it looks like those were taken by a camera that has taking lens on the left side and the viewing lens (viewfinder) on the right side.

Both shots are in portrait orientation so yeah, with the camera turned VF up for portrait, the VF is to the right of the taking lens.

 

[batterytypehah!]

Might be slightly off topic, but still has a lot to do with rangefinders and parallax error, but...

How come none of the manufacturers ever tried putting the VF/RF in the center above the lens, and moving the RF secondary window/prism to the left/outside? Is there some sort of spacing issue that I'm not accounting for? Seems like just swapping the locations would help quite a bit, though I guess you might just trade the parallax for lens intrusion into the VF...

The lens intruding is the one problem, your nose colliding with the back of the camera is the other. Centered viewfinders are annoying if you shoot right-eyed (and all finders are annoying if you shoot left-eyed...)