Back home on the range
Images (c) Jonathan Eastland
Give me a rangefinder and I'm a happy man, says Jonathan Eastland, who argues they still can't be beaten for candid shots. And you don't necessarily have to spend a fortune to buy one, thanks to a healthy supply of used Soviet models. Just beware the "No Name Contax".
Author: Jonathan Eastland
28 Dec 2010 Tags: IntelligenceRangefinder
In the seven years my online image archive has been running, only a couple of complaints have arisen about the quality of my prints; one because the colour didn't match the buyer's memories of an event some 20 years past, and the other because there was evidence of film grain - in a print 3m wide. Yet a high proportion of orders are placed for images made on film, and it seems that some sense of nostalgia for a bygone aesthetic is the key to triggering a purchase.
Therefore, I've concluded there is plenty of mileage left in shooting film, especially for the kind of images for which one type of camera still excels. If you're photographing the human condition and discretion is paramount, a rangefinder is still the best option.
For this kind of work, we need shutters that work without delay. Snap focus features on a compact digital may be a useful compromise towards reducing shutter lag, but this is still a long way from perfect, and the DSLR is just too damn big and noisy.
But there are further aspects to shooting with a film camera that are too often ignored. While there's a lot of forum chatter about how old glass performs on digital, little is ever said about the sublime experience of loading a roll of film and getting high on the fragrance of polyester and gelatin.
There is no substitute for the clarity of a sophisticated optical viewfinder found in a modern rangefinder, and there are no half-dead batteries to worry about, no pockets full of hefty replacements, no missed frames because a storage card is full, no stopping every few seconds to check that what you shot is what you wanted.
With film, you have to wait. With film, even when you missed the shot, there may be a pleasant surprise in store at the other end of the roll. But you won't know any of this - and therefore need not be concerned by it - until the lab coughs up the processed result.
Soviet copies
We have Oscar Barnack and Ernst Leitz to thank for the introduction of one of the handiest compact 35mm cameras ever created, first made back in 1925. Today's offerings from Leica differ little in appearance from their long line of predecessors; they are superbly engineered and hand-finished tools paired to the finest optical gems money can buy. However, the question of whether or not Leicas do the job better than more modestly priced cameras has often been the cause of heated debate.
My personal armoury comprises several rangefinder models dating back to the 1930s. I'm equally at home using an old screw-thread Leica IIIC, with its separate and diminutive view and rangefinder windows, as a current MP model.
The advantage of the latter is that on studying the subject through the ocular, it is clearly visible. And because the MP has an integral meter, I can be lazy and not carry a separate handheld. With older models, the viewfinder clarity issue is easily resolved by the addition of a supplementary finder slotted in the hot shoe, a ton of which, with different focal lengths and makes, are available through online auction sites.
As near perfect as they are, however, Leica is not the only option if you get caught by the rangefinder bug and begin exploring the secondhand market for ancient relics.
Type the phrase into a search engine and you will get hundreds of thousands of responses - everything from modern Bessas, vintage Niccas, a Foca or a Sears Roebuck Tanak, which came originally with Nikon lenses, to, of course, a plethora of Soviet era junk.
Junk is not the only adjective frequently (and perhaps unfairly) used to describe the vast array of apparently cheaply engineered models and lenses exported from factories as far apart as Moscow and Kiev.
The Fed, from the VOOMP secret experimental factory in Leningrad, later named after Soviet Secret Police founder and chief Felix Edmundovich Dzerjinski (1877-1926), began by copying the Leica II. Some have even dared suggest the ultimate blasphemy that it was Oscar who copied the VOOMP Fed, but that's another story.
Soviet lenses vary in quality, yet the screw thread 50mm f/3.5 Industar is very capable when it's a good one and not misted through balsam separation or clouded by fungus spores; better still when it's a post-1949 coated version. This is a copy of the 1925 Leitz Elmar f/3.5 50mm, although earlier versions are sometimes said to be based on the Zeiss Tessar, a cine version of which was first used by Barnack on his experimental 1913 UR Leica.
In recent months, factory refurbished Fed models stripped of their rough chrome and painted (all over) in black enamel have appeared on Ebay, selling for around the £200 mark.
