The Rangefinder Dilemma: Why I Want One But Can’t Justify It
Rangefinders are cool. Everyone knows this. If you see someone walking around with a Leica slung over their shoulder, odds are they either (a) really know what they’re doing or (b) just took out a small loan to afford it. Either way, they look effortlessly stylish while shooting. I want to be that person. I want a rangefinder. But there’s one small problem—I absolutely suck at focusing them.
It’s not like I haven’t tried. I’ve picked up a Minolta Hi-Matic E in a camera shop, twisted the focus ring, and watched as the tiny ghost-image patch in the viewfinder refused to line up. I’ve bought a Yashica Electro 35 GS from a friend (who definitely regretted selling it to me) and spent an entire afternoon taking what I was sure were perfectly focused shots—only to later realize that every single one of them looked like they were taken by someone who just got their pupils dilated.
The logical thing to do here would be to accept reality and move on. But logic has no place in film photography. I keep coming back to rangefinders, convinced that this time I’ll get the hang of it. I tell myself that if I just slow down, practice, and embrace the experience, I’ll finally understand why so many photographers swear by them. And yet, every time I actually try to use one, I’m reminded that I have the focusing skills of a mole.
I’d love to believe that with enough time, I’d get better. But let’s be honest, I have a perfectly good SLR that lets me see exactly what’s in focus, and yet here I am, trying to convince myself that a system designed before autofocus was even a dream is somehow the superior choice. I know the truth. If I bought a rangefinder, I’d spend 90% of my time second-guessing my focus and the other 10% frantically trying to remember the hyperfocal distance chart I looked up once and immediately forgot.
Still, the temptation lingers. Rangefinders are compact. They’re quiet. They have that undeniable old-school charm. They make you feel like you’re in a Wes Anderson movie even when you’re just taking a picture of a parking lot. And honestly, that’s a powerful draw.
So maybe one day I’ll cave. Maybe I’ll pick up a Leica and convince myself I’ve ascended to a new level of photographic enlightenment. Or maybe I’ll just keep pretending I don’t want one, right up until I inevitably buy one, miss every shot, and quietly sell it a few months later. At this point, we all know how this story ends.
Using a rangefinder is a process. At first, when you struggle a bit, it makes you wary of the actual focus point and composition. Once you master the focusing, you literally stop thinking about it. Muscle memory is everything here. It helps to reset the focusing to infinity after each shot, so that you always focus from far to close, one quick move. Alternatively, when you don’t do that, you will notice that depending on the focal length, you actually tend to make photos from the same distance, and your camera is basically always in focus or needs just a nudge on the focusing ring. It is also helpful if you have a focusing tab on your lens (I suggest buying a stick-on rubber one for all your lenses that don’t have one from the factory). Most rangefinder lenses have the same focus throw, so the focusing tab ends up in the same positions for various distances on different lenses. 1 metre is almost always 6pm, 3 metres 7pm, etc. So you can prefocus pretty accurately without even putting your camera to the eye. Combine this knowledge with focus zones and you get close to 100% hit rate in very short time.
Most importantly, embrace the imperfection.
Zone focusing takes practice. Lots of it. And I found I really needed to work with one focal length for an extended period of time also. You don't need to know all your hyperfocal distances. Just pick a couple for your most commonly used apertures.