Equipment

For most of my photography these days, I use rangefinder cameras. Specifically, a Zeiss Ikon (the current model that has no name) and a Minolta CLE which is 20 or more years old. I still have two Contax SLRs; the 139 which I bought new in 1981 and a RXII bought a few years ago. The SLRs don't get much use now but having been a long time user of Contax and Zeiss equipment, I've no plans to get rid of them. I also have a couple of point-and-shoot cameras I keep in the car. One is a Yashica T-Zoom and the other a Rollei Giro 70WA.

I mostly use Cosina/Voigtlander lenses on my rangefinders, a result of the fact that prior to buying the above two cameras, I had a Bessa T. The 28mm f/1.9 probably gets the most use. I have both the 35mm f/1.4 and the 40mm f/1.4 which seems pointless and it was my intention to sell the 40mm when I bought the 35mm until I discovered the 35mm brings up the 50mm frame lines in the viewfinder of the CLE. So I ended up keeping them both. I also have a rather old Leica 90mm f/4 collapsible Elmar which, despite it's age gives good results and, being collapsible, is easier to carry around. Finally I have the CV 21mm f/4 (not shown below because I forgot to include it).

I've been moving towards travelling light for some time and my usual kit is one camera with lens attached, two more lenses in a small bag and an extra roll of film or two. I've never yet carried both cameras so having two might seem a waste as they are both very similar in specification. The main reason I bought the CLE when I already had the ZI was because I can't see the 28mm frame lines on the ZI very well - not at all if wearing glasses - and, in that respect, the CLE is better. The ZI is usable but it means either framing less precisely or moving your eye around to see the frame lines. I've tried to show the two viewfinders in two short movie clips, moving the camera in the same way I might move my eye. Click the link below to go to them. You can see that the CLE 28mm framelines stay visible most of the time whereas the ZI framelines are never all visible at the same time and a fair amount of movement is required to see them. Because of this, I tend to choose which camera to use based on the lenses I'm likely to be using most.

Goto clips

Update: Two minor changes to the above...

I've now bought the Voigtlander 28mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar. This is the smallest of all the Voigtlander lenses and, in conjunction with the CLE, makes a very compact combination. Whether I keep the 28mm Ultron as well remains to be seen. Seems a bit pointless to have two 28mm lenses but we'll see.

The other change is that I recently got a 28mm viewfinder to go with the ZI. It's the Voigtlander 28/35 mini-viewfinder which is very small and the plan is to leave it on the ZI permanently. When I had a CV Bessa-T (the one with a rangefinder but no viewfinder) I used to find switching my eye from rangefinder to seperate viewfinder a bit of a pain, but I'm going to try this to see if I can use the ZI more than I currently do. If it doesn't work out, the ZI may be appearing on Ebay in the near future as I just can't get on with it when using a 28mm lens.

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