Voigtlander Bessa R2S

Cosina built the Bessa R2S because almost nobody else would. Nikon's S rangefinder mount had been dead for forty years when Cosina, under the revived Voigtlander name, brought it back in 2002 as a small run of bodies for the people who still loved old Nikon and Nikkor glass and Contax-derived optics. The R2S was the Nikon S variant in a small family of mount-specific bodies, sitting alongside an R2C for the Contax rangefinder mount. So the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 and the rest of that 1950s lens family finally had a fresh, working camera to live on instead of a sixty-year-old S2 with a tired meter.

Pick one up and the modern build under the classic shape is obvious. The body is lighter than the chrome Nikons it serves, with a top plate that does not pretend to be brass when it is not. The finder is bright and clean, with selectable frame lines and a rangefinder patch that snaps in well even in low light. The focal-plane shutter is a vertical metal-bladed unit, not cloth, running from a full second to 1/2000, and it has a real mechanical-feeling release, though the whole thing leans on a battery for the meter. Flash sync sits at 1/120, which is generous for a metal-bladed rangefinder of this size.

The meter divides opinion, and once you learn its language it earns its keep. It is a center-weighted silicon meter reading off the shutter blades, and the readout is a small LED display in the finder. Half-press the release, then turn shutter or aperture until the center LED lights and the over and under arrows go dark. No aperture priority, no program mode, no automation. You set the shutter and the aperture yourself every frame. That is the appeal for the kind of shooter who buys one, somebody coming off a Leica M or a Bessa R who wants the Nikon S glass but wants to think while they work.

Who actually carries it: street and reportage photographers chasing those early Nikkor rendering characteristics, plus collectors who own the lenses and got tired of trusting a half-century-old body. Cosina made so few that the thing has a small, devoted following now, and that low production number works against you as much as for you. When the meter electronics or the shutter need attention, you are not walking into any shop. A proper CLA on one of these is a specialist job, and parts are not exactly stacked on a shelf somewhere.

What you give up for the price is build feel. Next to a chrome Nikon S-mount body like the SP, the R2S can feel a touch hollow, more plasticky in the controls, and the secondhand prices have climbed to a point where you start wishing the body felt as serious as the glass on the front. People cross-shop it against a used Bessa R3A or a Leica screw-mount body, and the decision usually comes down to whether you already own the S-mount lenses.

Since the body gives you nothing but those finder LEDs, a missing battery turns it meterless on the spot. Carry an incident or spot reading from the Zone Light Meter app and you place exposure exactly where you want it, LEDs or no LEDs.