MP Guy
06-10-2005, 20:01
You're stuck in traffic. It's a glorious day, you've got the radio
playing, the air conditioning is pumping, and you are headed for the
outdoor area where you will be seeing one of your favorite bands in
concert for a sold-out show. Everything would be perfect, if you could
just make this traffic go away! At this rate, you're going to be late!
Suddenly, you near above the sound of your radio and air conditioning a
distant murmur, which slowly grows louder and more distinct - you are
concentrating on the sound now, looking in your rear-view mirror,
waiting for something to appear to go with the deep-throated rumble you
now hear very well above the noise your own car makes.
Then you see it. A lone rider on a motorcycle, neatly splitting the
lanes between the cars that are stuck in traffic. He's not moving fast,
but he's moving faster than you are at the moment. He's approaching at
a steady rate, and as he goes by, you note that he's sweating, and it
glistens on his skin as he disappears down the line of cars ahead of
you. He's hot now - although he has the wind in his face, he has no air
conditioning, no protection from the sun. He can't kick back and relax
to the mellow sounds from the radio, he has to keep moving or he'll fall
over. But he'll be at the concert before you will. He'll be kicking
back with a cold one with his feet up while you're still circling the
parking lot looking for a spot to park your gas-guzzling SUV. Perhaps
that's why he was smiling as he went by you...
And that, my friends, is a rangefinder camera to an SLR camera. The car
is all about comfort, safety, protection from the elements. The
motorcycle is all about the trip itself, not just the destination.
Motorcycle riders have a word for cars - they call them 'cages'. And
with good reason - until you've been on the back of a motorcycle, taking
a long road trip, you have no idea what kind of world we live in -
because in a car, you pass through it. On a motorcycle, you're a part
of it, immersed in it - living it. Most motorcycle riders also own
cars, and they drive them and use them when they are the most
appropriate tool to use. But a 'car' will always be a 'cage' to a
person who has experienced life on two wheels.
So too, do rangefinder camera owners also own SLR cameras. And
sometimes, an SLR camera is the most appropriate tool for the job. Need
to take a macro photo of a flower? An SLR camera is better suited for
the job than your average rangefinder. Need to take an extreme
telephoto shot of a rare beast wandering the high plains of Africa on a
once-in-a-lifetime safari? Great job for an SLR with a long, fast,
telephoto lens and tripod. Not that a rangefinder camera can't be
pressed into service to do jobs like this - but the SLR is just
naturally better at it.
An SLR camera is a 'what you see is what you get' camera - kind of.
Mostly. That premise seems to be true because for the most part, you
look through the viewfinder, which is connected optically to the lens
that takes the photo, and you see what the film or digital sensor will
be seeing when you trip the shutter. Sounds good, right? But there are
times when this is not true, or not practical. What? How can that be?
Well, let's explore...
Let's suppose that you are shooting B&W film. You have a deep red
filter on your lens, because of the effect you want. What do you see
through your SLR lens? Deep, dark, red. Can you focus your camera
through that? Can you compose effectively?
And let's say that you are not bothered by such things. You have
auto-focus, and you've learned to deal with the world turned dark red in
your viewfinder. Now, except for the red, you are seeing everything that
the film or sensor will see, right?
Wrong. Sadly, in order to let enough light through the lens for you to
see anything at all, the lens has had to be made in such a way that it
is normally at the widest aperture setting. That way, you can see to
focus and compose (or just compose, if you have auto-focus). So what?
Well, the apparent depth-of-field that you'll be seeing is not what the
film or sensor will see when you take the photo. When you trip that
shutter, the lens will be stopped down to the aperture selected; and the
depth-of-field will be what that smaller aperture presents, not what you
saw in your viewfinder. But wait - surely you can experience the actual
depth-of-field by doing some sort of preview, right?
Sure you can. Now, with the deep red filter on, use your SLR's 'DOF
Preview' to stop down to the taking aperture. Tell me - can you see
anything at all at f/22? f/16? f5.6?
And we haven't even mentioned that when you trip the shutter, the mirror
on the SLR goes up, and you're prevented from seeing what the film or
sensor saw at that moment. Well, we did just then.