These at least appear to be rather better quality than the many hundreds of repainted models purporting to be special editions of the 1970s Cosmonaut Moon landing, Luftwaffe Leicas or cauliflower cheese. You name it, those enterprising backroom boys in the new Russian Federation or the Ukraine have a name for it and, few, if any, come with a guarantee of proper mechanical function.
Somewhat less abuse has been fostered on the Kiev, a camera that - to all intents and purposes - largely replicated the pre-war Zeiss Jena Contax, and which for several decades of production in the Kiev Arsenal factory remained true to its pedigree origins.
In 2008, I acquired a refurbished black painted "No Name Contax" - actually a Kiev 4A. To reassure the unsuspecting Western buyer, the front bezel of its Jupiter-8 50mm lens had been ground off and re-engraved with the words "5cm 1:2 Zeiss Sonnar, Jena", and so badly done that the lie would have been evident even to a blind man.
A Jupiter-12 35mm f/2.8 acquired around the same time performed exceptionally well, and on the basis of this, I acquired two more of the same with screw mounts to fit old Leica bodies.
Why two? This lens is a copy of the pre-war 35mm f/2.8 Biogon, which in its time was sought after as the reportage lens of the day - sharper and more contrasty than any Leitz offering then available. When the Soviets cleared out the Jena factory in 1945, the dies for the Biogon were removed along with all the other machinery and tooling for the Contax camera.
The Jupiter-12 seems to have been a particular favourite of the KMZ (Kraznagorsk) and later Lytkarino factories, and apart from upgrading the coatings over the years, the optical cell design remained the same.
Newer element coating makes a subtle difference to performance, and the two I purchased with 10 years between them show slightly different imaging characteristics, the later 1984 version turning in a quality performance with Kodak's new Ektar 100 colour film.
The older 50mm fake Sonnar was a dog, producing low-contrast images with little inherent sharpness for small details. I could buy another for £20, or commandeer my elderly father's brand new Kiev, which was given to him as a birthday present back in the early 1980s. He cherished it, often marvelling at what he then called "value for money engineering". But I knew the camera had barely seen two rolls of film through it in as many decades - the lens was pristine.
Later models with clunky modified rapid film rewind levers, but improved shutter time dials - the Kiev 5 and 5c - tend to be fitted with the more modern Helios 103, 53mm (sometimes 50mm) f/2 glass.
A good Jupiter-8, however, is not to be shunned. Based on the design of the Jena Sonnar f/2, later versions are multicoated and are at least equal in terms of image rendering as a 1950s Leitz Summicron now that Kodachrome has disappeared off the map.
Kodachrome's uniqueness lay in its ability to render an image stamped with the characteristic near-3D fingerprint of its emulsion and processing formulae and, because of this, differences in how the glass rendered the subject were easier to see.
Other types, such as C-41 colour negative, black-and-white or E6 reversal materials, render apparently flatter images; the sharpness, contrast, colour hues or tonal values, aji and bokeh effects of glass are less pronounced, and are, therefore, harder to detect.
I am attached to my Leica lenses, but looking at the equation from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, it does seem to me now that some of us are to be denied the luxury of shooting Kodachrome, almost any old piece of glass that turns in a more than modest result will do the job. BJP
Comments
Film is awesome. Film is tangible. Film is analog. Mechanical cameras are pretty, they perform better for less money (on average), they are something for the soul.
But.
Shooting film produces lots and lots of waste. Physical waste - film containers, slide frames, prints. Chemical waste, from production over processing and printing - and it all goes into your community drain.
Film produces huge amounts of clutter. If you're a nomad like I am, you don't want to move around myriads of negatives, slides and prints every time you change your location. You don't want to rent an apartment where you need an extra room to make a dark room of.
Film is expensive - a couple of thousand times more expensive than digital. You have to buy it, pay for the chemicals (and possibly the service) to develop it and get your prints, while you don't pay anything except the battery charge for your digital photo - and if you have it printed, you can get fairly good quality for just a few cents per print.
