The Contax Brand, 1974-2005

Apropos the previous post, Roger Bartlett wrote:

Having coined the term 'bokeh' you have a track record for instigating new stuff—so if such a lens were to be created, no matter who the manufacturer, then a lens with this feature set would have to be called the 'Johnston' or at least have the letters MJ included in the name on the filter ring. Mike, you already have a Patreon following—perhaps start a cloud funding drive and get this lens on a production line. A project for 2020.

Well, I had about as much influence on the camera industry as I had on the word "bokeh"—a slight emendation. Here's the only camera product I ever had any direct influence on (and I'm not even absolutely positive about that):

Contax S2b, 1994

Contax released the S2 in 1992 for its 60th anniversary. It was conceived as a "purist's camera," something you might imagine I would have liked. I also liked it because it was similar to the Contax 139Q, the camera I went through art school with. It was fully mechanical, with an uncoupled meter. The battery powered nothing but the meter. Really not a bad concept, if you happen to remember that "independence from batteries" was a value amongst camera mavens and advanced amateurs at the time, as evidenced by cameras like the Leica R6 and Olympus OM-3 (and, negatively, by the scorn heaped on the battery-dependent Nikon FE by Nikon FM fans). The conventional worry, often repeated but seldom experienced, was "what would happen" if you were caught photographing miles from civilization and your batteries failed? Oh no. With a batter-dependent shutter, you'd be SOL. Yeah, like that ever happened to anybody more than, like, twice ever. And the solution was not exactly beyond comprehension...you could just carry an extra set of fresh batteries in your bag. We're talking button batteries, remember, which are tiny and weigh nothing.

However, the S2's meter was a spot meter—the camera didn't have any other metering option. After discussing this with the American Contax rep at the time, I wrote a brief arguing for a center-weighted meter for the S2. He said it wasn't going to do any good, but he promised to take it to Japan. A number of months later the rep got back to me and reported that, much to his surprise, the brass in Japan bought the argument and would be making a variant of the S2 with a center-weighted meter. And the S2b was born.

So that's my sole influence on the camera industry, as far as I'm aware.

Embarrassingly, I couldn't even buy an S2b myself when it appeared in 1994. I was a single parent with a one-year-old and had just gotten hired as Editor-in-Chief of Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques magazine at the time, and the premium price of the S2b was beyond my pay grade. I think it cost $1,100—something like that—and it was simply out of reach.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Some Contax history
The "anniversary" marked by the S2 was something of a manufactured occasion, in reality.

Here's a brief rundown: Zeiss Ikon first labeled a rangefinder "Contax" in 1932. That was the problem-plagued Contax I, which was essentially released as a "beta" as we might call it today. It was rushed to market and underwent many modifications after release, not really maturing until it became the Contax II in 1936. After WWII, with Zeiss split into West German and East German branches, the East German VEB Zeiss Ikon developed the Contax S SLR in 1949, followed by subsequent Contax models. (The Contax S is where "S2" as the name of the anniversary model came from.) But the Contax name didn't really resonate worldwide because export models were labeled "Pentacon." After the Japanese essentially blitzkrieged the German camera business in the 1960s (Germany had long been identified with cameras like the Swiss were associated with watches), Zeiss stopped making cameras. But in 1972, German Carl Zeiss and Japanese Yashica launched a co-operative venture with the in-house name of "Top Secret Project 130." Yashica would make the cameras, Zeiss the lenses—best of both hemispheres, right? The launch of the new brand did make a big splash in the early and mid 1970s. The first product was the Contax RTS, a beautiful camera with industrial design by the Porsche Design Group, accompanied by lenses in uniform livery made in Germany by Zeiss.

This partnership turned out to be not so cooperative as it appeared from the outside. It was instigated and motivated mainly by Yashica, which licensed the Contax name from Zeiss. Yashica had to order runs of lenses from Zeiss, paying up front, and Zeiss was sometimes less than forthcoming about filling the orders...something that became clear later. Yashica was acquired by Kyocera (originally Kyoto Ceramics) in 1984, and in the '90s Kyocera wanted to follow the hot trend and create an autofocus camera. But when it asked Zeiss to make AF lenses, Zeiss refused! Supposedly the tolerances could not be strict enough for Zeiss's standards (Nikon had weathered lots of criticism for this), so they just said nope, ain't gonna do it.