You see what happens? We built cars, and they were great. Nice,
automated, protected us from the elements. They became popular. And we
added radios, and cruise control, and air conditioning, and heated seats
and 'fine Corinthian leather' and they became over-sized, gas-guzzling
monstrosities. And then the roads, which had not kept up with the
traffic demands, became bottlenecks, and we sat in air-conditioned
comfort on highways that no longer took us where we wanted to go in a
short amount of time. We're captives of our own ingenuity.
And so it can be with the SLR. With auto-everything, we can lose sight
of the original goal - to take a photograph that creatively interprets
what we physically see and combine it with what we see in our mind's eye
to produce something special, something unique, a photograph that says
something definite and special about who we are. Oh, there are master
photographers who can use any tool they're given - they could paint a
masterpiece with a spray can - the tool itself is nearly transparent to
them. But most of us need to take more conscious control of our tools,
to make decisions about what we want the camera to do, when it should do
it. Our tools are simple - film or sensor, lens, aperture, focus,
frame, filter, and shutter release. Nearly any camera can do all those
things - but not all of them are under our control at all times, or at
the times when we might wish them to be so.
A rangefinder camera is as basic as a camera can be and still give you
full control of your palette of tools as well as being instantly
transportable (A view camera, to be fair, is more basic and gives full
control as well, but is hardly pocket-sized). Most rangefinder cameras
ever made did not have auto-exposure, auto-focus, or automatic anything
- just focus control, aperture, shutter speed, and a removable lens
design for choice in focal length. Many did not even offer metering of
any kind, some had only a single fixed lens.
More advanced rangefinder cameras do offer such luxuries, as well as
such niceties as automatic parallax adjustment (since, with a
rangefinder camera, the lens you look through is not the lens taking the
photo), even auto-focus in a few models. Most of those features can be
turned off at will, though.
So what advantages does a rangefinder camera offer over an SLR?
For one thing - all things being equal, it is quieter. Does this
matter? I dunno, ever try to take a photo in a public place? When your
SLR grinds and slaps and whirs, all eyes turn towards you. Most
rangefinder cameras are quieter than most SLR cameras; some are so quiet
even the photographers using them have reported anxiety that the camera
'did not go off'.
Rangefinder cameras tend to be smaller. There is no mirror box, there
is no pentaprism. This also means that they tend to weigh less. This
is multiplied by the fact that most rangefinder lenses do not have to
contain mechanisms or motors designed to focus for you - or to stop down
the lens for taking a photo and open it back up for viewing. This means
that due to the lack of SLR mirror and pentaprism, the lens can be more
simply designed - and due to the lack of requirement for extra
mechanical complications, it can contain fewer components.
Taken as a whole, rangefinder lenses can then be better designed - with
fewer optical compromises - and less mechanically complex - and lighter
in weight, to boot. When you buy a rangefinder lens, you're paying for
glass, not complicated optical compromises to make it easier for a human
to look through the lens meant to expose film or a digital sensor.
Which would you rather pay for; the best optical design for your film
or sensor, or the best compromise that doesn't damage the resulting
image too much, while making it easier for you to see through it when it
is not taking a photo? It's no wonder that early SLR lens designers were
often dragged out into the street and horse-whipped. OK, I made that
last part up.
Let's imagine the scenario described previously for the poor SLR camera,
burdened with dark filters and DOF Preview that caused the screen to
become unusable. What happens when we apply the same standards to a
rangefinder camera?
Well, nothing, really. Because you do not look through the same lens
that take the photo, with a rangefinder camera, you are not hampered
with a dim viewfinder when heavy filtration is placed upon it. You
cannot perform a DOF Preview - there is no such thing in the rangefinder
camera world. What to do? Well, the rangefinder camera photographer is
always prepared - and has a little piece of paper (or years of
experience and a good memory) which tells him the approximate DOF of his
lens for any given aperture. Easy enough to visualize - and that's what
the world of photography is all about anyway, right?
Now, some of you SLR fans may cry 'foul' at this point. An SLR user
could just as easily carry around a piece of paper with DOF for various
apertures written on too, right? Well, yes. But they won't. Why not?
