Sears 35rf

I figure I've talked about the high end so I suppose I should talk about the low end as well.

This is the Sears 35rf, possibly from the late-70s or early-80s, but I'm not really too certain about that.  It's a store-brand clone of the Ricoh 35rf which I understand is a simplified version of the more nicely constructed Ricoh 500G, but the lenses used in all three cameras are the same.

With a 40mm f/2.8 lens this is no Canonet QL17, but I found this camera at a thrift store for $4 which included the working Sears brand flash.  Made mostly from stamped steel and plastic, this little camera certainly feels...um...inexpensive, but operationally, there's not much to complain about and it 's much lighter than a QL17.  Unlike the Canonet the light meter still functions when you're shooting manually, but there is also a shutter priority mode in which the camera indicates via match-needle the aperture being selected.  Fortunately the camera uses a standard 1.5V alkaline battery which is easy to come by.

The rangefinder patch is on the dim side, unsurprising given the inexpensive nature of the camera, but it's at least reasonably accurate when you can see it.  The focus throw on the lens is fairly short so there's not much use for terribly accurate focusing anyway, and with a maximum f/2.8 aperture you're not going to be getting super shallow depth of field to begin with.  The brightlines are also kind of difficult to see in dim lighting, but they're not really that accurate anyway so you're not loosing out on much.  The lens isn't bad, at least up to compact standards, but it's nothing all that special either.  The ASA rating only goes up to 800, so if you were wanting to push some HP5 to 1600 or shoot some TMZ3200 to compensate for the slowish aperture you'll have to deduct a stop or two from the indicated value.

All of this sounds like I'm pretty negative on the camera, but I'm really not.  No, the rangefinder experience is not up to Leica standards--does anyone honestly expect that from these pocket rangefinders--but it's perfectly usable and probably preferable to your basic AF 1980s compact cameras.  In fact, what so impressed me about this camera, was that in something smaller than a Walkman (the sort that plays cassettes rather than MP3s), and probably cheaper too, you had a camera that gave you all the manual control that you could expect from a much larger and more expensive SLR type camera.  Yeah it was cheaply made, but it was a cheap camera.

Anyway, for awhile when I was in college this was my go to travel camera and it rode along everyday in my bag, and made a couple trips to Chicago and St. Louis with me.  I was never unhappy with it, but ultimately I replaced it with an Olympus Stylus Epic mostly for the built-in flash.

Examples:

Leica M8

Looks like I've gone Leica mad!

If you've read anything about the Leica M8 on the internet you've undoubtedly heard about all of its "issues," so I won't bother going over them to any great extent, but I will add my thoughts on them.  

The shutter is louder than a film Leica, no doubt about it, but it's not really loud either.  I'd agree with what some people have said about the shutter making a different kind of noise, but honestly it's as loud as pretty much any DSLR these days.  Of course, there are a couple of advantages to the noisier shutter in the M8 versus the quieter one in the M9, M8.2 and so-called M8.1, such as 1/8000th second top shutter speed and 1/250th flash sync.  In a professional-grade camera, I really appreciate the higher flash sync, so I'll put up with a slightly noisier--but not really noisy--shutter.  

One thing that really bothers me:  why no PC-sync port?!  I know a lot of people say, "oh, well a M-rangefinder is about natural light shooting," but that's stupid.  Photography is about controlling light, whether it's existing or not, and sometimes I'd like to be able to plug some studio lights into the camera and still be able to use the shoe for additional viewfinders.  I can't believe the M9 still doesn't have a PC-sync port.

The camera itself is really rather unobtrusive--it's smallish and it looks like something you dug out of your grandpa's closet--unless someone happens to recognize it as a Leica.  It's sort of funny to watch people process why an "antique" camera like this has an LCD on the back, and inevitably they ask, "Is this digital?"  I've always wondered what they'd think if I said no.

I sort of have mixed feelings about removing the bottom plate to change the battery and the SD card, but it's not too much trouble; I know some people think it's a bother, but it is what it is.  Battery life is as you've heard: on the low side.  I usually take my M8 on vacation with me and I'm always careful to charge the battery every night; I'd like to just carry an extra battery pack, but they're stupidly pricey.  I'd guess about 400 shots to a charge when you're not doing a lot of image review.

It has a 1.33x crop factor compared to 35mm film, and that's a little annoying, but to me since it's a rangefinder and you're not actually looking through the lens it seems easier to me to adjust to than the 1.5x or 1.6x common to most DSLRs.  I would still appreciate a full frame sensor, but the M9 is just more than I can honestly justify spending on a camera (and sometimes the M8 is as well).  I sold my Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 PII and replaced it with their Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 MC, and I'm fairly happy with it as a basic "normal" lens, and it wasn't too outrageously expensive.

