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Q: What is a rangefinder?

A rangefinder uses a rangefinder mechanism to measure and set the lens to the correct distance to the subject. Two images are presented to the user, and you twist the lens focusing mount until they coincide for your selected subject. The key point is that you are not looking through the lens when you focus, but a rangefinder viewfinder.

SLR stands for single lens reflex, where reflex refers to the mirror. In an SLR, you are actually looking through the lens to focus. The image you see is reflected to your eyes from a mirror. In most SLRs, there is a moving or swinging mirror which has to be moved out of the way prior to exposing the film. A few SLRs have a pellicle mirror which splits light between the viewfinder and the film plane.

A viewfinder camera has an optical sight that has only one image presenting the scene. You look directly through it, mainly to compose the shot. You don't have to focus to bring two images into one image as on most rangefinders.

• Rangefinders can be made smaller and lighter than most SLRs, since there is no need for a swinging mirror and large viewing pentaprism.
  

• Rangefinders can be quieter than SLRs, thanks to the lack of noise from a moving mirror.
  

• Rangefinders may be lower cost than similar quality SLRs, simply due to the fewer parts, including the lack of an expensive pentaprism.
  

• Rangefinders may be cheaper and simpler to fix, depending on their design, due to the fewer and lower cost parts used in their simpler design.
  

• Rangefinders may have shorter delays in taking the exposure, since they don't have to wait for a big mirror to swing or move out of the way before taking the exposure.
  

• Rangefinders can have brighter focusing images, since you aren't looking through a lens (of possibly small aperture like f/4 or f/5.6).
  

• Rangefinder focusing may be more accurate than even split image screen focusing on an SLR. The reason lies in the longer baseline between the two windows in the rangefinder. The farther apart these are, the more accurate the focusing can potentially be.
  

• Rangefinder optics can be smaller and lighter than similar speed and focal length lenses in SLRs. Rangefinder lenses don't need to use complex and costly retrofocus designs for wide angle lenses so the mirror won't hit the lens.
  

• Rangefinder lenses can be higher contrast, partly due to the reduced number of elements (e.g., non-retrofocus design) and flare from fewer elements too. As an example, the Zeiss Biogon design is a classic lens design that produces superior contrast and low distortion in wide angle lenses. But to use this design, Hasselblad had to build a viewfinder SWC superwide body around the lens, without a mirror as in their regular SLR bodies. Nikon made a non-retrofocus 21mm lens for their 35mm SLRs, but you have to lock up the mirror to mount this lens too.
  

Since you aren't looking through the lens, what you see in the viewfinder and what ends up on film may be different in some situations. In particular, closeup photography is hard to do with most rangefinders, since what the lens sees is quite different from your view through the rangefinder optics placed well above the closeup lens.

Similarly, telephoto lens use is difficult past about 135mm (on a 35mm rangefinder). The size of the image frame in the rangefinder gets too small to accurately frame distant subjects, and focusing is much harder too.

Photojournalism and street photography are two good examples of areas where the strengths of rangefinders win out, and their limitations are not critical. A small, quiet rangefinder beats a heavy, noisy SLR in most street shooting. Similarly, the typical 35mm and 90mm lenses favored by rangefinder users are very handy for photojournalism and portraiture uses.

Rangefinders don't have a moving mirror, so they produce less vibration in taking photographs. This is one major reason that users claim to be able to get consistently one stop slower shots with similar lenses for equal results. In other words, if you can shoot and get good images at 1/30th with a 35mm f/2 lens on your SLR, you might get similar images at 1/15th with a 35mm f/2 lens on your rangefinder. That is very handy in low light situations! It would take an f/1.4 lens at 1/30th on your SLR to equal an f/2 lens at 1/15th on your rangefinder. In effect, you can squeeze an extra stop of performance out of your rangefinder in low light situations when shooting handheld (typically).

The human eye responds optimally to yellow-green colors. By having one image highlighted in yellow (through a filter in the rangefinder optics), you can have an easier to focus and higher contrast image.

Good point. Probably the majority of rangefinders that have been sold do NOT provide interchangeable lenses. They have a fixed and non-removable lens and a leaf shutter. There are a number of models with interchangeable lenses, such as the Leica M series, the Fed clones, and so on. While we tend to focus on these interchangeable lens models, the others work very well and at low cost for many rangefinder users too.

Many low cost non-interchangeable lens rangefinders such as the Lynx have a leaf shutter built into their bodies. The advantage of a leaf shutter is simply that you can often flash synch at any shutter speed, from 1 second to 1/500th second (rarely, 1/1000th). By contrast, 35mm SLRs and focal plane shutter rangefinders will usually synchronize with flash at a slower maximum speed, typically from 1/60th to 1/250th second.

See medium format rangefinder pages. The medium format rangefinders include the venerable Koni-Omega and Mamiya Press series, while Fuji among others makes some current rangefinder designs in medium format.