The Hexar RF is a Leica M-mount camera of the modern (though pre-digital) world. It has motorised film loading, advance and rewind, DX encoding, aperture-priority auto-exposure (with AE lock) as well as fully manual aperture and shutter speed settings. It has a .6x magnification finder (with optical coatings on the finder glass to reduce glare). It has frame-lines for 50/75, 35/135 and 28/90 focal lengths (in those parings) automatically selected when the lens is mounted. Its a very bright and clear finder, with a distinct and sharp-edged RF patch that makes it easy to focus (although the .6 magnification means it has a shortish effective base length, which would make it harder to focus longer/faster lenses - especially close up).
Most of them were black painted aluminium bodies (with painted titanium top and bottom plates). Many came in a boxed set with a 50mm/f2 lens and a small flash unit (I have a boxed set, bought 2nd-hand from a Sydney camera shop). There was a special anniversary set with a chrome body and 50mm/f1.2 lens, but that's not what I have.
The Konica M-Hexanon lenses are well regarded, with the 50/2 and 35/2 considered by many to be equal to or better than the pre-asph Leica Summicrons. Konica's full range of lenses was: 28/2.8, 35/2, 50/2, 50/1.2, 90/2.8 and a dual-range 21-35/3.4-4 lens similar in concept to the Leica Tri-Elmar. (I have the 50/2 and the 35/2.)
Unfortunately, for such a nice camera and system, its something of an orphan because of what's happened to Konica (and subsequently Konica-Minolta) in the series of events that led to their departure from photography. While its a nice camera, I suspect that if anything goes wrong there will be very few repair options.
The camera looks like this:
A sample photo with the 35mm f2 lens (@f4)
And another sample, with the 50mm f2 lens (@f2):
The Leica M3 (which arrived last Friday) was something of an accident (I put in a low-ball bid in an e-Bay auction with no thought that I might win it). It's a very nice all-mechanical camera (not so much as a light meter) that was the first model to take the Leica bayonet mount lens. It has a large bright .91 magnification viewfinder (giving it the longest effective base length, hence most accurate focus, of any of the Leica rangefinders). Mine, at least, has a very bright clear viewfinder, a very clear RF patch and is very nice to focus. It has 50mm, 90mm and 135mm frame lines, automatically selected when the lens is mounted. Because of the high-magnification finder, lenses wider that 50mm can't really be framed without special lens attachments (with "eyes") that sit in front of the rangefinder windows.
My camera is, I think, of 1957 manufacture and has a "double stroke" film advance (later versions of the M3 had a single-stroke winder). Loading a film is quite a painful process, requiring the baseplate to be removed, the back of the camera opened, the take-up spool removed to attach the film leader, then the whole process reversed. Quite a contrast to the electrical film loading of my Hexar RF! That, and the absence of any form of light meter, are the only problems I have with the camera. (Oh, and the absence of 75mm frame-lines: I've acquired a beaten up Summilux 75/1.4 that's off being professionally cleaned and adjusted so I'll have to learn to estimate the framing as well as the exposure - but do want to take advantage of the M3's focusing accuracy.)
I haven't had a chance to photograph the camera yet, but here's a shot taken with the M3 and the M-Hexanon 50/2 over the weekend:
At the Sydney Motorcycle Show on Saturday (f2, 1/100)
(Other photos can be found at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfunnell/ )
Thanks for asking, and I hope I haven't bored you all to tears.
...Mike
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