First, because these days, many, if not most, SLR users have zoom
lenses - the focal length varies. No way to figure DOF on those without
actually knowing what focal length you're using. As well, the SLR gives
one a sense of automation, of separation. Why would one need to know
the DOF when one can see what one is viewing right through the lens? In
other words, the lens lies and we buy it. Am I wrong? If so, then why
has DOF Preview slipped off the equipment lists of so many SLR cameras
over the years - only recently making a bit of comeback in the form of a
'custom function' buried in a computer menu somewhere? Because many SLR
users think they understand the world they see from inside their cages,
that's why.
A rangefinder camera, as we've seen, is light, fast, capable of better
photographs due to better optics (all things being equal - there is some
superb SLR glass out there, but it often costs the world), and you see
everything - including the moment the shutter is tripped. You're not
viewing the world from inside a jeweled, mirrored, box - you're in the
world, a part of it.
Just like the motorcycle rider is part of his or her environment, so too
is the rangefinder camera photographer part of their world. A
rangefinder camera is like a motorcycle in its shortcomings, too. For
example, when it rains, a motorcycle rider gets wet. When you must take
an extreme macro shot, the rangefinder camera falls down compared to the
SLR with a macro lens.
But when you're stuck in traffic with somewhere to go, the SLR will just
hold you back, like being a victim of the behemoth SUV you're driving -
you must go where it goes, at the speed it can go. The rangefinder
camera photographer, like the motorcycle rider, is cutting smoothly
through traffic, getting to the heart of the matter, getting the shot
and moving on - all while being totally connected to his or her environment.
No rangefinder camera photographer should be without an SLR camera in
their kit, that's for sure. But they reach for the SLR when it is the
appropriate tool for the job, because at all other times, they'd prefer
to be in full command of the tools they use to say what they wish to say.
To the SLR user, I would advise getting your hands around a decent
rangefinder camera, and do it soon. The world is waiting for you -
there are so many things for you to experience, things you've never seen
from inside your SLR viewfinder. You can always return to your SLR
again when you wish. But just like learning to ride a motorcycle - for
those who dare, the freedom you experience will very likely be so
intense, you'll be reluctant to squint at the world through a swinging
mirror and a pentaprism again anytime soon. And unlike the motorcycle
rider, you probably won't even be tempted to get any tattoos. You don't
want to scare your SLR-using buddies, now, do you?
playing, the air conditioning is pumping, and you are headed for the
outdoor area where you will be seeing one of your favorite bands in
concert for a sold-out show. Everything would be perfect, if you could
just make this traffic go away! At this rate, you're going to be late!
Suddenly, you near above the sound of your radio and air conditioning a
distant murmur, which slowly grows louder and more distinct - you are
concentrating on the sound now, looking in your rear-view mirror,
waiting for something to appear to go with the deep-throated rumble you
now hear very well above the noise your own car makes.
Then you see it. A lone rider on a motorcycle, neatly splitting the
lanes between the cars that are stuck in traffic. He's not moving fast,
but he's moving faster than you are at the moment. He's approaching at
a steady rate, and as he goes by, you note that he's sweating, and it
glistens on his skin as he disappears down the line of cars ahead of
you. He's hot now - although he has the wind in his face, he has no air
conditioning, no protection from the sun. He can't kick back and relax
to the mellow sounds from the radio, he has to keep moving or he'll fall
over. But he'll be at the concert before you will. He'll be kicking
back with a cold one with his feet up while you're still circling the
parking lot looking for a spot to park your gas-guzzling SUV. Perhaps
that's why he was smiling as he went by you...
And that, my friends, is a rangefinder camera to an SLR camera. The car
is all about comfort, safety, protection from the elements. The
motorcycle is all about the trip itself, not just the destination.
Motorcycle riders have a word for cars - they call them 'cages'. And
with good reason - until you've been on the back of a motorcycle, taking
a long road trip, you have no idea what kind of world we live in -
because in a car, you pass through it. On a motorcycle, you're a part
of it, immersed in it - living it. Most motorcycle riders also own
cars, and they drive them and use them when they are the most
appropriate tool to use. But a 'car' will always be a 'cage' to a
person who has experienced life on two wheels.
