[DWThomas]

[...]

While I await the arrival of my camera, I have been hunting onlne for a nice shoe-mount rangefinder, but they are quite expensive, and almost all that I have seen appear to be in less than ideal condition. So I think I will just manage without, as I have been doing with my other cameras. So it will be strictly old-school for me, right down to Sunny 16. Just the way I like things done!

Thanks again,
Glen

Ha! I thought it would be nice to have the official Voigtländer rangefinder and started following them on ePrey. One of the first auctions I saw pictured the RF mounted on a camera, although it clearly said the auction did NOT include the camera, it looked as though bidders might have thought that way. I finally wound up with a unit by Watameter that was more reasonable in price, but now in truth, I almost always just estimate. If you start working with closeup ('Focar') lenses, or close in with wide open aperture, more accurate measurements might be useful, but otherwise one can learn to estimate pretty closely. Many of those folders have a mark for 'snapshot mode' on the focus scale. My Perkeo II has a little circle toward the infinity end (distant) and a triangle at about 11 feet (near). These serve as a zone focus mark, for which they recommend an aperture of f/8 or smaller so depth of field covers up some sins.

The other obstacle with getting an accessory rangefinder is that both the camera and the RF may be marked in feet or in meters, depending on where they were initially sold. I suspect trying to mix them and mentally convert between meters and feet is likely no more accurate that estimating the distance directly.