365cameras.com

Have you ever wondered what a rangefinder camera is? Do you know how you would focus a rangefinder camera if you aren’t looking through the lens? Here is a short video explaining how rangefinder cameras work.

Be sure to check out the rangefinder cameras for sale on ebay

I found a very nice photography site, www.suaudeau.eu. The only stumbling point for me is that it’s in French. My knowledge of French is not so good. Wait a minute. Don’t leave yet. Google makes it easy to see a translated copy of a site.

The translated www.suaudeau.eu home page.

There is some really excellent content here, such as this guide to Minolta cameras

That page has individual pages for particular Minolta models. It has history of Minolta SLR and rangefinder cameras. It also has repair tips, lens disassembly instructions, and finder changing instructions for the SRT 101.

The histories are excellent. I like the Minolta Manual SLR history.

Check out these Camera, Shutter and Flash Service Manuals
There are service or user manuals for Leica 2M, Leica 3f, Minolta Himatic 7Sii, Minolta XD-11, Minolta X-700, Minolta X300, Minolta X500, Minolta XE, Minolta 360XP, Minolta SRT 101, Nikon F3, Compur, Pentax K1000, Pentax Spotmatic, Pentax Spotmatic II, Canon EF, Canon EOS 30, Canon EOS 500, Canon F1, Canon Canonet GIII QL 17, Obturateur Prontor 1, Obturateur Prontor 2, Olympus XA, Yashica D, Yashica Mat 124 G, Yashica Electro 35
The caveat is that not all of the manuals have English translations in them.

Along with the manuals, there is a very nice Repair page

This site is well worth checking out, especially for the service manuals and repair section. If you’re a Minolta person especially, there is some great stuff here. Highly recommended.

Please note that if google comes back and says a page is too big to translate, such as the manuals, then just view the page without the translator. Most of the links I provided are for the translations by google.

Today, I decided to go back to rangefinders and mention RangefinderForum.com

This forum has extensive coverage of rangefinder cameras and is well worth visiting if you’re into them.

The thing I really like is that since the site is devoted to rangefinders, that category is well distributed among many different individual forum topics. I think there are over 25 separate categories of rangefinders on the site. That makes it nice for finding specific information.

As expected there are other topics for discussion, eg. darkroom or TLRs, but the rangefinder information is what really shines.

There also classified and gallery sections. The gallery is accessible even if you’re not a member.

I really like this site and recommend that you check it out.