So too, do rangefinder camera owners also own SLR cameras. And
sometimes, an SLR camera is the most appropriate tool for the job. Need
to take a macro photo of a flower? An SLR camera is better suited for
the job than your average rangefinder. Need to take an extreme
telephoto shot of a rare beast wandering the high plains of Africa on a
once-in-a-lifetime safari? Great job for an SLR with a long, fast,
telephoto lens and tripod. Not that a rangefinder camera can't be
pressed into service to do jobs like this - but the SLR is just
naturally better at it.
An SLR camera is a 'what you see is what you get' camera - kind of.
Mostly. That premise seems to be true because for the most part, you
look through the viewfinder, which is connected optically to the lens
that takes the photo, and you see what the film or digital sensor will
be seeing when you trip the shutter. Sounds good, right? But there are
times when this is not true, or not practical. What? How can that be?
Well, let's explore...
Let's suppose that you are shooting B&W film. You have a deep red
filter on your lens, because of the effect you want. What do you see
through your SLR lens? Deep, dark, red. Can you focus your camera
through that? Can you compose effectively?
And let's say that you are not bothered by such things. You have
auto-focus, and you've learned to deal with the world turned dark red in
your viewfinder. Now, except for the red, you are seeing everything that
the film or sensor will see, right?
Wrong. Sadly, in order to let enough light through the lens for you to
see anything at all, the lens has had to be made in such a way that it
is normally at the widest aperture setting. That way, you can see to
focus and compose (or just compose, if you have auto-focus). So what?
Well, the apparent depth-of-field that you'll be seeing is not what the
film or sensor will see when you take the photo. When you trip that
shutter, the lens will be stopped down to the aperture selected; and the
depth-of-field will be what that smaller aperture presents, not what you
saw in your viewfinder. But wait - surely you can experience the actual
depth-of-field by doing some sort of preview, right?
Sure you can. Now, with the deep red filter on, use your SLR's 'DOF
Preview' to stop down to the taking aperture. Tell me - can you see
anything at all at f/22? f/16? f5.6?
And we haven't even mentioned that when you trip the shutter, the mirror
on the SLR goes up, and you're prevented from seeing what the film or
sensor saw at that moment. Well, we did just then.
You see what happens? We built cars, and they were great. Nice,
automated, protected us from the elements. They became popular. And we
added radios, and cruise control, and air conditioning, and heated seats
and 'fine Corinthian leather' and they became over-sized, gas-guzzling
monstrosities. And then the roads, which had not kept up with the
traffic demands, became bottlenecks, and we sat in air-conditioned
comfort on highways that no longer took us where we wanted to go in a
short amount of time. We're captives of our own ingenuity.
And so it can be with the SLR. With auto-everything, we can lose sight
of the original goal - to take a photograph that creatively interprets
what we physically see and combine it with what we see in our mind's eye
to produce something special, something unique, a photograph that says
something definite and special about who we are. Oh, there are master
photographers who can use any tool they're given - they could paint a
masterpiece with a spray can - the tool itself is nearly transparent to
them. But most of us need to take more conscious control of our tools,
to make decisions about what we want the camera to do, when it should do
it. Our tools are simple - film or sensor, lens, aperture, focus,
frame, filter, and shutter release. Nearly any camera can do all those
things - but not all of them are under our control at all times, or at
the times when we might wish them to be so.
A rangefinder camera is as basic as a camera can be and still give you
full control of your palette of tools as well as being instantly
transportable (A view camera, to be fair, is more basic and gives full
control as well, but is hardly pocket-sized). Most rangefinder cameras
ever made did not have auto-exposure, auto-focus, or automatic anything
- just focus control, aperture, shutter speed, and a removable lens
design for choice in focal length. Many did not even offer metering of
any kind, some had only a single fixed lens.
More advanced rangefinder cameras do offer such luxuries, as well as
such niceties as automatic parallax adjustment (since, with a
rangefinder camera, the lens you look through is not the lens taking the
photo), even auto-focus in a few models. Most of those features can be
turned off at will, though.
So what advantages does a rangefinder camera offer over an SLR?
For one thing - all things being equal, it is quieter. Does this
matter? I dunno, ever try to take a photo in a public place? When your
SLR grinds and slaps and whirs, all eyes turn towards you. Most
rangefinder cameras are quieter than most SLR cameras; some are so quiet
even the photographers using them have reported anxiety that the camera
'did not go off'.