Kyocera, frustrated, in 1996 introduced its workaround, the Contax AX. The AX used Zeiss manual-focus lenses, but autofocused by moving the entire film plane back and forth! Keep in mind that the film still had to be transported past the gate as it was exposed, and held flat and in position to quite high tolerances, and you'll realize what an undertaking this was. Obviously this was not an ideal way to do autofocus. The AX was expensive as well as large and clunky by the standards of the time, and was understandably not a big seller. It was never followed up. It remains a true oddity in camera history. It was, though, as Barry Reid points out in the Comments, the only camera that could autofocus a tilt-shift lens.

Zeiss eventually did relent and there were a few AF lenses labeled Carl Zeiss made for the ill-fated Contax N, although it's likely Zeiss didn't really have much to do with them.

Back to the S2. Kyocera had swallowed Yashica, but was not shy about outsourcing cameras if it was convenient. I don't know this for sure, but I think it's fairly likely that the S2—celebrating the anniversary of the Contax I, an essentially failed camera that happened to mark the first use of the Contax name—was manufactured by Cosina. If true, one nice thing that would mean is that the S2 and S2b would have direct links to the Zeiss Ikon ZI rangefinder, which was manufactured for Zeiss by Cosina. (Cosina, one of the largest camera and lens OEM manufacturers in Japan, is the maker of Voigtländer cameras and lenses now.)

Another little factoid: Camera mavens were (and sometimes still are!) adamant in preferring German-made Carl Zeiss Contax lenses, but the Japanese-made versions were actually better because all the tooling was new.

The most beautiful true German-Japanese Contax if you ask me was the RTS II, a deluxe film SLR with an electronically controlled shutter, an electromechanical shutter release, and industrial design by Ferdinand Alexander ("Butzy") Porsche. I owned one briefly and had it stolen from me. It would be fun to have one with a Carl Zeiss 45mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar, a lens design that is central to Zeiss history and dates to 1902. You'll need sharp eyes, though—that combination is difficult to focus.

Contax discontinued the S2 and S2b in 2000. After hemorrhaging money trying to bring to market a deluxe and advanced 6-MP DSLR too early on*, Kyocera left the camera business in 2005.

Mike
(Thanks to Roger)

*It's a footnote now, but that camera, the Contax N Digital, was the world's first full-frame DSLR.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Gaspar Heurtley: "There’s a typo under that picture. It’s not a Contax from 1994, that camera is a Fujifilm X-T100 from 2018."

Mike replies: Twin sons of (very) different mothers.  :-)

Al C. (partial comment): "Wonderful history lesson. Thank you. The Contax S2b has beautiful massing—perfect, actually. Its Fuji 'twin' has such ugly massing. The prism is fake, stacked on, entirely un-inflected by the rest of the body."

Peter: "Wow, memories...I was smitten by the Contax RTS back in the day before I could ever afford one, at the same time that I was smitten by the Lotus Europa before I had a drivers license. But 40-odd years later, I picked up a Pentacon FM, with its proto-steampunk whirligig shutter speed selector, and a 1932 Zeiss Ikon 520/15 folder, both great cameras—maybe no RTS but hey, no batteries to die on you either.  ;^)  "

Mike replies: You need to seek out the episode of "Pawn Stars" in which they buy a Lotus Europa. It'll make you smile and roll your eyes both.

Eamon Hickey: "I've had fun over the years tracing back the origins of camera and lens brands and manufacturers, and this post brings up one of those llttle threads for me. When Kyocera bought Yashica, the company (Yashica) was an integrated lens and camera manufacturer. But Yashica had acquired its lens manufacturing capability only a few years previously by buying Tomioka Optical in the late 1960s. Tomioka had been supplying Yashica with lenses for a couple of decades (and supplying lenses to other camera companies, too). The Japanese-made Contax lenses were manufactured in the Tomioka factory.

"Tomioka, in turn, was founded by an optical engineer who had worked at Nikon from its beginnings in 1917. At Nikon, he would certainly have worked with (apprenticed under?) one of the German engineers (some had worked previously with Zeiss) that Nikon had hired to teach them how to be a lens and glass manufacturer. Connections within connections.