Keeping track of your work, keeping it catalogued, is so much easier when it's digital. All the modern image management tools, from iPhoto to Lightroom, give you all kinds of assistance to catalog your work according to multiple categories, like event, time, location, subject etc. Tagging makes it much easier to retrieve a specific image without having to dig knee-deep in your physical archives.
If you upload copies of your work to an online service like flickr in original size, you can access it from anywhere in the world, from any computer or smartphone. If you do client assignments, you can deliver much more quickly and economically.
Film is the exception for me. The 'special treat'. Other than that, it's digital all the way these days.
And in the end, it's not the gear that makes a good photograph, it's the photographer.
There is a lot of interest in the Rangefinder format, so why only Leica in the market?
To the author of the original Yes, but.. comment on the old film vs. digital debate I would refer him/her to the overwhelming and endless commentary on the topic on many photog websites such as Lightstalkers - which includes some of my own comments. To summarize, apart from other considerations I just hope all your cleverly saved digital images online or wherever are still accessable to you 20 or 50 years from now. While you have to constantly undate your files and storage mediums my transparencies sleep comfortably - barring the house burning down or a major flood - in a box under the bed and film lasts for apparently up to 500 years.
Thanks for this - your article reminded me of an old Zorki 4 that had been sitting, unused, in a drawer since I picked it up on Ebay for peanuts a while back.
Took it out and shot a roll of film today, and the results came out surprisingly well given that the shutter speed control's pretty much broken! Sadly I can't see many of today's cameras - especially with Li-Ion batteries - still working as well 30yrs after leaving the factory.
Most responsible film photographers don't throw their chem's down the sink into the community drain. Film cassettes, canisters and slide mounts are all made of recyclable materials.
Storage of either mediums is just a pain.
You forgot about the another cost you need to spend with digital photography - the computer to process your files, which will need upgrading every so often. And if you're going on the green tip, then how about the electrity consumed when charging your digi cam and processing your files?
I use both mediums and find this digital v's film just tedious.
Just curious as to why this article is listed under Medium Format when all the cameras mentioned are 35mm?
That niggle aside, after living in Moscow for a couple of years I developed a love for old Soviet kit I just can't shake off, across all formats, though the rangefinders form the bulk of my stable as they were so damned cheap, I was able to buy NOS Feds for 8 euros apiece.
"In 2008, I acquired a refurbished black painted "No Name Contax" - actually a Kiev 4A"
Interestingly this may have been an actual Contax, when the East Germans absorbed the factory they took many of the technicians and all of the tooling with them.
The first production run consisted of a bunch of cameras without engraving and there is great debate as to whether these should be classifies=d as Contax or Kiev, either way it is a rare beast.
First, I agree 100% that rangefinders excel in ways that other cameras don't.
Second, there are many options for rangefinders besides Leica, although Leica benefits from their brand and history. Voightlander has great rangefinders, and although now out of production, the Contax G1 and G2 cameras were/are fantastic. A $30 Olympus or Yashica rangefinder from the 70's are as capable as any Leica, so there's no excuse not to try one out.
For me, there's nothing in digital that excites me in terms of the process of photography. As others have said, there are now more excellent images being made than ever, but there are also more banal images...
I feel sorry for people who have not learned photography through film. The digital "mindset" -- see results now, is more of a distraction than a benefit to making good images. Nothing defines the digital process more than "chimping."
I've never shot more 35mm film than now. It's a process that makes photography worth it for me.
Bought a Zorki 4K in pristine condition from my father-in-law many years ago when he decided to take up photography and started buying cameras. Having put a roll through it, I was surprised at the quality of the images. Later bought the 35m f2.8 and it too, is not a bad performer. Many cameras later, Leica 111 of 1933, 2 M3s, a pair of m4-Ps and a MD + visoflex + 280mm Telyt and a MD2 + 21mm SuperAngulon, I still keep the Zorki outfit to teach my grandson how to use proper cameras when he is a little older. Digital? I'm far too old to learn new tricks, such as taking the shot, admiring it on your screen, then 'show it to the person on your left, show it to the person on your right, then look at it again!
In response to Victor, there are other rangefinders in production than Leica.
