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A better kind of gear thread Serenar !m827jEgWi.
I know we all hate gear threads here, but I figured that's because they're always the same stupid things over and over again - I'm sick of discussing budget DSLRs or "wut camera i get /p/???"

So I propose we talk about more interesting gear by having show and tell threads about our more obscure cameras and lenses. Previous threads on camera history have seemed to go down well, so I figure it's worth a shot.

Okay, I'll start. Here's the Canon 7, a rangefinder released in 1961. Technical stuff:

1-1/1000 stainless steel focal plane shutter
Selectable projected framelines (35, 50, 85/100, 135)
Takes Leica thread mount lenses, and has an external bayonet for the Canon 50/0.95
Uncoupled selenium meter

This (along with its successor, the 7s) was pretty much the last attempt by any non-Leica company to have a professional rangefinder system before SLRs totally dominated. The Nikon F had been released in 1959 (Nikon's last pro RF was the SP in 57), and pros everywhere were switching to those and Pentaxes. Even Canon had released an SLR in 1957 (the Canonflex, that nobody cares about), but they figured this rangefinder thing was worth one last shot.

Interestingly, the Leica M system survived to this day, while this Canon arguably kicked the M3's ass. The 7 had a meter, had twice the framelines, took a faster lens, and had a swing-back for reloading. I guess the dual competition from increasingly popular SLRs and Leica brand snobbery killed the poor thing.

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>> Serenar !m827jEgWi.
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Here's a size comparison with two SLRs. The 7 is pretty big, but then it's around the same size as a Leica M.

This is pretty much the best Leica screw mount body for using (apart from the modern Bessa R). It's pretty cheap (200ish USD), and has familiar modern features like a combined rangefinder/viewfinder (unlike the screw mount Leicas) and a lever wind and rewind crank (unlike Leica's knob shit).

The wonderful thing about the Leica mount is that this guy can take a zillion different lenses with no adapters. The Canon 50/1.8 in the first pic is a little old for the 7, but looks great. And the Leica Summaron mounted in this one works just fine as it is, but would require an accessory finder on a Leica.

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>> Anonymous
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Canon Powershot G9, released last year.

It has a sleek, sexy, all metal black body. Every time I touch it, I want to orgasm.

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>> Serenar !m827jEgWi.
Alright guys, it's your turn. Doesn't have to be old gear - I'm interested in hearing more about that F5 that someone's using, and the guy with all those Maxxums might as well tell us where he got them.
>> Anonymous
Probably the Leica beat it because of ergonomics and market share, not snobbery. I don't think Leica snobbery existed back then any more than Canon or Nikon snobbery exists now.

Also, hadn't the M2 (with more framelines) come out by '61?
>> Serenar !m827jEgWi.
>>174056
M2 has 35/50/90, M3 has 50/90/135. Canon 7 wins.

I'd say that the M series has better build quality and probably a better finder, but ergonomically the 7 is superior - bottom loading is retarded.

Market share is kinda Leica snobbery, right? Sure, the pros all used to use Leica screw bodies, but that would allow an upgrade to a 7 just as much as it would an M.

Gee, I come across as such a Leica hater here, but I'm still aiming to have one someday...
>> Anonymous
>>174061
I think Leica probably won out as mentioned before primarily because of brand recognition and ergonomics. I'd also add build quality. While the Canon is good, the M3 is a masterpiece. Keep in mind that at the time Canon was known basically for cheap cameras, not for professional quality equipment. Brand recognition is an important thing.

As for the framelines, the Canon has a bit better selection but the difference is trivial. The M3 used goggles for 35mm (an admittedly kludgey system, but it permitted a high magnification finder) and 135mm lenses were pretty much phased out of the Leica line after the M system was introduced.

The meter would be a nice feature, but there was a matching hot shoe mounted meter available for the M3 and M2 that did the job. Many people who used these cameras probably were also comfortable calculating exposures in their heads, which was much easier to do when everybody was shooting high-latitude black and white films. A meter would have been a much less important feature then than it was twenty years later when color slide films were common.

