The Contax G System One Analog Film Cameras Still Of The Best Rangefinder Cameras In The World
The revival of the analog film cameras
The Contax G1 Review
The camera I use for almost everything apart from macro photography is a Contax G1 with the three lenses 28mm, 45mm,90mm and sometimes the flash unit TLA 140. My main reason for using this system is that it gives me access to the excellent Carl Zeiss lenses. I will concentrate in this review not so much on technical data (which you can look up on the Contax and Zeiss websites) but on my personal experience with this camera system.
The Contax G1 is a so-called rangefinder camera. You don't look through the lens but through a separate viewfinder and the focusing is done externally. It measures the distance using triangulation and then the autofocus system sets the lens to the correct distance. The Contax G1 and its larger sister, the Contax G2, are the only autofocus rangefinders with exchangable lenses in small format I know of -- there is no similar camera system one really could compare to. In newsgroups and forums you will find lengthy and often heated discussions comparing the Contaxes to Leicas, Konica Hexars and Hasselblad X-Pans, but in their details all of these cameras are quite different
Each camera system has its limitations and you will only become happy with a certain type of camera if you know about them and accept them. There are some things you simply cannot do with an rangefinder. Rangefinder cameras (=RFs) are very convenient for wide angle lenses and normal lenses -- often much better than SLRs. Focussing with these 'short' lenses usually is much more accurate on a RF. But the longer the lenses get, the more the RFs are outperformed by SLRs. The longest lens for the Contax Gs is a 90mm lens, for Leicas you can buy 135mm lenses but that's about as long as it gets. There are no 200mm or 300mm lenses for RFs and if you need such long telephoto lenses a RF is not the right type of camera for you. Another thing which is totaly impossible with a RF (simply as you don't look through the lens but through a viewfinder which is several centimetres beside it) is macro photography. You also cannot see if your lens flares under adverse light conditions (which is usually not the problem of Zeiss lenses) and you cannot judge the effect of a polarization filter. The use of filters in general is no problem as the light metering is done through the lens (=TTL) and therefore takes automatically the intensity loss into account.
The Contax G1 is a very well built camera and it feels quite solid. It's probably the most comfortable camera to hold in hands I ever touched. For the right hand, there are some perfectly shaped rubber parts which make it extremely easy to hold the camera with only one hand. If you lift it up for the first time you'll probably be surprised that it is heavier than it looks like. The surface is made of titanium and although I didn't handle it with exceptional care it didn't get any serious scratches yet. The ergonomics are perfect: for every function (apart from some custom settings which I usually don't change at all) there is a separate knob or wheel, and everything has only one function. If I compare this to my Canon EOS where I have to click with tiny plastic buttons through menues until I arrive again at the beginning I indeed prefer the straight-forward design of the Contax.
The Contax G1 offers aperture priority or manual mode. I usually use it in aperture priority. Then you can select the f-stop at the lens and the camera will select the appropriate shutter speed (between 16s and 1/2000s) to achieve correct exposure. The exposure can easily be corrected in the range of +2 to -2 EV in 1/3 EV increments with the left one of the two wheels. Below the wheel, there is a small lever which allows to activate automatic bracketing of +/-0.5 EV or +/-1 EV: the camera will take three exposures, one with the determined light meter reading and in addition one under- and one overexposed (by 0.5 or 1 EV). Expecially if you shoot slide film this is convenient. Sometimes the light meter gets mislead (like every light meter, e.g. if you have a lot of snow in your picture and it tries to compensate it to 12.5% or 18% grey) -- then you have to intervene. The TTL-light metering system of the Contax Gs is extremely simple, much simpler than the matrix-/multizone-/whatever-systems modern SLRs use. I actually prefer this system as I always know exactly what it does or tries to do (once I understood it). With some experience you will get perfect results and even if you just blindly trust it, most of your pictures will be not so bad.