"Something of Tomioka still lives at Kyocera."

Mike replies: So that was it! Tomioka. And I never knew exactly who manufactured the early Japanese-made Contax C/Y lenses. A piece of the story that has always been missing for me. Thank you my friend.

Pierre Charbonneau: "Mike, Have you ever sprung for the Contax G?"

Mike replies: No, but I followed its introduction closely and as it happened I was the first writer in N. America to receive the press kit for the G1. Another of my .15 seconds of fame: I was the first photo writer to receive T-Max 100 and 400 films for testing. One precious roll of each! Oh, how I brag.  :-)

Oskar Ojala: "I never owned a Contax, but since getting into full-frame mirrorless I realized that all my lens options are either sharp on sharper and adapting older manual focus lenses works better now than ever. So I started playing with the idea of getting some older Zeiss lenses for Contax, did some research and bought a 85mm ƒ/1.4, which I like very much for its look. This lead to me thinking 'why not get a Contax body for the original experience? surely they must be cheap now.' I was partly correct; the basic Contax body is indeed inexpensive, but the S2b, which would be appealing since the electronics failing do not render the camera inoperable, is quite expensive and rare. I'm not really surprised though, I doubt many people were tempted by an expensive full manual SLR in the mid '90s."

Mike replies: See if you can find an RX. I liked that one, and it might not be so dear.

Phil Aynsley: "Your words on the 'phobia' regarding cameras featuring batteries, or rather what happened if the batteries failed, reminded me of the lengths Canon went to with the design of the 1981 Canon New F1 (my all time favourite camera, with the T90 a close second). As a Canon technician at the time I could fully appreciate the elegant engineering that went into the mechanism that converted the shutter release from electronic to mechanical by simply removing the 6V battery."

Dan: "Kyocera is an interesting company that seems to get in and out of businesses. In the early '80s they made some top-notch high-end stereo equipment. Then went out of business in that field in the mid-'80s if I remember correctly. I still have my Kyocera receiver from 1982."

John: "I loved my Contax N and G kits and briefly the 645 MF camera as well, before all fell victim to the digital onslaught. There’s a follow-up story: when Kyocera left the business, PhaseOne wanted to buy the tooling and production lines for the 645 cameras. Kyocera refused and destroyed everything. The Contax name went back to Zeiss, which strangely enough doesn’t use it for its new digital camera."

Barry Reid: "Very interesting story about the S2/S2b. It’s amazing how expensive those bodies remain, even now. The 'batteries are for wimps' hair shirt mentality seems to be strong in many film photography fans.

"I do have the AX which is just about the only Contax body, along with the RTS III, which is big enough to counterbalance the Zeiss 28–85mm and 35–135mm zooms! Although, much like the Zeiss zooms, The AX doesn’t seem so large compared with modern DSLRs. It’s still quite an extraordinary experience shooting with one. Even more extraordinarily it’s actually quite an effective AF camera and able to hold its own against the early screw drive AF bodies, say pre-1990. With the PC-Distagon attached I believe it remains the only camera to allow AF with a shift lens.

"The RTS II the most stylish and usable of the RTS line. The original model went too far along with the ‘Real-Time System’ idea—the separation of metering preview and shutter release made it awkward. Something the RTS II fixed along with adding TTL Flash. If only they had added a spot meter option.... Unfortunately that only came with the ginormous beast that is the RTSIII. The 139Q is sweet though, a mini-me of the RTS II and probably nicer to use too.

"However the 159 which superseded it has by far the best spec (fastest shutter, highest flash sync, best selection of modes) of any of the non-motorised Contax bodies. The 159 with 25mm, 50mm and 85mm ƒ/2.8 was the camera my 15-year-old self would have most liked to get his hands on in the mid '80s. Thanks to the end of Contax plus the DSLR revolution, I’ve been able to pick up a really good collection of Contax bodies over the past 10 years or so. Sadly all the hype around the T2 and T3 seems to be lifting the SLR prices now."

Mike replies: The 159 was one of those cameras that always fascinated me but always remained somehow over the horizon, just out of sight. I do believe I finally saw one, long after they were new. I seem to vaguely recall that I bought a used one but learned on trying to get it CLA'd that it had a fatal flaw and couldn't be fixed.

