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Thought I'd share this: I finally sat down with five sets of prints from two Canon QL17 GIII's, a Konica Auto S3, my new Vivitar 35ES (like the Revue Winfried has written about) and my old Nikon FM w/an '80s vintage 50mm 1.8 (clean and sharp) as the "control" (not that this is very scientific, with the low sample size, etc, though I did use the same kind of film (Fuji Superia), the same processing (Fuji plant), shot in same conditions and same place, and split three of the rolls between cameras). All meters were accurate. Results:
Nikon: great color, very good sharpness overall, great sharpness at middle apertures. In other words, about what you would expect.
Auto S3: Almost as good as the Nikon, but not quite as sharp. About equally good sharpness at 2.8 as 8 or 11. Color great (that somewhat less contrasty '70s look but warm colors still "pop" (and note that this is true with other film stocks as well, so I think it's the lens coatings). Much more prone to flare when shooting into a bright light source than the Nikon (neither were shaded).
GIIIs: [One of these I bought and re-sold due to slight fungus inside lens (lost some $$ there!), the other is a recent ebay purchase.] Both acceptably sharp, but not as sharp as the other cameras in the "test." Color was great, though; as nice as the Auto S3's.
Vivitar 35ES: This camera LOOKS a little like the Auto S3 (and is also black on black), but it's not built as well (nor as well as the Canonets). The images, however, were very good: every bit as good as the Auto S3, better than either GIII, just slightly less sharp than the Nikon (or maybe just slightly less contrasty: I checked negs with black text on white with a loupe comparing these two). I got this one on ebay for $27, and the meter is right on. I'm now in absolutely no hurry to replace the Auto S3 (it was stolen last fall).
Ranging from $200 (Konica) to $27 (Vivitar) all of these compact rangefinders are relative bargains (especially considering the size), but the Vivitar takes the cake for value. I'll be keeping my eyes open for another.
With the winds blowing a gale, the rain lashing down outside and inspired by Paul's investigations I decided to run a simple lens test on seven of the seventies rangefinders in my small collection.
Canonet GIII 17, Minolta Hi-Matic E, Olympus RD, Olympus SP, Yashica GT , Yashica Lynx 14E, and a Yashica MC.
I pinned a newspaper to a board and in the centre of that stuck an A4 printout of the USAF test chart* - filling about the centre ninth of the area. I mounted the cameras on a tripod at 1 meter and used a roll of FP4 rewound and transferred to each in turn. On each camera I used the RF to focus for one frame and the measured distance for another. I used the camera’s own metering for a frame and the reading from a known accurate hand meter for another. I was happily surprised at the accuracy of these old camera’s auto exposure systems. But discovered a couple a rangefinders I’ll need to adjust! After developing the film in Auclux 2 I scanned the frames with a Minolta Scan Dual at 2400 dpi and cropped to the centre portion of the USAF chart. Unfortunately the limited scanner resolution doesn't do justice to negatives. Maybe I'll have to dig the enlarger out.
From previous experience of these cameras the results did not really surprise me. There’s not much between them but the Lynx comes out just about best on resolution closely followed by the GT. The Canonet didn't come out too well, last in fact, and this was a surprise but seems to agree with Paul's findings. The Olympuses, Hi-Matic and MC are a toss up for the in between places.
Hardly a scientific test I know, but it made for an interesting few hours on a foul weather day! If anyone wants to see the rather crude results
http://www.rogerprovins.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/7seventies.html
Roger
Gloucester
USAF chart here...
* http://frozenmoments.virtualave.net/LensTests/LensTestImages/USAF1951-BEST.pdf
The 50mm f1.8 Nikkor is one of the best, so the RFs are doing just fine. I did something similar with my Retina IIIc and a USAF target. Just hand held the thing did over 60 lines per mm. One caveat- focus makes all the difference and unless the rangefinder is well adjusted, results may be less than optimum.
I was wondering the same thing Conrad mentioned. How does the focus accuracy compare between these. How is the weather there? Maybe a focus comparison could be on the agenda?
I really enjoyed your experiment. Excellent work.
Henry
I was prepared to find rangefinder misalignment, particularly this close distance (1 meter), so I also took frames with the measured distance set onto the lens. The Olympus SP and the Hi-Matic rangefinders were slightly out (I've since adjusted them) but the other four were fine. The Yashica MC does not have a rangefinder.
Weather here in Enland remains foul, rain and very high winds :-)
Roger
Great thread.
I would have thought the Canonet would have had the best lens... it seems a lot better than my eos {not the L series} primes. I have shot tons of rolls with these rangefinders and have concluded { very un-scientifically} that the OLYMPUS RC is the best overall value out there in terms of lens quality, reliability and compactness.
I was asked by atleast two people this weekend at the Baltimore Aquarium if the RC was the latest digital camera from Olympus...
Cheers,
Vinay