Bags for the Rangefinder User - 5 Good Choices

My first camera bag was a leather Samsonite bag that I bought at a department store for about $8 in the late 60’s. It had no special compartments, so I tore an old towel into squares and put the squares in the bag to keep my Soligor 35/2.8 and 135/3.5 from clacking together. My next bag was a black plastic atrocity from Spiratone. It was cheap, felt kind of sticky like it was made of licorice candy, and smelled like chemicals. None of the zippers seemed to work. I was a graduate student back then, so $10 was pretty much my food allowance for a week. A nice bag was out of the question.

Things are far different decades later. Eveready cases for cameras are unheard of, and there are some high-end bags that look good and work well for the serious photographer. Single lens reflexes still dominate for the professional and enthusiast photographer, but I still prefer the smaller rangefinders. Is there a perfect bag for a kit consisting of a rangefinder + lens and two additional lenses? Five choices come to mind. All five comfortably hold a rangefinder with three lenses (one attached). How much more you can get into the bag varies from bag to bag.

• Billingham Hadley
• Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home
• Domke 803
• Domke F5XB
• M-Classic Bag

The Billingham Hadley is the most expensive of the lot and one of the most attractive bags. The padding surrounding the equipment is the thickest and presumably affords the best protection. Repositionable partitions allow you to vary the size of the inner slots. Two generous expandable pockets in the front will accommodate film, lens paper, and batteries. With its leather accents, it won’t embarrass the well-dressed shooter. Securing the top of the bag are two leather straps with eyes. I find these a bit awkward to use in the field. On the positive side, opening the bag doesn’t produce the grating ripping noise of Velcro, making it a bit more discrete than some of the others. I find the strap attachments to the sides of the bag to be a bit too low for my taste. It sometimes gives me the feeling that the bag is top-heavy.

The Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home is slightly more pouch-like in appearance. The internal dimensions are smaller than most of the bags, so the camera and lenses fit a bit more snugly, a win-win situation in my view. Like the Billingham Hadley, you can reposition the partitions inside of the bag, making a larger slot in the middle for the camera. The bag itself appears to be a synthetic canvas, and the padded inside also appears to be made of a synthetic compound. This might be a plus, making the material water resistant, and less likely to produce dust or support mold. Unlike the Hadley, there aren’t fat pouches for film, so a jacket with big pockets might be necessary when carrying this bag fully loaded. There are two levels of security for holding the top flap in place. A large piece of Velcro will hold the flap securely in place. If you need more security than that, a black plastic pinch clasp (yeah, I made that name up, but you know what I’m talking about) adds to the security. On the negative side, every time you open the flap, the peace is shattered with a deafening ripping noise. If you want to access the inside flat pocket, another deafening velcroesque ripping sound will put the pigeons to flight. If James Nachtwey had used the Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home, he’d have been taken out by friendly fire years ago. The Crumpler strap appears to be similar to seat belt material. This is a sturdy bag. If you haven’t looked at the Crumpler web sites, be prepared for even more noise. Singing with unintelligible words, oinking, flushing, flatulence, resophonic guitar, horses whinnying. There are four versions of the site (USA, Australia, Singapore, and Canada), with different noises. At one point, I couldn’t click on a menu choice because an animated arm would reach out and block it from my mouse arrow. If you hate the site, you are probably a Billingham Hadley kind of guy. NOTE: The day after this blog was posted, a reader suggested dealing with the Velcro noise issue by putting some Velcro (or even tape) on the Velco. Excellent suggestion. I had thought of meticulously trimming the Velcro off with a razor blade, but his idea is better.

The Domke 803 is probably the popular choice among rangefinder users for several reasons. It looks more like an army surplus bag than a camera bag, it can be made to look even crappier by throwing it in the washing machine, it can be waterproofed with various canvas waterproofing sprays, and it is easy to access from the top. A three-slot insert provides sufficient room for a camera + two additional lenses. Zippered sleeves and two flapped (with Velcro) pockets can carry your film, batteries, lens paper, etc. Padding is not as luxurious as the Hadley. The partitioned sleeves are made of nylon cloth reinforced with flexible plastic foam. The top flap is held security in place by a steel hook clasp like you would see on a dog leash. This bag is reasonably priced, has the least frills, and is the most blue-collar-looking bag described here.

The Domke F5XB is considerably smaller than the Domke 803, but it can still accommodate a rangefinder plus two additional lenses. But there isn’t much room for anything else other than lens hoods, lens paper, and batteries. I actually like it better than the 803 for several reasons. The F5XB can be tethered securely to your body via a long tunnel on the back through which you snake your trouser belt. This, along with the shoulder strap, securely fastens the bag to you and eliminates the problem of the bag swinging around while you are walking, climbing, etc. Like the Crumpler, there are two levels of security. Velcro hold the top flap securely in place, and a heavy-duty zipper runs along the top lengthwise. Two movable nylon partitions allow you to change the size of the internal compartments. A spongy fabric protects the contents from bumps.

The M-Classic Bag is the least well known of the five rangefinder bags here. The manufacturer is one Seth Levine who sells the bags from a Spartan web site. Like the Billingham bags, the M-Classic is handsome, made from canvas with generous leather trim. Of the bags described here, it affords the least padding. The compartments inside the bag are large canvas pockets that can carry a lot of equipment. This might be the best bag for a dressy event if you are not expecting anything violent or traumatic to happen. The pockets are particularly huge. Like my Samsonite bag of 40 years ago, I might want to shove a few hand towels in the bag to add protection.

Any of these five bags will serve the rangefinder shooter well. For users of digital rangefinders, the Crumpler 5-Million Dollar Home and the Domke F5XB might be the best choices, based on their snugness and their lack of room for film.

