Almost 10 years ago, Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer blog wrote a post:
The Leica as Teacher. In it he proposed that budding photographers should use One Camera, One Lens and One (black and white) Film for One Year (plus a few other bits about printing and reviewing your images). What's more he suggests using a rangefinder to do it. You'll see this idea referred to sometimes as OCOLOF or OCOLOY. Dean (
@Strappy) and I both did 6-month versions of this, and it was certainly very interesting and instructive to me, and greatly helped me get my "black and white eye" back.
In a
later post he suggested a digital variant; however, he also included this paragraph:
"I argued that it would improve one's photographic chops in many ways. It would make you stop thinking about camera and lens options; the use of the one camera you were using would become second nature; the "transparent" nature of the RF viewfinder makes the finder image less seductive, less easy to get lost in (view camera photographers know how easy it is to get enthralled by that gorgeous image on the groundglass); the minimal shutter lag and mechanical responsiveness of the Leica encourages you to learn the benefit of timing the moment of exposure exactly; the necessity of developing film tends to make you more conservative and thoughtful and avoid shooting too much; and learning to see in B&W is a good foundation even for color photographers because color can't substitute for meaning, and value (tones) comprises the structure of many good photographs, even ones in color."
By the way, he also suggested that, contrary to the belief that Leicas are expensive, he suggested that they are free, or nearly so, in that demand means prices are static or rising, so after your year, 6 months or whatever, you can get your money back! Not quite my experience; theoretically I got my money back for my little Leitz Minolta CL, but in practice a quarter went to Ffordes for the sale, after fruitless attempts to sell it on here and fleabay.
So as you can tell, I didn't stick with my rangefinder, though I di enjoy it enormously, and still hanker after another one from time to time. One of the reasons I gave it up was the near order of magnitude greater cost of expanding the lens collection over the sweet 40/2 M-Rokkor the camera came with, compared with lenses for my Pentaxes. But I think a rangefinder is about the only non-Pentax 35mm camera I would consider buying, these days!
Voigtlander Bessa R3A and R4A are very good choices, BTW! Go on, give it a go...