with 50mm f/2 Dual Range Sumicron. Wish I had the lens in black ( Leica probably never made a black version ). A beauty and silky smooth with still the best ever rangefinder viewfinder.
And my Nikon SP. Maybe more sleek but not as smooth. Both Vietnam era photojournalist 2nd choice after the Nikon F.
The father of all Nikon SLRs.
Lovely - all of them. For years, I shot with an M2 with a 35 Summaron.. Sold it for some stupid reason. Stupid , stupid, stupid...
The IIIf is a curiosity. Interesting but mostly for what a few outstnading photographers did with it and for what developed form it post-WWII.
That Nikon S4 was the camera I hankered after really, although as with its forebear, the Contax, I was always doubtful about the focusing wheel.
In the event, I couldn't get either of them; a matter of expense and availability. I ended up with a used Canon 7s which was a bit big and heavy and had the worst rangefinder you could imagine -- I just couldn't see it well enough no matter what I did.
It had a beautiful, tiny f1.5 35mm Canon lens which was rubbish wide open but when closed down to f2 was a dream, ovely smooth tones and very sharp -- for black and white, NOT for color! Obviously it was produced just before tuning lenses for color became the norm -- the down market Canonnette (?) had a lovely lens that beat the 7s's lens (and most others on the market) hands down in handling color.
The Nikon F was a big piece of kit, expensive too, and was already dominating the market in the mid-60s or so, the period I am talking about. I thought it just too big and ugly. It had the unusual attribute of lenses matched for color throughout the range from UWA to very long tele -- a technological
tour de force at the time. I found the color rather cold. Pentax with their much smaller cameras, rapidly followed suit on the matched lenses (did they actually lead? I'm not sure) with warmer color, and within a very short time, color matching was standard.
I was mainly using 6x6 at that time, Yashicamat, Mamiya C3/C330, Rollei f3.5, but in the mid-70s, I switched to 35mm with two Olympus OM1 cameras, one black (B&W film), one silver (color) for the majority of my work.
I think this pic was taken with the Canon 7s:
Interesting thread, this. The Voigtlanders were an oddity; that barn door camera always intrigued me but the piston instead of a lever didn't appeal! They produced some very good gear -- notably to my mind, the folding Bessa roll film cameras -- but always seemed just a bit off the pace.
--
Geoffrey Heard
Down and out in Rabaul in the South Pacific
http://rabaulpng.com/we-are-all-traveling-throug/i-waited-51-years-for-tavur.html
