About 5 years ago I started getting serious about street photography. My main camera back then was the Nikon FE. That camera was great; it served its purpose incredibly eloquently and with electro-mechanical swag. It was reliable and with the 50 1.8 on it, it was an extremely tough street photography proposition to beat even though the Leica M6 seemed to be the king of the hill.
In one of my studies on Malcolm X, at that time I was very much interested in the Civil Rights period in the U.S. I saw a photo in which he had a Konica IIIA hanging around his neck. The camera looked so interesting and beautiful to me even though I had no idea as to which camera it was. After doing tons of research I found out it was a Konica IIIA and the more I read about it, the more my curiosity peaked which inevitably lead to me purchasing a copy in the beginning of 2021.
It didn’t take much deliberation for me to finally purchase one in 2021 because the specs and the build quality essentially sold the camera for itself. Yes! It is that good. I bought my copy in excellent condition from a gentleman called Jeffrey Guthrie in Japan. My copy was virtually flawless and I was incredibly stoked because for the longest time I wanted a high-end, all-mechanical 35mm rangefinder camera.
When you hold the Konica IIIA in your hands you wil instantly be amazed and comforted by its incredibly solid and substantial weight. You feel the craftsmanship and the eye for detail. It is a wonderfully designed piece of kit which arouse my street photography senses in all the very best ways possible. It’s a camera that you wanna pick up and make photographs with of whichever subject you choose. However, in this article I will restrain myself to the wonderful art of street photography.
The Konica IIIA is mostly build from metal. There is not a single piece of plastic available for your eyes. Delightful! This is a type of craftsmanship which in today’s world is only reserved for the very well off. Yet you can own one in great condition for about $300. The Konica IIIA was designed to directly compete with the venerable Leica M3. Konica, back then known as Konishiroku, wanted to design a camera that could outperform the Leica M3 but then with a fixed 50mm lens so the engineers could then fine tune the camera according to the very specific parameters of such lens.
And boy did they hit it out of the ballpark with the Hexanon 50 1.8; it is razor sharp, corner to corner, beautiful painterly bokeh, great color fidelity/contrast and tons of character. Truly a lens which competes admirably angainst its Leica counterpart. Konishiroku opted for a double gause, 6 elements in 5 groups design which was similar to a Zeiss Planar design. It is my personal sharpest lens and the standard to which I measure all other lenses. The aparture goes from 1.8 to 22 and although the lens loses a tiny bit of contrast wide open, it’s most definitely very sharp right away which is a phenomenal achievement. No, sharpness is certainly not the end all, be all which defines a photo but it sure is nice to have it and the Hexanon 50 1.8 is second to none. It easily holds its own to the V1 and V2 Summicron of its day.
In daily life out on the streets it didn’t take me long at all to get used to the double stroke advance system which has been a point of contention and even a dealbreaker for some. Personally I think this is one of the coolest features of the Konica IIIA. What makes the Konica IIIA a real champ out on the streets is its big and very bright viewfinder. It’s not simply that it’s big and bright, that its frame lines not only correct for parallax as well as field size, to me personally it’s also the fact that since this is a fixed lens 5Omm camera there are only frame lines for 50mm. So, no clutter whatsoever in its beautiful 1:1 life size viewfinder. Nothing in its category beats it. It is a sheer joy to use. Konica has left you with some real estate towards the edges of the illuminated frame lines so you can literally anticipate your subject walking in and out of your frame. A must for street photography! And you get about 95% coverage of the actual frame at the outside edges. The frame lines are so accurate I’ve never taken a picture as it wasn’t intended compositionally.
If you are a flash shooter you’ll also be very delighted to hear that the Konica IIIA has a leaf shutter incorporated into its lens. This means that you’re able to sync flash all the way up to 1/500! Which is phenomenal for fill flash during the day. You might ask yourself; isn’t a max shutter speed of 1/500 going to be a limiting factor? Well, to me personally it hasn’t. With street photography you usually want larger aperture values anyway for increased depth of field and on those occasions that I want/need smaller aperture values I simply use an ND filter. I’ve even used an ND filter for creative purposes on the streets in combination with flash. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The Konica IIIA has a filter size of 43mm so this lowers the cost and size of a filter system in your camera bag. The Konica IIIA doesn’t have a hot shoe. It has a cold shoe and a PC outlet on the lens so that means you can use flash off-camera as well with it. In practical terms I can tell you that using flash with the Konica IIIA is a joy to do!
In reality the Konica IIIA is an amazing street shooter. I would advise you to have the EV lock disabled so you can independently change the aperture and the shutter speed rings. Once you get used to the double stroke film advance lever everything else is smooth sailing. Since the Konica IIIA has a 50mm lens zone focusing is not really an option. That’s okay. Critical focus can be achieved incredibly fast. The lens itself also has a relatively short focus throw so you can focus incredibly quickly. The lens is smooth and incredibly well build. It has Konica’s famous amber colored coating which delivers great color fidelity and awesome contrast in black and white photography. Personally I cannot ask for more in a lens. If this lens was available in the venerable Leica M-mount it would be a massive success.
Well folks, there you have it. My written review of the legendary Konica IIIA. If you are a 50mm shooter like me and you’re in the market for a high grade, all-mechanical rangefinder camera and you want something totally unique with a razor sharp lens then this is the camera for you. Take a few hours to read through the manual as well which is available online because there are many gems of pieces of advice in it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little article on the wonderful Konica IIIA.
If you’d like to see my YouTube review of the Konica IIIA you can do so right here.
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