For well under a grand, you can get a Voigtlander, either the R3 or R4, both available in AE or fully manual varieties. I've had an R3A for years and it's my favourite camera.
Then at a higher price (but still way cheaper than Leica) there's the Zeiss Ikon.
I use an old Leica M4 and currently await a Bessa R4a for variable lighting situations. I also use digital but for my exhibitions it's always the rangefinders.
Yes, but: "Keeping track of your work, keeping it catalogued, is so much easier when it's digital....", and so on.
But the trick, surely, is to convert your film-based slides and prints to digital format by scanning them on to a computer, where they can be tweaked in exactly the same way as all other digital images.
Provided that you use a really good scanner, and provided you are averagely experienced in digital image manipulation, it's often virtually impossible to distinguish computer images shot with a film camera from computer images shot with a digital one - in fact my guess is that most Flickr users would be very hard pressed to tell the difference.
There is the beautyful Mamiya 7, a bit on the large size but ( there seems there's a but for everything these days) you are shooting 120; the sad thing is the lack of 220.
I've been an enthusiast photographer since I was 12 years old when I gof my first camera. A plastic 110 I traded for 50 caps of Inka Cola in my native Peru. Since then, after a few short romances with Canon and Olympus P&S (including the glorious Olympus XA), I settled with Nikon SLRs (N70, N90, F100, F3, and the stout F4). Commitment interrupted only by a few bohemian affairs of the lomographic nature (we still see each other now and then) and some short trips with a Rolleicord IIc I met in Prague.
My love for photography had stagnated in the clinical world of Photoshop and the D70, D200 and D700. Until in a recent trip through Eastern Europe I saw her: an old russian lady of distinction, the beautiful FED 2 with an Industar 26. A bit tattered and rather cheap at under 15 Euros, but produced just glorious images with that priceless vintage look. Since then I am the proud owner and daily user of several FSU cameras. My favorite is now the dashing Zorki 4A.
Yes, film is clunky, expensive and a lot of work, but it has soul, character and feels human. Thanks to this little russian rangefinders I've rediscovered my passion and my photography is again interesting and fresh. It forces me to slow down, think and "take in" the subject. My images are a lot stronger because of this.
I would recommend anybody to give it a try. Worst it can happen is to lose 20 Euros and a bit of film. You will not regret it.
I return to film and to my "old" Zorki 4 and Fed 5 and Fed 2 after some years of digital. Digital do not have the grain and the plasticity of film. I use these RF for street shot and some Zenit (E, TTL) and Praktica as alternative.
I agree with John Sargent, as a hybrid photographer. I went over to digital from film and although I still use digital for wildlife photography, I have reverted to film for other work. I mainly shoot film in the medium and large formats, but still love using my excellent Contax G2 and in particular its superb 21mm Zeiss lens
For sheet film I scan it in using an Epson flat-bed V750 scanner and do the post-processing in Lightroom/Photoshop (the latter is essential for colour profile corrections with scanned transparency film). Sheet film can also be catalogued and the data easily searched in a spreadsheet format, filing the film in much the same way as one does books.
It's not as simple as one would think. Yep, processing film costs money, but is digital photography free? A s/h film rangefinder will if anything increase in value over the years, mine have - a lot, whilst my expensive Nikon D100 is now worth, probably, nothing at all... so it probably works out the same in the end.
I started out with a Rollei 35. Not strictly a rangefinder but as convenient and good as SLRs (film) were I never quite enjoyed them as much as the Rollei. I bought (and still have) a Mamiya 6 with three lenses plus a Voigtlander Bessa with a 15mm/35mm/90mm. And I use digital.
The film cameras were used less and less as digital became more and more convenient.
I wouldn't knock digi but recently I've been using the Mamiya more and more (B&W and processing by me) and enjoying it immensely.
The bottom line is that I am more comfortable with the view through the rangefinder than with the with through the prism. Don't know why. Any answers?
Also, I prefer something tangible like film rather than reliance on binary files that I can't touch, see or feel.