The general conclusion on the internet is that the M8 is too noisy regarding higher ISO settings.  And I'd maybe agree, but while it's no D700 or 5D Mark II, it's also an improvement over most APS-C DSLRs out there.  Noise aside, I've worked with files from a lot of different cameras and the M8 files have a crispness that I haven't been able to find in other cameras, and I'd wager that the lack of any anti-alias filter in the camera is the reason.  I've compared the M8 against the Canon 7D, and I'd conclude that, in terms of resolution, the M8 is a match for the 7D.  A camera like the 5D Mark II has an advantage at large print sizes, but I think up to 11x14 or so the M8 is a strong contender.

IR/UV sensitivity is an issue, and the whole black-into-magenta thing shows up pretty easily.  Leica sent me two filters to block it, but even with coded lenses the whole cyan corner shift is still a bit of an issue at times.  I've coded my lenses with markers, but my Zeiss and Leica lenses rub off too easily.  Voigtlander lenses have a nice groove in the mount to prevent the self-coding from wearing off, but I tend to favor Zeiss lenses, and I find myself recoding them every four or five lens changes.  But having an infrared sensitive camera is actually pretty nice, and a simple Hoya R72 visible light blocking filter is all that's needed to take advantage of it.  The best thing is that unlike on an SLR, focusing (and metering even!) is as easy as ever.

I actually sold off nearly all of my Canon kit in order to purchase more M-mount lenses.  I thought I'd keep the Canon stuff for the things that a rangefinder isn't suitable for, but it turned out that for what I was shooting a rangefinder could do 90% of it.  One thing that turned out to be pretty neat was that when I put my Canon ST-E2 wireless controller on my M8, I found out that if I used the 580EX II Speedlights set in manual wireless mode I could fire them off with a maximum sync-speed of 1/90th second!  I just had to make sure that the M8 wasn't set to second curtain sync or it'd miss the flash, but I was surprised that this worked at all.  In the end though, the 580s were sold and I've picked up some Nikon SB-24s that work great with the M8.

Anyway,  I really like the M8, but it's not a camera for everyone, and there's times that I really miss having a DSLR.  Having such an anachronistic camera is always going to be a bit of a struggle unless you're either wealthy enough to not really care about it, or have a specific enough shooting style that you can make the most of it.  I wouldn't really say that I'm either of those things, and I'd probably be better suited with a camera like Sony's new NEX-7, but every now and then everything comes together correctly and the M8 is the greatest camera I've ever used.

Examples (not necessarily of greatness):

Leitz Elmarit-M 135mm f/2.8

Ooo, what an exotic looking setup!

Leitz Elmarit-M 135mm f/2.8 from about 1984 mounted on a 1958 Leica M2 with MR-4 Leica-Meter.

It would seem that despite being a fairly popular and relatively affordable lens, there's not a whole lot of good information out there on the internet about it.  There's a lot of people that say it's way too large and that the slower aperture Leitz lenses are a lot better (which I don't doubt), but that's about all I ever seem to see anyone say about it.

The longer the lens, the more difficult it is to focus on a rangefinder.  Since we're dealing with a lens here that's both relatively fast aperture and fairly long, Leitz compensated for some of the increased difficulty in focusing by building in a set of magnifying goggles.  These goggles turn the 90mm brightline into a 135mm view by giving the viewfinder an extra 1.4x magnification and effectively enhances the accuracy of the rangefinder.  It does darken the viewfinder image a little and I think it also increases the tendency of the rangefinder spot to flare out, but all in all, it's a intriguing solution.

The lens is obviously kind of large, but not really any more so than any other 135mm lens like this would be.  This particular version of the lens was the last version (sometimes denoted by the option for E55 filters as opposed to the earlier Series 7?) and was optically the same as the R-series lens that Leitz made for the now discontinued R-system of SLRs.  There's definitely some heft to it; I'd say that with it mounted to the M2 the whole kit is maybe five pounds, so yeah, it's not exactly lightweight, but what do you really expect from such a solidly built package?  

The person I bought this lens from said that he used it on an Epson RD-1, but I don't see how that's possible as the goggles don't line up with the rangefinder windows, and I can say for certain that the lens does not work with the Voigtlander Bessa series of rangefinders.  It might work with the Konica Hexar RF, but I've never played with one to know what the differences are, and my guess is that it won't work with the new Zeiss Ikon M-mount rangefinder either.  It does, however, work fine on the newer digital-Ms, but on the M8 (at least on an unmodified M8 anyway) the frame lines aren't 100% accurate, but they are usable.

Functionality aside, the lens is quite sharp, no surprise there, but what did surprise me is how prone it is to flare.  Any sufficiently bright light source can lead to a dramatic veiling flare that doesn't necessarily ruin a photo, but does reduce contrast significantly.  I suppose this might be highly desirable in a portrait lens, and certainly 135mm makes for a great portrait focal length, but this still surprised me a bit.  As I said, the lens is very sharp (not uncommon for a 135mm) and doesn't really need to be stopped down to improve.  If you've got one of these lenses and you think it's not quite up to snuff, you might want to calibrate it--sharpness really depends on critical focus.  Fortunately you can do this yourself by loosening (but not removing) the back of the goggles and adjusting the set screws near the goggles' objectives.

All in all, a very nice lens.

Examples: