I have been looking pretty hard at a bunch of 35mm rangefinders and cant seem to come to a conclusion on what to get. The Leica M7 is an obvious choice but as I understand it, you don’t see the shutter speed in the finder unless you are using the auto mode, and metering is done by aligning the triangles until they are even, doesn’t seem that intuitive really. On my Mamiya 6 you see a shutter speed selected and the suggested metered speed, which I have become very fond of because then I know exactly what I can expect if I take a shot of something moving because then I know if its going to be blurry or not without taking my face away from the finder to look at the top of the camera. Of course in auto mode the M7 will show the speed but I don’t always want to use an auto mode.

So brings me to the topic of this thread. In my search for a good rangefinder I have looked at the Zeiss Ikon once or twice but dismissed it because its something of an enigma. From what I understand it does have a similar shutter speed readout like the Mamiya 6 in the finder and it does take Leica lenses (which is what I would use on it) but I cant seem to find out anything else about this rather elusive camera. Ive searched around the web for reviews or any little bits of information I can paste together but can’t really find any substance at all. Any one out there have any good real life information about this camera? I am especially interested in reliability, I know it’s a new camera but the fact that it’s made by Cosina is not that assuring to me because I am looking for something I can use for a lifetime. Also shutter sound, my Mamiya 6 is positively loud compared to my friends Leica M4P. Another thing that I am interested in is the film loading, my friend Leica M4P is a real pain for me to load and I prefer the swing door backs. I have seriously considered the Leica M7 but it seems to have too many quirks and not seeing the shutter speed in the viewfinder (cough cough Leica R 6.2) when in manual mode turns me off to this one.

Oh, by the way, I think the Zeiss Ikon is pretty ugly compared to the M7, which I think still doesn’t look as nice as the M6TTL


~~Colin
~~Chongqing, China

Colin, try http://www.rangefinderforum.com/ , most people here think film is dead

It is really too early to pass judgement on that camera. Few have one and none for very long. But as Jason says, Luminous Landscapes is really not the forum to discuss film cameras.