After a bumpy delivery, courtesy of UPS, a Konica Hexar RF kit came into my hands. The kit includes the 50mm/2 Hexanon, the dinky HX-18 flash that I will never use, and a few diopter lenses in a lovely presentation case.
I have the Hexar AF, but I have never been very happy with it - awkward MF and the AF is too flakey, I suspect not helped by the slowly fading shutter button. Plus it is a user-interface nightmare (hold down "MF" while switching on to turn on silent mode!?!). Lovely 35mm lens though.
But the RF is something else. Beautifully made, and ergonomically sleek, it takes Leica M lenses yet with all the mod-cons like DX, AE, AEL, metered manual and even continous motor drive. I don't mind the motor/winder noise; if I leave it in C, the two actions happen simultaneously. For the parsimonious, it manages to eek out 38 frames on a roll of 36, a big deal after being used to 400+ shots on an 8GB card.
The Hexanon is outstanding. The bricks in the chimney stack in shot 5 are countable. Beautiful bokeh.
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