Jerzy Z: "Was it really stolen? I bought an RTS II with 45mm ƒ/2.8 from you in the '90s through listserv for $460, if I remember well. ...Unless you had two copies of the camera, of course. I still have it and it’s an awesome camera. Thanks again for selling it. Best wishes for the New Year."

Mike replies: That's awesome that you remember that. And cool that you still have it. That was my second RTS II. The first one I bought in '85 when I got my first real job after graduating. You could still buy them new then. That was the one that was stolen.

Vijay: It’s intetesting to me that your last two posts have been about the 40mm focal length and Contax cameras. Several years ago, I purchased the Voigtlander Ultron 40mm lens to use with a Nikon FE2, inspired by your earlier article about the focal length. I loved the focal length but didn’t like the eyepoint of the FE2 so I sold the lens. Another article you wrote about viewfinders and eyepoints led me to the Contax Aria, which I love using for its light weight and great viewfinder. For the longest time, I had to 'settle' for using it with a 50mm lens. But much to my surprise, I found a 40mm Ultron in Contax mount listed on eBay a couple of years ago. I bought it and now enjoy the best of both Mike Johnston inspired tool choices! It’s the only film setup I use regularly in my kit. Thanks for your writing over the years!"

Mike replies: Very cool. You're more me-ish than me!

Comments

[Cal Lefty]

Oh for a mirrorless camera with the Contax aesthetic that would let me mount my contax-g lenses.

[Helcio J. Tagliolatto]

What?! No mention to the superb RTS III, the "epitome 35mm SLR ever", according to someone in Phototechmag?

[Alan Farthing]

I had a Contax 139; designed by Porche but not to be used. The leather covering soon wore, from my nose pressing against it!

[A. Dias]

You have coined the term 'bokeh'? Can you please elaborate?

[Nobody coined it, it's a Japanese word meaning "fuzzy" and sometimes referring to blur, originally Romanized "bo-ke."

The three original articles about bokeh were published in the March/April 1997 issue of Photo Techniques magazine, which I edited at the time. Carl Weese was the one who introduced me to the idea. Oren Grad, who speaks Japanese, clarified the terminology. The articles were written by John Kennerdell, Oren, and Harold Merklinger. Harold's article is online at The Luminous Landscape. Oren and John still write on occasion for The Online Photographer.

The only reason I added the "h" to the end of the Japanese word in the magazine was that English speakers persistently mispronounced "boke," which at one time (but no longer!) was the more common romanization of the Japanese katakana characters. It's properly pronounced in two syllables, "bo" as in "bone" and "ke" as in "Kenneth" with equal stress on each syllable. "Bokeh" simply renders that a little more accurately. At least adding the "h" stopped all the "toke" and "bloke" jokes.

The word or spelling have nothing to do with the word "bouquet," from the French, and is not even pronounced the same (bo-keh versus boo-KAY). --Mike]

[Martin D]

Happy memories of using the Contax G1 for a few years in the late 1990s. Not a perfect camera by any means: the AF was a little bit erratic and the manual override clumsy and not always effective. But the build quality was pure Rolls Royce, and there was a design integrity to the whole system that made it a real camera. I had it with the 45mm and the 90mm. In fairness the camera didn't make much sense with the tele. But the 45mm was a joy to use with the rangerfinder-style viewfinder, and it made an effective and elegant pairing with the G1 body: a real photography tool. When my home got burgled, the burglers found nothing of value except the G1, and that was the end of my Contax period.

[Glenn Allensopach]

I ran through a string of Contax bodies in those days; wore out a couple, and traded a couple because, well because. The RTS was never my fave, although I did like (but didn’t own) the RTS II and III. My favorite of them all was the 137MA. Simple aperture priority, easy to access shutter speed dial on the top left for manual operation, 3FPS built in, and a beautiful sound when you fired it. Nice size and balance, too. At the end of my Contax days, I had an RX, also a bit of an oddity, in that it featured focus assist. It used manual focus lenses and had a focus sensor built into the back of the mirror, with a “bow tie” display in the viewfinder that indicated which direction to turn the focusing ring, and a circle in the middle when you hit the right focus.