Nikon S3 Year 2000 Limited Edition

The past 7 years have witnessed a rangefinder renaissance. Cosina acquired the Voigtländer name and started producing a variety of cute, relatively inexpensive, retro rangefinder cameras that can use Leica, Voigtländer, Contax, and Nikon RF lenses. Konica released a rangefinder in the Leica M mount. Rollei marketed a new rangefinder (very similar to the Voigtländer). Zeiss Ikon released a very impressive rangefinder in two versions. Epson and Leica both released digital rangefinder cameras. Bronica released a medium format rangefinder camera. And Leica released perhaps their finest rangefinder of them all, the Leica MP. But during the past 7 years, most of these rangefinder cameras were quickly discontinued, along with some other rangefinder cameras that existed before the rangefinder renaissance (Hasselblad, Fuji, Mamiya).

The rangefinder camera I haven’t mentioned is the Nikon S3. This camera seemed to make the least sense, at least to me. It is a close reproduction of a meterless rangefinder camera released back in 1958. The S3 wasn’t the most popular Nikon rangefinders, nor was it what many felt was Nikon’s best rangefinder. Producing it obviously required all new tooling at Nikon. And with this new S3 came a revised 50/1.4 Nikkor lens. Dubbed the Nikon S3 Year 2000 Limited Edition, it retailed for a bundle and nobody thought one of them would actually be used to take photos. The idea was apparently that the Japanese market would buy it as a collector’s item and that it would never see action. Early reports said that, even at the large price, Nikon lost money on every camera sold. Worse yet, nobody seemed interested in buying them. Why would a collector with a pristine Nikon S3 from 1958 buy a replica made over 40 years later? The lure of collecting is to be able to show off a 50-year-old camera that looks brand new, not a brand new camera that resembles one made 50 years ago. The rangefinder world ignored the new, meterless Nikon S3 and they sat on dealer shelves for several years.

Today, I found one on the Internet with a $5,183.84 price tag on it. Other stores on the web are offering it for $3,999. One Ebay seller just dropped his asking price from $3,000 to $2,500. No nibbles so far. And they continue to gather dust. Two really big stores in New York, Adorama and B&H, apparently decided to cut their losses and dropped their prices apparently below what dealers would pay for the cameras wholesale. When Nikon is losing money on them and the two powerhouse camera stores are losing money on them, it’s hard to convince me that buying one isn’t a bargain, but I wouldn’t want to make that pitch to my wife. I wanted to know if it was eye candy or a good camera. Nowhere could I find a soul who had one and could tell me. The silence was deafening.

Then Leica did something that really tipped the balance. They raised their prices for an MP and an M7 astronomically. Now one would have to shell out nearly $3,500 for just a body. And then they released the 50/1.4 Summilux aspheric lens for an earth-shattering $2,800. Squeak!!! That's $6,300 for a camera and fast 50mm lens. Suddenly Nikon’s original asking price for the Nikon S3 was getting palatable. I found one that Adorama was unloading for less than $3,000 on Ebay. That did it. I buckled and got it. It even came with a leather ever-ready case (does anyone really use those’).

I have a couple of old Nikon S2 cameras that I like very much. Had I not had good experiences with the 50-year-old S2s, I wouldn’t have plunged into an S3. Okay, what are my impressions of the S3?’

Plusses

• It’s a very handsome camera, like the original Nikon rangefinders. Although it is barely larger than a Contax IIa, it feels larger.
• It’s much easier to load than a Leica of any vintage. But then what’s harder to load than a Leica’
• The lens is exceptional. Why make a lens this good for a collector? Why not make thousands of them in M mount for Leica users? My 50/1.4 Nikkor from the 1950’s in LTM mount makes my knees buckle. Everyone should be so fortunate to have one.
• It’s lighter than Leica’s MP.
• With a cloth shutter, it’s relatively quiet, quieter than either of my S2 bodies (but perhaps not as quiet as a Leica M).
• It isn’t a cheap-feeling reproduction. It really does look and feel like a 1950’s vintage Nikon rangefinder.
  
• It’s a pleasure to use.

Minuses

• No meter. But we’re used to that. Anyone who uses a pre-M5 Leica or a medium to large format camera is accustomed to using a handheld light meter.
• Vague rangefinder patch. Anyone who has used a Leica M3, Zeiss Ikon, or modern Voigtländer is spoiled by a bright rangefinder patch. The Nikon patch is not as easy to see.
• Build quality is good, but it does look stamped instead of milled. My Leica MP body looks and feels like it was machined from a massive billet of solid brass. You could beat someone to death with a Leica MP, but only maim them with a Nikon S3.
• The entire lens rotates when you focus it. It also rotates (unintentionally) when you try to change the aperture. If Nikon decided to come out with a new-millennium rangefinder, they hope they would fix this design shortcoming.
• It has an infinity lock. What the hell is with the infinity lock’! Early Leicas had them too. I think this comes from a manual transmission mentality. Nobody in the 1940’s would leave their car out of gear when parking. You have to put the car in gear so it won’t roll. So let’s put an infinity lock on lenses so they won’t move from infinity. I hate them.

• Very few lenses available. The only modern lenses for Nikon RF mount are the 50/1.4 Nikkor, a [now discontinued] set of fine optics from Voigtländer, and a 35mm lens that ships with yet another Nikon commemorative rangefinder, the SP.

Fortunately, I use a 50mm lens most of the time and the 50/1.4 Nikkor is a wonderful lens. Do I recommend the reissue of the Nikon S3? If you can get one at a reasonable price, by all means yes. And you had best snap up the remaining Nikon mount rangefinder lenses from www.cameraquest.com before they are gone.