Analog film photography and cameras

I'm off to Afghanistan in 3 weeks time... keen to take some good phots.
I've had XA, Leica CL, OM2 and FE2 suggested as robust 35mm's to take but I'm not sure. SLR or P&S?

This is classical rangefinder land... I'd take along a robust mechanical compact scale focus camera--- such as the Rollei 35--- and a rangefinder. For rangefinder I'd take either a Leica M3, Robot Royal or if I could only take one camera then a Voigtländer Vitessa--- I have one with an Ultron and its one of the sharpest resolving objectives ever made .

A Robot Star 25 is also a good choice. Its scale focus but small and incredibly robust--- about as robust a camera as you will ever get your hands on. They are hefty little buggers but very fast shooting--- they have a wind-up clockwork motor advance. They use 24x24 format so a 36 exp roll gets 55 pics. Since take-up goes into a special cassette film change can be very fast and one can even change film in the middle of a roll! Image quality is tops---- what else can one expect from cameras that more or less dominated espionage in both East and West.

I will have to keep my eyes open at car boot sales; a quick googling reveals none under £100.

Olympus OM1n with 50 1.8 for under £100 on ebay. Reliable and simple, will work without battery. I'd get that.

Been reading up on the olmypus range finder's. Was thinking of getting a 35rc has any one used one? there are a couple on the bay at the mo.

http://kenrockwell.com/olympus/35rc.htm;

He says you should; though you will need these batteries.

Can somebody recommend some alternative sources of info besides Ken Rockwell?
Have found mostly babble so far
(I like Rockwell / know how to read him I think, just like to read others as well).

Can't beat Ken Rockwell, all talk and no photos, bar a few dull but technically perfect palm trees and xmas photos.

That said, his site is one hell of a resource, and when you get the hang of how to read him, it's very usable

Is anyone interested in this? Vivitar 35ES.

It's really quite good and I'll probably regret it if I sell it but I've barely used it and I'm not sure when I ever will. I'd want £50 for it, can show some sample pictures if I ever find where they are.

Sorry for just posting in here to try and sell shit...

Olympus OM1n with 50 1.8 for under £100 on ebay. Reliable and simple, will work without battery. I'd get that.

Its really a question of philosophy and experience.. but I don't think SLRs are terribly well suited to street photography. SLRs are not just bulkier, nosier, slower (slower to compose, focus, expose and advance) but also tend to demand a less fluid style and better lighting. Without a mirror swinging about one can learn to shoot rather slow speeds. One can easily focus in much lower light on a rangefinder than an SLR. Use some high latitude film and one can shoot pretty much anything in ambient light. Robot cameras have rotary shutters and they let one go to really slow shutter speeds without shake .

SLRs also tend to look like SLRs and in some people's eyes look no different than DSLRs-- eg. a more prime object for a thief to set their desires upon than something "old fashioned". While a nice rangefinder (Leica M, Robot Royal, Zeiss Contax, Nikon SP) is worth much more than one of these Japanese SLRs in the eyes of an unschooled thief..

If you want a rangefinder but one that you can toss.. there are always the Russian Leica clones...

Can somebody recommend some alternative sources of info besides Ken Rockwell?
Have found mostly babble so far
(I like Rockwell / know how to read him I think, just like to read others as well).

If its about cameras.. Camerapedia is not bad. Camera Quest is a shop but their site has some good articles..http://cameraquest.com/classics.htm. Then there are the relevant forums.. Rangefinder, APUG, PHOTO.NET etc. and lastly there is http://www.ukcamera.com/ which has a good link collection...

Its really a question of philosophy and experience.. but I don't think SLRs are terribly well suited to street photography. SLRs are not just bulkier, nosier, slower (slower to compose, focus, expose and advance) but also tend to demand a less fluid style and better lighting. Without a mirror swinging about one can learn to shoot rather slow speeds. One can easily focus in much lower light on a rangefinder than an SLR. Use some high latitude film and one can shoot pretty much anything in ambient light. Robot cameras have rotary shutters and they let one go to really slow shutter speeds without shake .

Also the rangefinder (and rangefinder 'style')cameras often have the viewfinder stuck right atthe edge of the body, when you use it it block your face much lessly than an slr so if you talk to your subject etc it's less inbetween you.

Also the rangefinder (and rangefinder 'style')cameras often have the viewfinder stuck right atthe edge of the body, when you use it it block your face much lessly than an slr so if you talk to your subject etc it's less inbetween you.

One can also quickly zone focus and use a clip on sportsfinder (such as the Ikondot) to reduce the barrier even more.. One can also use a Voigtlander Kontur finder and keep both eyes open--- it works really well (there was also a British copy but the name escapes me this moment,... started with the letter K... something like Kerin).
Lastly... Rangefinder objectives can be quite small.. much smaller than those made for SLRs.. People often just see the big lens barrels on SLRs and react..

SLRs are not just bulkier, nosier, slower (slower to compose, focus, expose and advance) but also tend to demand a less fluid style and better lighting.

What? Why?

Without a mirror swinging about one can learn to shoot rather slow speeds.

Huh?

One can easily focus in much lower light on a rangefinder than an SLR.

Really don't think so.

Thanks for your input on the Rockwell alternatives,
but to be honest I disagree with pretty much everything you said about SLR vs. rangefinder.

how can you disagree that an SLR is bulkier than a rangefinder?
(others arguable depending on the specific camera)

Also the rangefinder (and rangefinder 'style')cameras often have the viewfinder stuck right atthe edge of the body, when you use it it block your face much lessly than an slr (...)

You do look through the viewfinder (near the left edge of the camera) with your left eye, right?
So the camera is basically right in front of your face, right?
What do you mean by "block your face much lessly"?

