Now the thread's stretching into pages, and can't be bullied or biased, I wondered what Bill's more detailed evaluation of the camera was?
To me, cameras are tools. And there is no camera-tool that does everything. As a working stiff, I’ve got a pretty large toolbox. In the film days it ranged from cameras like the Minilux and Contax T up to an 8x10 view. As first journalism and then much of professional photography turned digital, digital equivalents of most of our working tools appeared. And, in many cases, those digital cameras had significant advantages over their film predecessors.
The one area where this was not true was the rangefinder camera - a camera that was for many, the most important tool in the toolbox.
Let’s look at the film rangefinder’s advantages over the film SLR .
(1) Relatively small and quiet. No problem carrying one ready to shoot and less of a problem attracting attention than when you are shooting with a larger, noisier SLR.
(2) More accurate focus with fast wide-angle and normal lenses used wide open, although this often depended upon cameras and lenses being null-nulled, individually fine tuned, by a skilled repairman.
(3) The availability of high ISO recording films from Agfa and Kodak, and, at the end of the film era, even better low light films like Kodak P3200, complimented the usefulness of the fast lenses and bright line finder in the available darkness world.
(4) The bright line viewfinder allowed you to see what might be out of focus or out of frame in an SLR.
There were other advantages, but these were the main ones. Today, how do the M digitals hold up?
(1) Relatively small and quiet. Still true… But cameras like the Contax T, which were even smaller and had sometimes useful autofocus and autoexposure, were gaining in popularity among rangefinder users at the end of the era of film dominance. Today, the number of digital equivalents to the small T is huge. For many photographers such cameras don’t supplement the rangefinder; they replace it.
(2) More accurate focus. No longer true… Magnified live view, probably the most accurate focus available, is impractical in many situations. Autofocus accuracy varies tremendously over the spectrum of digital brands and camera models. But, certainly, within that spectrum there is focusing more accurate that that of the typical rangefinder. (What worries me is the future of those independent craftsman who could fine tune a set of digital rangefinder bodies and lenses and make a rangefinder’s focusing performance shine. This becomes even more important as a number of manufacturers make M mount lenses. But, at least in the United States, Leitz does not seem to be supporting these people.)
(3) The availability of high ISO… Many other cameras have higher ISO’s with less loss of image quality than the digital M’s.
(4) The bright line viewfinder allowed you to see what might be out of focus or out of frame in an SLR. Still true and still so advantageous in some situations that you see folks using auxiliary bright line finders in the accessory shoes of a number of non rangefinder cameras.
However, the problem the bright line finder had in film days is the same one it has now. It’s not good for macro, long lenses or just looking at the pictorial effect of depth-of-field in picture situations like portraiture. Thus, having to shoot those kinds of pictures, any rangefinder photographer is carrying a double set of gear.
What do I think of the Fuji X-Pro? Relatively small and quiet, very accurate focus with its wide-angle and normal lens wide open, very good high ISO performance, a viewfinder that is both bright line and TTL and a price for a body that is less than 1/4 the price of an M9P - of course I like it. It fills what was the biggest gap in my toolbox. I’m completely infatuated. But I’ve only lived with the Fuji for less than a month. Time will tell whether this is a tawdry affair or match made in heaven. I’ll let you know. I’m hoping for a match made in heaven. (The first step would be for Fuji to cooperate fully with Adobe in setting up a program in Lightroom for the Fuji.)
