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Want To Be Better at Photography?
Buy a 60 year old camera.
If you have read any of my writing recently, you will see I have talked about this camera and my foray back into a film a couple of times.
Simply put, I love this camera, or rather, I love the fact it makes me think what I need to do in order to get the best possible picture out of it.
There is an old saying in photography that the most important feature of any camera is just a few inches behind the viewfinder. It’s you, or rather your brain, so start using it.
I purchased this camera at the start of 2024. A Canon 7 rangefinder with a 50mm Serenar lens. It was first released in 1961.
A rangefinder is a little different than a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. With an SLR when you look through the viewfinder, you are actually looking through the lens. This is achieved by using a number of mirrors in the pentaprism at the top of the camera where the viewfinder is.
With a rangefinder, when you look through the viewfinder you are not looking through the lens, rather you have frame-lines inside which approximate the field of view of the lens.
Focusing with a rangefinder is a little different too. An SLR uses what is known as split image focusing. In the centre of the viewfinder is a circle, and…