Asher Kelman said:
No mirror to lock up, no mirror to cause vibration.
While this is a small point in letters, it's huge in effect: I can make decently sharp hand-held exposure exposures at 1/8 sec (1/4 on a good day) with a range finder, whereas the absolute best I can manage with an SLR--depending on the camera--is 1/15, more likely 1/30. That's a three stop advantage in low light! It's far worse with medium format, where I end up using MLU handheld a lot. As a general rule, I try not to shoot SLRs below 1/60 because of the mirror slap.
Asher Kelman said:
Oh yes, a name Leica or Zeiss is you can afford it!
This is certainly a nice way to go, but there are heaps of affordable rangefinders out there as well. For example, there's the classic Canon Canonet QL-17 Giii, which has a great [fixed] lens, great form factor, and can be had for about $100 US in good shooting condition.
The shutter lag is generally lower than SLRs because the iris is already stopped down and there's no mirror to get out of the way, all that's left to do is fire the shutter.
In addition to the
Epson R-D1, there's the long-rumoured but supposedly imminent
Leica M8 Digital.
On the connection thing, if we argue that simplicity increases connection, then toy cameras like Dianas and Holgas are in turn superior to rangefinders. This is consistent with my experience, too: when shooting toys, there simply are no real options other than maybe zone focus, which makes me see a scene as the camera does, and actually operating the camera becomes a formality. it goes from my head to the scene rather than my head to the camera to the scene, because half of the camera is in my head. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it, but toys remove a layer of abstraction for me.