I do understand that generally people are less 'scared' by little cameras opposed to huge SLRs,
but I think when you do want to seriously photograph people you have do deal with that 'barrier' anyway,
also you can look at it as a plus, some people feel like it's more "serious" if you have a big camera,
as idiotic as this seems.

how can you disagree that an SLR is bulkier than a rangefinder?
(others arguable depending on the specific camera)

Yes they are bulkier, sorry.
Also "noisier", ok (but when is that really a problem).

I was responding to
slower (slower to compose, focus, expose and advance) but also tend to demand a less fluid style and better lighting
..should have quoted more precisely.

I think everyone is talking about different types of photography..

Why not look through with your right eye out of interest?

Yes they are bulkier, sorry.
Also "noisier", ok (but when is that really a problem).

Noise can be a big problem. People on the street can get a bit annoyed by click-click-ratch sounds of an SLR (especially motor SLRs). Even rangefinders can be louder than one wants. Many companies made silenced cameras--- and not all were sold for espionage.

I was responding to
slower (slower to compose, focus, expose and advance) but also tend to demand a less fluid style and better lighting
..should have quoted more precisely.

Rangefinders are fast to focus. That's the point of the split image feature--- why even many TLRs and press cameras (such as Graflex and Linhof) had them. Focusing is in maximal light and not stopped down by the taking lens. For composition one tends to have a number of discrete viewfinders--- or a zoom finder set to the focal distance-- and these are sharp and fully illuminated and not stopped down and no DOF blur--- RF photographers tend to be able to envision bokeh and focus depth.
Advance speed.. If you don't lock up the mirror there is no way it can compete-- and even then. My oldest Robot from the 1930s can shoot at 4-5 images per second. I've even got a Robot Royal with burst modus and ít can take one image after the next (as many as 6 per second). The Nikon F6 with all its electronics and battery still gets edged out by by a fully mechanical 1950s Robot--- I even have an outboard wind-up booster motor and film magazine (10m, 30m, 60m and even 150m were made) should I need to shoot DSLR style. A Leica M can too get pretty fast.. Using an Abrahamsson Rapidwinder one can get 2, maybe even 2 1/2 frames per second.
And modern electronic rangefinders with autofocus.. Contax G3 is f-a-s-t!

I think everyone is talking about different types of photography..

I doubt if the chap going to Afghanistan is looking for a camera to take fashion shots or product marketing-- if so he'd not have asked (its all digital workflow these days)... I think its clear that we're talking about street photography in all its facets.. And he wants a film camera for its special look and feel.. and the smell of a past era...

Good point.

I'm going to Johannesburg/Soweto in a few weeks. Also not sure what camera to take with me.

I was going to pick up a longer lens for some candid portraits (105/135) for my Nikon but my FA died on me this week.

Might just stick with the 50mm and loads of slides

Why not look through with your right eye out of interest?

You can be left eyed like left handed I think? I have to use my left eye if I ever aim some kind of gun like thing and I naturally bring a viewfinder to my left eye, I kind of taught myself to use my right eye after a while though.

I am left-eyed, left-footed, and always right-handed from birth. We can all be different.

I take some issue with the glowing praise of rangefinder cameras over the slr. True, it CAN be less obtrusive, but this is only in terms of noise. The claim that a rangefinder can compose better than a slr camera is as incredible to me, as is news of Martians landing on Earth and going straight to Buckingham Palace, where they ask for fish and chips, please.

I've lovingly used several rangefinder cameras over the years, and still have some, but no rangefinder composes better than a slr camera. Just to say/write the words, makes me feel in danger of being carted away by the men in white coats.

My favourite cameras I've used have been the Olympus OM1-n, and the Mamiya C33.

For speed of use, and critical composition, the slr wins. For friendly street portraits, the twin lens reflex was very hard to beat.

Also, regarding the OM1-n, in black especially, it was small and did not engender negative responses. That's my experience.

I have used mechanical only cameras for 99% of all the time I have ever used film cameras (I've never owned a digital camera), so it's not that I'm voting for modernity, but just saying that in composition, the rangefinder does not win, nor for speed of use.

Please feel free to flame away at me; It is what I expect from the rangefinder brigade (please remember that I am a user too; its just obvious that I don't sing from the same hymn sheet).

Different strokes for different folks, no? As with everything there's no right or wrong, just use whatever you like.

I don't really see the relevance to what a war photographer used in the 30s has to what we use today. James Nachtwey takes amazing shots on a film SLR, and you see documentary shots from the 50s where photo journos walked around with a Hasselblad. They're all cameras. Get one that you like, then shoot as much as you can.

Fwiw I get more attention for my iPhone photos than my film ones, so perhaps I should just stick to that....

a camera that you feel comfortable with is surely the best one for street photography, especially any kind of portraits of strangers. if you are happy using it, it doesn't matter if you have to stick it on a tripod to keep it still, you'll just get different pictures. some people are curious, some people are non-plussed, some are not.

while an unobtrusive camera means you can take more candid shots, to be honest I am never sure about "stealing" photos that way. it makes me uncomfortable. but that's a whole other topic of debate... I have no natural journalistic instinct.

Different strokes for different folks, no? As with everything there's no right or wrong, just use whatever you like.

Yes. It is silly to argue which is better.
It depends on what you want / need to do of course.

There are some differences, yes -
SLRs are not as silent for example (but in how many situations do you really need this?)
SLRs are usually bigger / heavier - you might not want to carry it all day / every day
(but if you're serious about photos / do it for money you'll carry it anyway).

Personally, I can focus faster and compose better with SLRs, split-image and microprism work well for me,
and, as I often wear glasses, I have difficulties seeing the whole RF frame to begin with, so this sucks.

As for the speed argument modern SLRs win.

In the end it's a combination of personal preference, and using the right tool for the job I guess.