My first camera was a Yashica Electro 35 and my first roll of film was an Ektachrome 64 dad and I used to test his new present and some of the pictures we took together made it to the printing shop calendars that we printed! So I can relate to the range finders, albeit in a humble way.
Later on in a trip to Miami I bought the supplementary lenses but the Yashica became faulty. I still have it and plan to repair it according to the instructions found on Flickr.
I can relate to the author's test media Kodkachrome, he tested his Leica's lenses with this film! I never shot Kodachrome since it had to be sent to Panama City via snail mail, to be developed or to the USA. At least he shot Kodachrome!
Great column!
My first camera was a Yashica Electro 35 and my first roll of film was an Ektachrome 64, that dad and I used to test his new present to me in the early 1980'2. Some of the pictures we took together made it to the printing shop calendars that we printed! So I can relate to the range finders, albeit in a humble way.
Later on in a trip to Miami I bought the supplementary lenses but the Yashica became faulty. I still have it and plan to repair it according to the instructions found on Flickr.
I can relate to the author's test media Kodkachrome, he tested his Leica's lenses with this film! I never shot Kodachrome since it had to be sent to Panama City via snail mail, to be developed or to the USA. At least he shot Kodachrome!
Great column! It brings back memories, and now I have the mission of reparing dad's Mamiya Standard 23 range finder, perhaps it is not to late, and keep longing after Mamiya 645 that I just lost on an eBay auction!
I cannot see myself yet making photography on digital, albeit, i do so oftenly in my iPhone camera documenting snapshots and processes that i need to have in my computer.
Excellent column!
I went to digital in 2001 and had it going for about four years and then I went back to film and have been with it since. I shoot every format but primarily 35mm and I wanted to counter what Gabi said about it being pricey and cluttered etc.
Ive very successfully travelled the planet with film and even my own developing system for extended periods of time on the road moving around in countries less hospitable then what Im used to, and Ive never had a problem. I have a small bag too.
Theres a terrible myth now about how film is wasteful and bad for the environment etc if its done without though thats the case, but charging batteries feeds the fossil fuel industry too so bear that in mind if you want to get technical about it.
I bulk roll all my own film, it costs me $0.26c per roll from start to finish. Theya re scannable to 65mb aprox & can give me images teh same size as that D800 will.
I use hardy reusable chemistry which gives me 9+ stops of latitude and I wash my negs in the same water over and over again. I have archival quality images stable and highly scannable images from a decade ago using this same process and Ive only dumped my chemicals 6 times in 13 years. Its called Diafine, two part no stop, fix, wash roll and thats it. I put my negs into the tin the bulk film came in, I can fit about 30 rolls into it. -shooting film is deliberate, so my quality shot quota is vastly higher then it ever was on digital.
My kit is about the same size as your laptop bag and your Canon/Nikon DSLRs and your lenses. I use an X Pan, an M6 (24+35) and an Olympus RC35. The Xpan requires a battery. I shoot the first frame of every roll of my watch or iPod which acts as a timestamp and logging tool. Its the only Exif anyone will ever need.
..and its not just about the photographer, sometimes the gear really helps. A leica will stand up to a deade of abuse that your DSLR will not. Guaranteed. I repair your cameras for a living, I know what Im talking about.
Related Articles
BJP Daily
Most Popular Articles
World Press Photo controversy: Objectivity, manipulation and the search for truth
Flickr unveils new design, offers 1TB of free space
EyeEm photo-sharing app aims to enable photographers to sell their images
Hipstamatic launches Oggl, a new social network for creative photographers
Hasselblad puts an end to its V line of cameras
12 photographers selected for 2013 World Press Photo's Joop Swart Masterclass
Updating your subscription status 
About us
British Journal of Photography is the world’s longest running photography magazine, established in 1854, and online since 1997. A high-quality monthly printed edition is available as a subscription or from selected newsagents in the UK and around the world.
Jobs
Key Account Manager
We have a vacancy for a Key Account Manager working on The British Journal of Photography
Head of Photography
Magnet Harlequin, one of the UK's leading Creative Production Agencies is seeking a new Head of Photography.
Photographic technical support officers
We have opportunities for two experienced photographic, audio or video technicians.
Popular Topics