[Rob]

Mike, you somehow overlooked the Contax G cameras, which were autofocus rangefinders. The G lenses were Zeiss creations, although I don't know who manufactured them. The G2 was/is one of my all-time favorite cameras. Kyocera killed it off along with the rest of the brand. They could have created a digital version, as did Leica with the M series, but their interest was not really in photography.

[hugh crawford]

Didn’t Zeiss get out of the camera business on the same day Time Life announced that Life Magazine was ceasing weekly publication?

The Yashica made Contax is just as crazy over the top as the German cameras. I seem to recall that several of them had shutter release buttons made out of rubies or sapphires and the Real Time Vacuum System, which keeps the film flat by vacuuming the film to a ceramic pressure plate from behind was pretty cool. I could just never figure out why anybody who was that interested in precision would be monkeying around with 35mm film.

I actually always got a kick out of the approach used in the Argus C3 and other inexpensive cameras where they would deliberately curve the film plane to match the curvature of field of the lenses.

[Bill Pearce]

Mike,

I'm sorry to say that I never had a Contax SLR. While you were consumed with impure thoughts about Contax, I was equally consumed by Olympus, but it worked well for me, as the lenses were superb and the bodies were made for my tiny teenaged girlish hands, and were, against common wisdom in no way unreliable.

But later I was looking for an effective travel outfit, as I was able to devote time to international travel. I was taken by what I read about the contax G cameras. I got the three lens outfit, 28-40-90mm "Zeiss" lenses. The lenses were superb, better even that the Zeiss lenses on my Hasselblad I used when freelancing. In that time the common wisdom was that Zeiss lenses had what we would now call bad bokeh, but then I felt, as I do now that some who felt that way were way way too consumed with concern for the out of focus parts of the image, whereas I was more concerned with the subject. But I will say that I have never seen better lenses. There was what was either underground unverified information, or just plain old fake news, that as a condition of the license to use Zeiss name and design, a requirement that a QC engineer from the Zeiss factory would be on-site at all times. Little did I know the G's had, like the pretty girl I meet at a bar or in line at the supermarket, for me what was a fatal flaw.

The AF was a a small center spot, That I wouldn't have minded, if they had provided a way of knowing where that spot was. No box, no tiny corner marks, no nothing outside your imagination. So, as you might imagine, the AF was, while accurate in finding focus, it was AF as done by a blind man. You never knew what would be in focus until the film was processed. That said, a tip of the hat to Cosina, who presumably made the camera and lenses for a remarkably well made system, but raspberries to the designers, who were apparently not in any way familiar with cameras before they started the project. The G1 had a whole basket of fatal flaws, all that were erased by experience when the G2 was introduced.

But those lenses! There is a good reason that there is a (very small) cottage industry in converting the lenses to MF and Leica mounts.

But like you I too have miss out on some cameras that I would liked to own and use by the vagaries of employment. I would like to have owned a Mamiya 6, and the Bronica RF, both 120 film rangefinder cameras. And while right now I could swing it, if one comes around I'll not be able to get a digital version of one of my favorite film cameras, the (Fuji) Hasselblad xPan.

[Jerzy]

Oh boy, my beloved S2! I still shoot B&W film with it :) This camera is perfect, reliable and very easy to master. Spot metering makes everything easy to meter - I just check my hand's inside and get +1 EV. And when I don't want anything to spoil view around focusing screen I just remove batteries.
Well, other contaxes break over time, that one keeps shooting :)
BTW I've wrote once a post about real-life shooting with different contaxes, here it is: http://foto.ujerzego.pl/2017/03/14/lustrzanki-contax-pod-palcem-uzytkownika/ It's in Polish, but Google translate it well.

[Peter Gilbert]

Another vote for the RTSIII. I think one tester from Pop Photo (or was it that other magazine)said of it.."if it was a car, it would be a Bentley". The only issue was the funky blue text in the VF - that became unreadable in daylight.

I also had a Contax Aria - did you forget that one?

[J]

Contax N was one of the first cameras I got to review and when I drove away from wherever I picked it up from, I realized the camera + zeiss lens cost about 10x as much as my car. It was a great lesson in reminding myself to think of it as a tool, rather than something that might break, get stolen or otherwise get me in trouble. That mindset served me well when I dented one of my own cameras on the very first day. Or cracked a lens, or flooded a camera or...

