FED 3 front

Front view of an overhauled FED 3. I wish the sellers would stop refering to these as "Leica copies," because they are not. The FED 2 wasn't too far off from a Leica (and in fact most of the fake Leicas out there are FED 2s), but the 3 has a number of improvements and doesn't bear much resemblence anymore. It's actually closer to a Contax than a Leica.

Anyway, this is a very good 35mm coincident rangefinder and it has interchangable lenses. Focusing is by lining two superimposed images up until they match, far more accurate than the "now it looks fuzzy and now it doesn't" method used in SLRs and much easier to do in low light.

The Industar lenses are superb and will easily outperform ANY wide angle lens or normal lens you will find on ANY kind of SLR. SLRs don't come into their own until you put telephoto lenses on them (the strongest telephoto lens you can put on a rangefinder is 135mm). The best lenses available for these are the Industar 61 L/D and the Jupiter 8.

That said, if you are going to get an FED3, be certain to get one made for export (no cyrillic writing on the bottom plate). The ones made for domestic use very often don't work.

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