Fujifilm's 'Texas Leica' — a fixed-lens 6x9 medium-format rangefinder, the final GW690 generation.
The Fujifilm GW690III is a fixed-lens 6x9 medium format rangefinder released in 1992, the third and final generation of Fuji's big 6x9 Professional rangefinders. Its sheer size and Leica-M-like layout earned the whole family the nickname Texas Leica, and it gives eight frames per roll of 120 film.
The lens is the well-regarded EBC Fujinon 90mm f/3.5 (roughly a 39mm equivalent in 35mm terms), five elements in five groups, set in a leaf shutter running 1s to 1/500 plus T. The camera is entirely mechanical with no meter and no batteries, has a double-stroke film advance, a coupled rangefinder, a spirit level above the eyepiece and the rounded, rubber-coated body that distinguishes the III from its squarer predecessors.
For film shooters wanting the largest common roll-film negative without a bellows camera or an SLR system, the GW690III is the standard answer: simple, sharp and near enough indestructible. It was aimed at wedding, group-photo and tour photographers in Japan, but its second life is with landscape and documentary photographers, and clean examples now command strong money in the UK.
On a used example, flip the camera over: a small counter under the baseplate records shutter actuations in units of ten, so a reading of 300 means roughly 3,000 firings - lower is better, and heavily used ex-pro bodies with counts in the tens of thousands should be priced accordingly. Also check the rangefinder patch is bright and vertically aligned, the double-stroke advance winds without grinding, the leaf shutter fires cleanly at 1 second, and the plastic top housing is free of cracks around the strap lugs.