Quote Originally Posted by 92135011
Thank you for your helpful responses.
A little about my background so that you know where I'm coming from.
I'm a recent Leica M shooter switched from Nikon manual SLRs.
My M currently has no in-camera meter and I'm totally fine with lightmeters. I enjoy battery free operation and am not really that big a fan of AF. Current gear also has no shutter or aperture priorities. Using only primes and am getting increasingly better at judging the space to be captured before putting the camera to eye. Perhaps with this info you can suggest some possibilities.

BTW, to extend useability, I also meant the square format as most WLF are either 6x6 or 6x7 these days. Another View has said that most will be cropped to become close to 645, making the reason to get 6x6 a little useless. Does everyone find the square format less than useful?
Well....this is gonna sound a little goofy to some - but it's the path I've taken recently to explore Medium Format. The Kiev 60.

It's an SLR on Steroids - about twice the size of the average 35mm SLR, in all directions. Can use your choice of a prism viewfinder or a waist-level finder - both of which come in the 'basic kit', and it only takes a few seconds to swap them. The camera is fully mechanical - no batteries. The meter available in the prism finder does take batteries, but is inaccurate enough you'll do better sticking with your hand meter.

An advantage to the 6x6 format, is that you can easily shoot for 'normal' rectangular cropping - vertical or horizontal - without having to rotate the camera. And the square can be interesting for some things, too, that you couldn't do with a rectangular frame.

Here's a Kiev 60 group, for anyone interested -
Kiev 60 SLR-Free