The image quality on that Contax wasn't very impressive even in terms of standards of the day. It just wasn't a very memorable combo beyond the cost.

[Al C.]

Wonderful history lesson. Thank you.

The Contax S2b has beautiful massing -- perfect, actually. Its Fuji "twin" has such ugly massing. The prism is fake, stacked on, entirely un-inflected by the rest of the body.

I don't understand the admiration here for things Fuji. Their cameras are ugly, ruined copies of others' beautiful designs. And, viewed from this Merrill Foveon devotee, that x-tran sensor is 4x worse than the Bayer sensor: waxy skin; fatally acutance-compromised.

[Dan Khong]

Just wondering, was the Contax I rushed into the market in 1932 to compete with Leitz ("miniature camera") which was launched in 1925 and obviously enjoying a good run of the consumer business by then?

[Yes, that's my understanding. Consider this quote from the Wikipedia article "Zeiss Corporate History":

"The most important Zeiss lens by [Paul] Rudolph was the Tessar, first sold in 1902 in its Series IIb f/6.3 form. It can be said as a combination of the front half of the Unar with the rear half of the Protar. This proved to be a most valuable and flexible design, with tremendous development potential. Its maximum aperture was increased to f/4.7 in 1917, and reached f/2.7 in 1930. It is probable that every lens manufacturer has produced lenses of the Tessar configurations.

"Rudolph left Zeiss after World War I, but many other competent designers such as Merté, Wandersleb, etc. kept the firm at the leading edge of photographic lens innovations. One of the most significant designer was the ex-Ernemann man Dr Ludwig Bertele, famed for his Ernostar high-speed lens.

"With the advent of the Contax by Zeiss-Ikon, the first serious challenge to the Leica in the field of professional 35 mm cameras, both Zeiss-Ikon and Carl Zeiss decided to beat the Leica in every possible way. Bertele's Sonnar series of lenses designed for the Contax were the match in every respect for the Leica for at least two decades. Other lenses for the Contax included the Biotar, Biogon, Orthometar, and various Tessars and Triotars."

[Rick in CO]

Contax rangefinder serial numbers had a single letter prefix from the factory. Because of its complexity and the fact that it was an early design, the Contax I was often sent back to the factory for overhaul where it received a second letter to identify it as having been serviced. My camera was originally "V", for 1933, but is marked "AV" after having been serviced. 87 years later it works off & on today.
Rick

[Fred Haynes]

My memory is that Contax and Leica competed with one another in the same way Nikon and Canon compete today.
Also, I had at first, like Gaspar, saw the Fuji relationship. Great minds, I guess!
Fred

[Jeff]

Even Ansel loved using Contax, as you have (well, E. Weston has) pictured before...

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/12/weston.html

[Jan Steinman]

The AX used Zeiss manual-focus lenses, but autofocused by moving the entire film plane back and forth!

I very nearly got into Contax in 1977 or so, when I decided against it in favour of Olympus. Dodged that bullet!

But the brilliant (but ahead of its time) notion of moving the film plane could be very useful in today's world of exquisite sensor-position control, no? It seems it might be a natural way for Olympus, arguably the best at this game, to pursue.

I'm not necessarily talking about complete focus control, but as part of an integrated focus system, where inexpensive lens motors could make gross corrections, and IBIS-movements could make rapid fine-tuning. The IBIS method could be used with manual focus lenses the same way — you "rough in" the focus manually, and the IBIS mechanism polishes it to perfection!

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Don't apologize for feeling proud. I also cherish my own footnote to the history of photography, as insignificant as it may be.

In 2006 or so, I was tasked with finding a keynote speaker for a large conference about the environment in Alberta. We needed somebody with both a decent education, an articulate message, and general appeal. This was an academic conference, so everybody was a PhD student and up.

I proposed Edward Burtynsky. He was Canadian, had done a TED talk, enjoyed successful exposure within the museum circles, and his movie Manufactured Landscape was just out. He was engaged and engaging, and most importantly he was not a raging ideologue.

This meant that the day before, I enjoyed a full lunch hour with Burtynsky talking about everything from camera to the new iPhone and his recent photographs. The guy was a splendid talker, a delightful dinner guest, an accomplished artist, and I was star-struck.