Rangefinder cameras tend to be smaller. There is no mirror box, there
is no pentaprism. This also means that they tend to weigh less. This
is multiplied by the fact that most rangefinder lenses do not have to
contain mechanisms or motors designed to focus for you - or to stop down
the lens for taking a photo and open it back up for viewing. This means
that due to the lack of SLR mirror and pentaprism, the lens can be more
simply designed - and due to the lack of requirement for extra
mechanical complications, it can contain fewer components.
Taken as a whole, rangefinder lenses can then be better designed - with
fewer optical compromises - and less mechanically complex - and lighter
in weight, to boot. When you buy a rangefinder lens, you're paying for
glass, not complicated optical compromises to make it easier for a human
to look through the lens meant to expose film or a digital sensor.
Which would you rather pay for; the best optical design for your film
or sensor, or the best compromise that doesn't damage the resulting
image too much, while making it easier for you to see through it when it
is not taking a photo? It's no wonder that early SLR lens designers were
often dragged out into the street and horse-whipped. OK, I made that
last part up.
Let's imagine the scenario described previously for the poor SLR camera,
burdened with dark filters and DOF Preview that caused the screen to
become unusable. What happens when we apply the same standards to a
rangefinder camera?
Well, nothing, really. Because you do not look through the same lens
that take the photo, with a rangefinder camera, you are not hampered
with a dim viewfinder when heavy filtration is placed upon it. You
cannot perform a DOF Preview - there is no such thing in the rangefinder
camera world. What to do? Well, the rangefinder camera photographer is
always prepared - and has a little piece of paper (or years of
experience and a good memory) which tells him the approximate DOF of his
lens for any given aperture. Easy enough to visualize - and that's what
the world of photography is all about anyway, right?
Now, some of you SLR fans may cry 'foul' at this point. An SLR user
could just as easily carry around a piece of paper with DOF for various
apertures written on too, right? Well, yes. But they won't. Why not?
First, because these days, many, if not most, SLR users have zoom
lenses - the focal length varies. No way to figure DOF on those without
actually knowing what focal length you're using. As well, the SLR gives
one a sense of automation, of separation. Why would one need to know
the DOF when one can see what one is viewing right through the lens? In
other words, the lens lies and we buy it. Am I wrong? If so, then why
has DOF Preview slipped off the equipment lists of so many SLR cameras
over the years - only recently making a bit of comeback in the form of a
'custom function' buried in a computer menu somewhere? Because many SLR
users think they understand the world they see from inside their cages,
that's why.
A rangefinder camera, as we've seen, is light, fast, capable of better
photographs due to better optics (all things being equal - there is some
superb SLR glass out there, but it often costs the world), and you see
everything - including the moment the shutter is tripped. You're not
viewing the world from inside a jeweled, mirrored, box - you're in the
world, a part of it.
Just like the motorcycle rider is part of his or her environment, so too
is the rangefinder camera photographer part of their world. A
rangefinder camera is like a motorcycle in its shortcomings, too. For
example, when it rains, a motorcycle rider gets wet. When you must take
an extreme macro shot, the rangefinder camera falls down compared to the
SLR with a macro lens.
But when you're stuck in traffic with somewhere to go, the SLR will just
hold you back, like being a victim of the behemoth SUV you're driving -
you must go where it goes, at the speed it can go. The rangefinder
camera photographer, like the motorcycle rider, is cutting smoothly
through traffic, getting to the heart of the matter, getting the shot
and moving on - all while being totally connected to his or her environment.
No rangefinder camera photographer should be without an SLR camera in
their kit, that's for sure. But they reach for the SLR when it is the
appropriate tool for the job, because at all other times, they'd prefer
to be in full command of the tools they use to say what they wish to say.
To the SLR user, I would advise getting your hands around a decent
rangefinder camera, and do it soon. The world is waiting for you -
there are so many things for you to experience, things you've never seen
from inside your SLR viewfinder. You can always return to your SLR
again when you wish. But just like learning to ride a motorcycle - for
those who dare, the freedom you experience will very likely be so
intense, you'll be reluctant to squint at the world through a swinging
mirror and a pentaprism again anytime soon. And unlike the motorcycle
rider, you probably won't even be tempted to get any tattoos. You don't
want to scare your SLR-using buddies, now, do you?