Out and about at the MHR St. George’s Day Steam Fest yesterday reminded me what a brilliant camera the Zeiss Ikon ZM really is. A truly practical rangefinder camera, classic in its conception and handling but brought right up to date, with most of the foibles of the original 1950’s design sorted out.

There is a mystique to using a traditional 35mm film based manual rangefinder that no other camera form provides; so what could be more satisfying than photographing classic steam trains than with a classic rangefinder camera?

When you pick it up you realise that, in the ZI, form meets function, that there are the bare minimum of essential controls located in exactly the right place, that it sits in the hand just right, that you have total control over the picture making process, that it is intuitive to use and gets out of the way of your photography, that it is fast and precise, that it is the essence of what a camera should be, that it is photographic freedom and that it is joy to use.

Enough waxing lyrical!

This is also a very practical bit of kit. It uses the Leica M-mount. It has a long based rangefinder with an effective EBL of 55.5mm. This rangefinder can focus down to 0.7 metres, depending upon the lens attached. The rangefinder patch is large, precise, contrasty and flare free. It has a metal, vertical running shutter with speeds from 8-1/2000th and flash sync at 1/125th. It has a big, bright finder with 0.74x magnification comfortably allowing for bright frames for 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses. The finder has a row of red LEDs that show the shutter speed along its left hand edge. It comes in sliver and black finishes. It has a window in the film door that allows you to view the film characteristics printed on the film cassette so you can see what you have got loaded. The shutter release is threaded to take a standard mechanical cable release.

It has a standard contacts hot shoe so you can use a wide range of third party flash guns. Its all metal aluminium alloy body weighs in at sturdy16 ozs, not too heavy not too light. It has a big, highly visible frame counter, It uses a single, tiny CR1/3N lithium battery or two SR44 silver oxide button batteries. It provides highly consistent centre weighted TTL metering measuring off the grey stripe on the shutter blades. It has a choice of fully manual and aperture priority (AE) metering. It is highly ergonomic with a clever speed dial on the top that integrates shutter speed selection, exposure override and film speed (ISO) setting into a single control, magic. ISO range is 25 to 3200.

It also has three annoyances that are all linked. The first is that the red LED shutter speed readout in the viewfinder is great to use in lower light conditions being bright and clear, but useless in very bright light where you need to move your head position to be able to see them clearly, bummer. The second is the exposure lock button which seems to me to be an after thought. It is a toggle button on the back of the camera under the viewfinder. Press to turn the AE lock on, and press again to turn it off.  When switched on, you get a flashing AEL red LED read out in the bottom left corner of the viewfinder. That same red LED readout system that is hard to see in bright light! It all too easy to switch the AEL on and forget about it. I’s just not obvious.

A switch e.g. around the shutter release button would have been better placed and would have given both a visual and tactile indication of the AE lock state i.e. on or off. This brings me nicely to my last niggle, the switch around the collar of the shutter release. Firstly it’s current function is redundant - the camera is only switched on when wound on and I tend not to leave it wound on when I have finished using it. Secondly this would have been the ideal control for the AEL either on its own or as a two position switch used in conjunction with the on/off function if you must.

In practical terms the shutter is quiet and discrete with none of the intrusive slap bang mirror noise of an SLR. The lack of mirror mechanism allows you to hand hold without shake at about 2 stops lower than with an SLR and, with practice and the right technique, I can manage as much a 3 stops. This is as good as any of the image stabiliser systems in D-SLRs and lenses out there currently. Coupled with fast primes rather then the typical slow zooms found on modern D-LRs and you have a real winner for available light photography. Fast colour negative film like Fujicolor Superia 1600 makes it an even bigger winner in this field.

The rangefinder is precise and accurately focuses lenses like my Sonnar 85mm f2 wide open and at close range which is a real test for any rangefinder system. I use the old preset the lens close focus then move the camera in and out till the rangefinder images coincides method, and it works well. I also find the camera will happily focus an old Leitz 135mm f4 which I use in conjunction with an ancient 13.5cm finder which slips into the hot shoe. Close up and wide open at f4 hand held with this lens is dodgy though. Not because the rangefinder/ lens combination is inaccurate, rather in having to move the camera to get your eye up from rangefinder window to the accessory viewfinder in combination with the tiny (a few millimetres) depth of focus of  135mm at f4 close up you end up moving the camera out of the zone of focus. Best used stopped down and at a distance where it works fine.

Composing with the bright frame line viewfinder is a joy with an immediacy and continuous contact with your subject that no SLR provides. It is one of the major reasons to use a rangefinder in general and the ZI, with its big clear viewfinder, in particular. With standard to wide angle lenses, pre-focusing using the hyperfocal distance technique makes the ZI one of the fastest cameras to use beating all autofocus systems out there and leaving you free to get on with composition and capturing the moment. You simply watch, wait and click - job done.

The ZI is quiet and discrete, especially in black finish, unlike these big, chunky, clunky pro full frame D-SLRs which are really in your face - subtle they are not. Further, unlike the afore mention chunkies, the ZI will not give rise to you needing the services of an osteopath. The ZI camera and three Zeiss primes lenses, including the 85mm f2, weighs in at under 3.75 lbs compared to a full frame D-SLR and and a couple of fast pro zooms at 10-12 lbs. You get the picture.

Zeiss lenses are also lovely and indeed a compelling reason in their own right to use the ZI. I own the Biogon 21mm f2.8, Biogon 28mm f2.8, Biogon 35mm f2, Planar 50mm f2 and the Sonnar 85mm f2. They are brilliant! I especially like their colour rendition, tonality and near zero distortion, which is consistent across the range. Their manual focusing mechanisms are well damped and precise, and their aperture rings click in one third stops for accurate exposure.

The ZI uses 35mm film which remains superior to digital in natural look and feel, dynamic range, colour rendition and tonality, and organic sharpness. In combination with Zeiss glass and the precision of the ZI this means much superior image quality, if you do your bit. Digital is really a form of video imaging and this shows in the pictures it produces, they are unreal. Film is photography. The ZI and film together make you slow down and encourages a more considered, precise way of working which in turn means fewer, better composed photographs with a very high hit rate of “keepers”.

Need digital? Then use the ZI with colour negative film and scan it or indeed have it scanned for you at processing time - digital-film so to speak. Works great and with hi-res scans you get the very best of top end full frame 35mm digital, plus the negatives are archival in their own right and future technology proof.

So what will the ZI rush you? Well a new ZI here in the UK is listed at £1,299 as of this date. A Leica M7 (the nearest equivalent) is listed at £2,799. A full frame 35mm D-SLR like e.g. the Nikon D3s comes in at £3,574.  A bargain? Well I think so; the ZI is as good as the Leica with image quality still better than any D-SLR, at a very attractive price.

Oh, and finally above all else real photography with the Zeiss Ikon is such fun!