When we got to the conference, the MC asked me for some talking points about Burtynsky, and then I remembered that we had in the audience William Rees. Who happened to be the professor who gave us the term "ecological footprint." Impeccable academic credentials, please meet artist.

So I told the MC, "well, if Rees gave us the ecological footprint, Burtynsky is the one who makes it visible." (Of course that could have applied to David Maisel, but let's not digress). That's also how I introduced them to each other (and snapped a pic or two, as I was also the resident communications guy. I still have the pictures).

Lo and behold, the two fellas hit it off. So much so, that a little bit after the conference, Burtynsky published Oil with Steidl.
https://steidl.de/Books/Burtynsky-Oil-0418475158.html

With a postface by William Rees. Holy Mackerel! No, my name is not in the book, but I got a complimentary copy.

I know that somewhere deep within the cogs of history, the few levers I pushed here and there made things be a little bit different, and there's a Steidl book with my invisible fingerprints.

[Peter Croft]

In the early 2000s I bought into the Contax system, buying the G1 and G2 with the 28, 35 and 90mm lenses. I love the look and feel of these cameras, the snick of the shutter.

I bought second hand in Singapore so didn't outlay too much. But I don't think I've ever had a really sharp image out of either of them. The autofocus is hopeless. You have to pay so much attention to what it's focusing on that creativity is spoilt.

Foolishly I thought I would get my money back if I ever tired of them. Well, maybe, but they are film cameras after all.

So this fits with your story Mike. Contax, great design, fabulous construction, but deeply flawed.

I do have two adapters to fit my Olympus EM1, manual focus by a little finger wheel, but I can't use the 28mm and the others become 70mm and 180mm, not very useful.

I regret my purchase of Contax.

[Christer]

We are not on the same wave length.

I got my Contax IIIa in 1956. My father got very good deal on it; a neighbour worked at a local camera store and they had a used "like new" one they could not get rid of. Unsaleable because its 50mm f/2.0 Sonnar had an air bubble on the front lens. Three millimetres long and one wide. Quite impressive to look at. It taught me a lot about facts and fiction.

My heart starts beating faster every time I see an old IIIa at flea markets.

[Why are we not on the same wavelength? I only said the I was troublesome, not the IIIa. For many years I retained my youthful affection for Contax—a Zeiss Contaflex B (with a fixed Tessar) was the first serious camera I used, and the Contax 139Q was the first serious camera I bought for myself. --Mike]

[Thomas Mc Cann]

'Boke' is slang for vomit, in Northern Ireland slang at least

[Barry Reid]

Mike,

Re: the 159 problems - Most of the ‘dead’ ones are an easy fix. There is a common issue with a mirror box gear/flywheel which always gets gummed up. With this issue the finder info shows but the shutter won’t fire and the camera won’t wind on. It is, however, a relatively easy fix - get the gear/flywheel cleaned and the 159 should work for years to come.

[Charles]

The product photo of the S2b is marvelous.

[Michael Houghton]

Alas, Cosina are no longer making Voigtländer cameras. Just lenses.

I suppose we might see another run of them at some point in the future, if the film revival is sustained.

[Oskar Ojala]

The comments reminded me of the Contax 645, which I think is something of a curiosity: launched into the pretty stable medium format market in the late 90s, with no previous track record for Contax in medium format SLRs. In hindsight this was obviously not the best business decision since mass market digital was only a few years away, but the interesting bit to me is that I can name at least two established pros that prefer to use the Contax 645 right now. Seems that 20 years after its introduction it has managed to find its own niche.

[Dale]

Until just a couple of years ago, the Kyocera Optec website still listed as one of its product lines the custom manufacture of SLR lenses on an OEM basis. It was rumored that Kyocera likely was the manufacturing source of new Zeiss lenses (Batis, etc.) even today, given its long history of having produced Zeiss glass for the Yashica/Contax mount. Incidentally, the Optec website once featured a photo of its headquarters, which looked suspiciously like a former Yashica factory. Perhaps the great Mark Hama can shed some light on all this? The retired former service manager for Yashica USA once built MAT 124s at the Japanese plant and still services Yashica and Contax cameras in Georgia (USA) today. He has a huge stock of factory parts and has completely rebuilt two Yashica FX-2 cameras to like-new condition for me.