The metal bayonet of the lens mount is a bit 'fiddly' and I never got entirely comfortable with it. Don't get me wrong, it is very solid and the lens locks with a positive click. But to attach the lens I still have to look at it, even after doing it several hundred times. With my Canon EOS I could do it blindfolded, but with the Contax I still have to check if the lens is well aligned before I turn the lens barrel to lock it into place. It's not such a big deal. Only with the wide angle lenses (like the 28mm Biogon lens) you have to be really careful as the rear lens element stands out by a few centimeters and can be easily damaged by banging it against the edge of the metal lens mount!
The Contax Gs have automatic film advance. The G1 advances film with up to 2 fps (frames per second), the bigger G2 with up to 4 fps. At the end it will automatically rewind the film. When approaching the end of a film you actually have to pay a bit attention or you risk that the last picture will be just on the end of the film roll (and therefore incomplete). The camera allows you to take pictures until the film transport mechanism feels some resistance and starts rewinding the film. It doesn't stop you after e.g. the 36th frame, you can perhaps take a 37th but at the latest the 38th picture will be incomplete. That's not a big deal: look from time to time at the little LCD counter and if you reach the 37th picture just force the camera to rewind the film. And be warned: rewinding the film is a noisy process! This is one of the main reservations Leica users have against the Contax Gs. Better make sure that the rewind doesn't happen if you take the camera to a theatre or concert! At least not, if you sit next to someone with a Leica. On the other hand it's pretty fast and you can quickly remove the film canister, drop in a new one and will be ready again in about 30 seconds. I doubt the Leica fan next to you can beat this.
Look around on the web and read some reviews to get an impression what people think about these lenses. You will read lots of complaints about the Contax autofocus, the whirring noises the camera makes, the dim viewfinder and its appetite for expensive batteries. But almost everyone will agree that the Zeiss lenses for this camera system are outstanding. People will discuss which lenses are better: Carl Zeiss, Leica or the top lenses of Canon and Nikon. Nobody will ever seriously try to compare these lenses to Tokina or Tamron lenses. Most photographers will agree that, although there is much room for improvements on the Contax G1 and G2 bodies, the Zeiss lenses are as good as small format photography can get. People who use both Leica and Zeiss will talk about tiny differences but I never read that somebody seriously doubted the optical performance of the Zeiss lenses. The handling of the lenses is of course very different, the Zeiss lenses being autofocus lenses while the Leica lenses are manually focused. Even experienced photographers say that they usually cannot objectively distinguish photos they took with Zeiss glass from those taken with their Leica lenses.
So, when I bought my first Zeiss lens (which was the Planar 2/45) my expectations were high. They were surpassed by far, when I saw the first results. I thought I knew what a sharp picture looks like. Well, I have to admit: I didn't. I took for example a picture of a village viewed from a hill nearby. Hell, I could even count individual tiles on the roofs of the houses! I realized that I had never used a really good lens before.
Up to now I have three Zeiss prime lenses: the Biogon 2.8/28, the Planar 2/45 and the Sonnar 2.8/90. Using them helped me to develop a certain dislike for zoom lenses, which I explain on another webpage.
Unlike (most) SLR AF lenses, the AF motor is not located in the lens itself but in the camera body. On the bayonet mount of the body is sort of a 'screwdriver', which fits into a 'screw' on the lens. When you focus, this screwdriver will transmit the force to the lens and move it into position. After changing lenses you'll hear a 'click' the first time you focus. Don't worry, it's just the screwdriver catching the screw.
This is a moderate wide angle lens with 28mm focal length. The optical system is almost symmetrical which helps (according to Zeiss) to reduce the distortions to extremely low values. The rear lens element stands far out and almost touches the shutter curtain of the camera. Such a lens design is not possible on a SLR: there the rear lens has to stay several centimetres away from the focal plane to give space to the mirror, which compromises the optical performance of such a lens. According to Zeiss the 'retrofocal' construction of the Distagone lenses for SLRs is the reason why their performace is (slightly) lower than the performace of the Biogon lenses. If you attach this lens to your Contax G be very careful!! The rear lens sticks out so far that it is not well protected anymore and can get easily scratched on the metal bayonet mount of the Contax body!! With a maximum aperture of f2.8 this lens is not really fast but even at full aperture the sharpness is very good, stopped down to f4 or f5.6 it becomes excellent. I never could see any vignetting, even at f2.8.
