digital rangefinder, anyone?
25 November 2008
I've recently become obsessed with 70s era rangefinder cameras. I want to be able to manually focus and adjust settings, but I don't want to lug around this:
Watching Colleen lug her SLR around Chicago did not make me itch to get one. Why isn't there a simple, small manual camera? There is, if you like film. Something like this:
Yes! But do I want to go back to film? I'm considering it, especially because you can get one of these in good shape for $50 on eBay. But what about a digital version? You'd think the camera companies would be making them, but all you can find are bulky SLRs and tiny point-and-shoots, with nothing in between. With notable exception of Leica (cue my drooling) with their M8:
But I'm not looking to spend several thousand dollars. So what can I do? Nothing, for now, but it looks like the camera companies are finally paying attention to this huge design gap:
This is a beautiful concept design from Olympus. Sign me up.
2 comments:
I remember my dad (a pretty decent photographer) having a little minolta rangefinder when I was little. I was very intrigued by it, and he finally gave it to me when I was a teeneager. That thing was a friggen' trooper. Both he and I beat it up, and it took better-than-expected pictures.
You may consider a so-called "compact dslr" and put a prime lens on it. Some are actually surprisingly small. Double bonus on the prime lense -- it is significantly smaller/flatter than zooms, and you can get much better optics for the buck. Watch out that your dslr has the features you want since usually "compact" also means "entry level". Last time I looked (a couple of years ago), some didn't even have a *fully* manual exposure mode. This is probably remedied by now.
Just a thought.
woah, that looks cool. i'll have to research the olympus.
a friend of mine owns the M8... i've used it. i actually drooled on it so i'm not allowed to shoot with it anymore. it's killer.