The swing back reloading is more a matter of personal preference. Having owned an M3 for a number of years, I can say that I don't find the bottom loading difficult or inconvenient. It's a little slower, but not a big deal at all for me. The same goes for knob rewind- I thought it would bother me, but it doesn't.
>> Anonymous
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As for my interesting camera, the Lubitel 2. A cheap russian TLR intended for amateurs and often selling for under $20. They're usually regarded as toy cameras, but I think that term is a bit misleading. They're not Rolleis, but they're not Holgas either. They have a single coated 75mm f/4.5 glass lens that is quite sharp and reasonably well corrected. They have a full range of aperture settings from f/4.5 to f/22, a full range of shutter speeds from B to 1/250, and close focuses to about 1 meter. The negatives are a poor focusing patch that is difficult to use with the poor magnifier (it's easier to just focus by scale), unlinked shutter and film advance, and a cheap bakelite body. In my opinion it's still a very worthwhile camera for $20 and is capable of extremely good pictures with a little effort. It's one of those cameras that will teach you the true meaning of the saying "it's not the camera, it's the photographer."
>> Anonymous
>>174061
As the other poster said, the Ms are masterpieces and the finder really is important.

Not saying this Canon is a bad camera, just that comparing it to an M is like comparing a Honda Civic to an Aston-Martin: the Civic doesn't lack any features the

And as the other poster also said, goggles (or an external finder) fixed 35s. FWIW, I think a high-magnification finder with goggles is a better solution than weakening the finder for precise focus with fast teles (and normals) just to give people an easy way to get one wide focal length.
>> Anonymous
>>174072
Screw me, I didn't finish the middle paragraph. 2:31 AM, up, taking a quick /p/ break.

The Civic doesn't lack any features the Aston-Martin has, probably even has a bit more, but the Aston-Martin is the better machine to drive with. Same here.

And pros aren't switching to Fuji DSLRs en masse even though they take F-mount lenses and have more DR than anything else. Probably because they've all, for some reason, got drastically reduced finder coverage over their Nikon base bodies.
>> Serenar !m827jEgWi.
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>>174072
>>174069
Fair enough. I don't like goggles much, but I can see how they're an alternative to low-mag VFs.

To keep it rolling, here's a Contax III. These were Leica's greatest competitors before WWII, and some say they were even better than the Leicas of the time. Of course, Zeiss Ikon sputtered and died in the 70s, while Leica is still around soo...

The ad here refers to the stoppage of camera imports in the US during WWII, I think. Either that, or it's from a magazine for American POWs/Nazi sympathizers. Ironically, the famous pictures taken on Omaha Beach during D-Day were shot with a Contax II by Robert Capa.
>> Anonymous
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How does one make a cheap version of a Leica rangefinder cemra? That's right, by taking out the rangefinder!

This thing here is a Zaria, an ultrabudget version of the Fed-2 (which, in turn, is essentially a copy of Leica II). It takes any Leica screwmount lenses, but focusing can be done only using the distance scale. This may seem retarded, but still, over 140,000 of these were made.

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>> Anonymous
>>174645

Or get this: http://www.cameraquest.com/VCBT.htm

The Bessa T
>> Serenar !m827jEgWi.
>>174656
At least the Bessa T has a rangefinder. It's just as advanced as a Leica III once you slap a seperate viewfinder on - squint in the RF to focus, then look through the VF to frame. The Bessa L is more like the Zarya - now that's pretty much a box that holds film with a hole for a lens.

Here's another camera built on the scale focus concept, but much more classy (and German, at that): http://www.cameraquest.com/rol35se.htm

They're kinda cool, but way overpriced these days and pretty impractical for real use. I'd rather have an XA.
>> Anonymous
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Tasty Leica.

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