Zenit RF digital camera is coming!

Here it is. First Impressions: Zenit M Digital Rangefinder Camera

What do you think of it?

Honestly? - Mixed(!) emotions. - I am unable to decipher that Poblographer (p)review about how it does(n't) feel in the hand and the VF unit. So I'll either have to read more or handle it somewhere, with a chance to compare it to my old CCD bodies and maybe even some CMOS Ms.

I decided against the M(240), when it was new. If I wanted one right now, the dealership I bought from before, is offering a used one for 3K5€ with EVF 2, dumb grip and "thumbs up" in good condition. 5K5€ would get me either an M10 or 2nd version of Monochrom with EVF. The lens market seems dried up though. What used to be 5 pages of listings became two full of "too short", Voigtländer and "too long".

The Zenit label: I'd love it! - No, I don't have fond memories of shooting their SLRs. (What reached me, was mostly done or not worth getting batteries to operate the electronic shutter anymore.) If I had to use film and M42 lenses, I'd bring a Pentax and a Praktica. But I feel patriotic pride about the Zenit M. - Finally some German revenge for all the fake Leicas crafted from FEDs. I wanted my cameras, despite their red dots & price tags.

RF pros and cons: If you look at physically (due to age or luggage constraints) lazy photographers, there seem two camps: MFT & M. M has a film background, (I started desiring that stuff in the mid 80s too.) MFT is tech packed; sometimes nailing the decisive moment by doing a dozen frames before, "just in case". Weight wise your choice might barely matter, if you pick light RF lenses and twice as fast MFT glass to compare them to. So it will be a question of taste and maybe picking a chance for IQ over camera features / shooting convenience. - I haven't tried MFT myself. I attempted reading through Steve Huff's page and ended as confused as I started. The conclusion I brought home is: "Pick one of these systems, if needed by tossing a coin. Do not get both or the light will be gone until you made up your mind which to take out." + Who picks & brings both could have gotten Canon for less money.

There was a time when the RF concept worked really great: 1980s (& earlier) manually focusing journalism; at the wide end. - At the long end SLRs might work better for some folks, especially when there is plenty of light to handhold low ISO. Shooting RFs is an acquired taste, as some people say. It seems also a necessity when you want to focus a shot but your focusing screen would be too dim to work on (try focusing a WA lens on an MF film beater in a dim pub and you'll understand what I am talking about. - Heck, I need strong additional lights to focus a LF WA indoors!). DSLRs (and decent MILCs?) came a long way in between. - The huge difference: If a room is dim and I decided to shoot at f8 (with flash) The DSLR / MILC will focus better / easier with a faster lens attached; an RF doesn't care. It also doesn't mind dim filters in front of the lens.

M8/9 don't go (far?) beyond keeping the old CL(E)'s promise. You can nail focus at 50mm f2, equalling 90mm/f4 but it isn't guaranteed that you will.

The pre-M10 UIs ain't great. You have ISO hidden in the menu or M9 onwards a button to access that setting on the rear screen. - You'll feel your f-stop. Feeling your shutter speed is close to impossible (unlike on M2, 3 & 4, where I'd call it "easy"). You have a traffic light thingy to meter with eye on camera. - It isn't the worst I encountered but I like needles or bars more. You do get some warnings for out of auto ISO range but they aren't bold. You'll see auto exposure shutter speed, but that is harder to look at than a crop Pentax' VF display. Auto ISO shutter speed coupling is stupid; it permits either 1/*focal length* second or 1/125. - That is OK for available light desperadoism with Instagram & such in mind but not for getting entirely sharp noisy pictures.

Metering is on a early 80s tech level. - Integral, not matrix like everywhere else these days. Exposure compensation is deep in the menu; like in a budged entry level camera.

Other flaws to list: No option to use the hotshoe to mount VFs and additionally sync a flash, unless you add the multi(dys)functional hand grip to M(240).

Reviewers weren't overly happy with the makeshift-MILC shooting mode. - Laggy? - Low resolution of the add on EVF? - Will there be one for Zenit at all? - I am no purist. - Add on EVF makes a decent & comparably inexpensive backup for multiple auxilliary OVFs, might be handy for close up and still life photography and seems essential to me for MILCing the odd heritage lens you might have somewhere on your newly acquired FF workhorse.

Long story short: You don't pay only lots of money for the option to reduce gear bulk via shooting rangefinders, there is more.

The important reason why people go for Leica sensors is: These seem the only stock solution ready to cope with wide old Leica M lenses. If you are starting from scratch it is maybe the wrong time to get into the M system?

I can't say anything about the Zenitar lens in the kit.

• I suspect it to slightly block the view finder?
  
• It looks comparably bulky
  
• According to "you'll get what you pay for" it might be a rather soft / otherwise optically flawed classic ultra fast lens (unlike the latest Noctilux and other aspherical stuff by Leica that seems razor sharp wide open).
  

So you'll get a unique "nice toy"- lens with bragging rights, warm fuzzy patriotic feelings and a semi outdated body in a not really cheap package.

I never owned insanely fast M glass, besides maybe my old 90mm 'cron. Looking at a buddy's Noctilux 1.0 negs in the past and the pictures in the article you linked, I dare to wonder: What is the point of that "high end Lomography"? - Or what would be your term for "apparently everything out of focus"?

I assume shooting fast glass wide open is hit & miss, spray and pray, even if you are going for a full body shot but are still demanding the front eye in focus. Having a decent, micro adjusted AF at hand and a focusing point that you can use to avoid focus & recompose still might not always cut the cake. Attempting the same with a RF seems really hard to me. - IDK how folks managed it in the past. - I'm guessing they were very happy, if they nailed 3 frames per roll.

The association of Zenit and Leica is not entirely fortuitous. Of the early Zenit SLRs, the Zenit S was the closest to putting a mirror & prism on a clone-Leica RF body (link).

Perhaps not quite the precision of bench-made Leicas?

Zenit S in cyrillic script

VEB Leica?