The 45mm Planar is the 'normal' lens in the Zeiss line-up for the Contax Gs. Some reviews on the web claim that this is also the best lens -- I cannot confirm that as I'm not able to see a clear superiority over the other two lenses I own, they are all very good. To my own surprise that is the lens I grab usually if I take only one lens with me. I discovered that one can do a lot with only this one single normal lens. It is (together with the Planar 2/35 which I don't own) the fastest lens available for the Contax G system, which is (compared e.g. to the Leica M system with its f/1.4 and even f/1.0 (!) lenses) not that fast. I would be happy if Contax would offer at least one really fast lens, e.g. a Planar 1.4/45, but they don't -- therefore, if you need fast lenses, the Contax G system is probably not the right choice for you. But it's of course much better than e.g. the Hasselblad X-Pan with its f4/45mm lens, although I'm now comparing apples with oranges as the X-Pan lenses are in fact medium format lenses. If you accept the limitation of f/2 the Zeiss Planar 2/45 is an outstanding piece of glass which delivers absolutely staggering sharpness and vibrant colours.
I hesitated and wavered for quite a long time before I bought this lens. The reason was, that I read so many comments on the web which reported about focusing problems with this 90mm lens, especially in connection with the G1 body. Finally I decided to try it out myself as I liked the other two lenses so much and couldn't imagine that Contax/Zeiss would place a product with such a serious problem. Anyway, there were also all these comments about focusing problems with the G1 in general which I never experienced. I shot a roll of film the day I got the lens, developed it and there was not a single misfocused picture on it. I absolutely cannot confirm that there is a focusing problem with the Sonnar 2.8/90 at all. I can only think of two explanations for this persistent internet rumor: a) Perhaps there are indeed faulty G1s (perhaps with misaligned AF sensors or wrong lookup tables?) out there and my own G1 is just not one of those. But I think a second explanation is much more likely: b) Some users don't know how to use the AF correctly and it shows up especially on pictures taken with the 90mm lens due to the extremely restricted depth of field. Those users probably also misfocus with the 28mm lens but due to the much larger depth of field they 'get away' with that in this case. Feel free to send me angry emails if you like! Jim Williams wrote on his Contax G User Pages that he also cannot confirm the '90mm focusing problem'. He conceded that there might be a change of slightly missing the focus only under the following conditions: if you focus at the closest distance (1.0m) and at full aperture (f/2.8). Perhaps it's just because I don't take many photos under conditions like that, but I indeed never had a problem with this lens and I like it very much. It's strange, somehow I feel like I have the obligation to defend this excellent lens.
Yes and no. It depends. (This is always a diplomatic answer, isn't it?) You will find in newsgroups heated discussions which lenses are better or equally good: Leica, Zeiss, Canon, Nikon? Some people defend their camera equipment with a fierceness which makes you wonder if you somehow stumbled into a religous war. Hey, come on guys (it's always guys!), this is just a camera!?! I have no experience with Leica lenses but they are certainly very good. Even the leicaphiles never seriously doubted the optical performace of the Zeiss lenses but they love it to quash the characteristics of the Contax G bodies. This I can easily understand as the cameras are indeed very different and in fact you compare apples to oranges. On the other hand: well exposed and focused pictures of the Zeiss lenses seem in no way to be inferior to pictures taken with Leica lenses. Some people apparently just need to convince everybody and most of all themself, that their lens is the absolutely best one and everything else is crap (and this indeed is a disorder many Leica fans have!), so they start to talk about a special 'look' of their photos which no other lens can ever create, a certain 'glow' -- but they are totaly unable to define these properties in a way that someone else is able to understand what they are actually talking about. Again: if you feel like it, don't hesitate and send me angry e-mails!
Here now comes my personal opinion about the quality of these lenses: The Zeiss prime lenses are without any doubt first-rate optics. They will certainly deliver better image quality than any zoom lens you can find (including the few Zeiss zoom lenses). But I don't think they are better than the top class primes of e.g. Canon or Nikon.
Here is the video review of the Contax G1
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