Why I'm NOT Getting a Hexar RF

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By William Schaffel

Well, the long awaited Hexar RF has arrived. Perhaps it is the M7 that some Leica owners have dreamed of, or perhaps not. Only time will tell us if Konica made the right choices when designing the new Hexar RF. However, this is not the Hexar I had hoped for and I’m not ready to trade in my G2 for one. To tell you why, I need to explain how I got to the G2.

Until several years ago, every camera I owned was fully manual. In fact, I had not owned a camera since my Canon SLR vanished in a move ten years earlier. I planned to take my family on a Caribbean cruise and decided to replace the SLR. I knew I wanted something more than a point and shoot, but what? I had a brief affair with a Leica M2 once and thought about an M6 however; an M6 with a couple of lenses cost more than the cruise. So I began wandering through the camera stores looking at all of the modern auto-everything SLRs.

The biggest problem I found with the new cameras was all of the little tiny buttons needed to operate them. I couldn’t see which was which without putting on my reading glasses and the LCDs were just as bad. This is hardly the way a person would want to operate a camera.

I was in a local shop staring at a case of used rangefinder cameras, mostly in terrible condition, when I noticed this beautiful black Konica Hexar. The rubberized body fit perfectly in my hand and it didn’t feel light and cheap like some of the new cameras I had looked at. The viewfinder was bright and clear, the main controls were simple, and there were only four buttons to be concerned with. I liked the camera instantly. After some traditional haggling, the Hexar and I were off to the Caribbean.

As it turned out, the Hexar was an ideal travel camera. While I couldn’t put it in my shirt pocket, it was small and light enough not to need a camera bag. When we went ashore, I stuck the little HX14 flash and a couple of rolls of Kodak MAX 800 in my pocket and carried the camera on my shoulder.  The 35mm lens was perfect for the narrow streets of the Caribbean towns and did a nice job on landscapes as well.  The results were fantastic; everything was razor sharp.

The only shortcoming of the Hexar was having only one lens. Having rediscovered photography, I wanted more flexibility. I purchased a used Minolta X-700 and soon built a system of lenses, flash, and all of the other little things SLRs seem to need.  After a year, I was sick of manual everything and mostly tired of lugging all that gear around.

Rumors kept cropping up about the new Hexar II with interchangeable lenses. I was excited; the wonderful 35mm f2 lens with perhaps a matching 85mm or 90mm lens. Maybe auto bracketing and faster shutter speeds but beyond this the Hexar was perfect to me.

I waited and waited but no Hexar II. This is when I began looking at the Contax G2. I was lucky to have a local Contax dealer, so I could compare the G2 with my Hexar. I spent hours in the store comparing the auto focus, noise, and the viewfinder. I have to admit that the Hexar was faster, had the best viewfinder, and was far quieter. Even the salesman wanted a Hexar after playing with mine. In the end, a G2 with the 35mm Planar and the 90mm Sonar won out because I still wanted the choice of more than one lens and there was the G2’s better ergonomics.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I made the right choice. I wasn’t really sure if I liked the viewfinder and now Konica was saying the new Hexar would be here by the end of the year. However, after using the G2 for almost seven months, I’m hooked. I’ve found the G2’sauto focus to be very reliable; the only out of focus shots I have gotten can usually be attributed to me and not the camera. Once you are used to it, the viewfinder is not much different than using an auto focus SLR and everything is in focus. I’ve also found the auto bracketing to be cheap insurance when using slides or working in difficult light. Oh and how could one forget those wonderful Carl Zeiss lenses?

So enter the new Hexar RF. What have they done to my lovely Hexar? This is definitely not the camera I was waiting for.

If you have longed for a Leica M6 but don’t have five or six thousand dollars to spend on a camera body and a couple of lenses than the Hexar RF may be for you. If you prefer manual focus, don’t care about things like TTL flash, but want easy film loading, aperture priority exposure control, or a built in motor drive, than the Hexar RF may be for you. But if you have learned to prefer auto focus, like a viewfinder that isn’t cluttered with frame lines and a rangefinder patch, and can live with the current set of Carl Zeiss G lens, than keep your G-system like I intend to do.