The Contax RTS II (Part II)

Sorry for the delay. However, as I sometimes take the trouble to point out, this stuff doesn't write itself.

Taking up where we left off...

In 1982, the year the Contax RTS II was introduced, the "heavy metal" rocker Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat onstage. What will now permanently be the bestselling album in history, Michael Jackson's Thriller, came out, in November. Martina Navratilova won 90 of 93 tennis matches, and North Carolina won the NCAA Men's College Basketball tournament with the help of a freshman sensation then known as Mike Jordan. AT&T, colloquially called "Ma Bell," was ordered to be broken up. A movie called E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was helping Steven Spielberg earn $500,000 a day. On the Mall in Washington, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by a young unknown named Maya Lin, was dedicated. It was so stark that a figurative statue called "Three Soldiers," which was not part of Lin's design, had to be added two years later to placate detractors. (Lin's somber Memorial, now widely admired, is no longer controversial.) On January 14th, Air Florida flight 90 hit the 14th Street Bridge shortly after taking off from what was then called National Airport, and plunged into the freezing Potomac River, killing 78 people, including both pilots and four motorists on the bridge. A day later, "shock jock" Howard Stern called Air Florida on the air and asked to buy a ticket to the 14th Street Bridge, for which he was fired*. Thelonious Monk, Philip K. Dick, Leonid Brezhnev, and John Belushi were among those who died that year, as well as Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly the American movie star Grace Kelly. She died when she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage behind the wheel and drove off a mountainside. Instead of a "Man [or Woman] of the Year," which had been a big deal since the late 1920s, TIME magazine named the personal computer "Machine of the Year." In the U.S., a gallon of gas cost 91 cents, a loaf of bread cost 50 cents, and the average price of an existing home was $67,800. Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands. Dallas, M*A*S*H, and Hill Street Blues were on American TV, and the young standup comedian David Letterman's first (and still best) late night show, simply called "Late Night," debuted on NBC**. A new and high-tech type of music carrier called the Compact Disc, or CD, a joint effort between Sony and Philips, was first manufactured***. A computer scientist named Scott Fahlman proposed that a colon, hyphen, and close-parenthesis, like this: 

:-) 

be used as a marker for jokes. It became the first "emoticon," a word Fahlman coined—even though the Russian émigré author Vladimir Nabokov had proposed the same thing way back in 1969, writing, in The New York Times, "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket." 

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C....
Far less significantly—well, except to me—I accidentally applied to art school in 1982. I had become obsessed with photography, learning all I could about it on my own. And when I got going learning something, I really got going. I never received an academic degree, but when motivated I could be a ferocious autodidact. I once tried to teach myself Anglo-Saxon, for instance, and got further with it than you might imagine. After many visits to Industrial Photo in suburban Maryland—I would stop on my way home from the University of Maryland, where I was auditing a physics course in optics—I had carefully weighed all the options and finally purchased a Contax 139Q (for "quartz") and a Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens, which became my only lens for more than two years.

I was moonlighting at a framer's shop and met a photographer, a customer, who told me about the Corcoran School of Art's Open Program, where she had taken a class. I called the Corcoran, asked to be sent an application for a photography course, and had filled out more than two pages of the application out before I figured out that what they had sent me was an application for the four-year full-time program, which I hadn't even known about. Nothing much was going on in my life; I was living in a group house and working full-time as a handyman at Johnson's Flower Center, a garden center on Wisconsin Avenue, and working evenings and weekends at the frame shop. So I completed the application, was accepted, and entered the Photography BFA program as a second-year student in the Fall.

Naturally, when the RTS II came out and was covered in all the magazines, that became the "dream camera" I really wanted. But not really, because it was beyond my slender means, even though I had been working those two jobs. I considered at the time that the RTS II really should be considered a new camera on account of all its improvements and refinements, or what are now called "upgrades." The shutter on the original RTS of 1975 was known to have some problems, so the RTS II offered a horizontally-traveling new shutter made of titanium—I recall being cautioned never to touch it, as the titanium was very thin and a dented shutter could not be repaired. It inherited quartz-controlled shutter timing, which "trickled up" from my 139Q. I don't know how accurate it was—Dick, at Pro Photo, where most of the photographers in the Washington press corps had their cameras repaired, had a shutter tester, but testing cost $15 and I was a cheapskate. The RTS II had a fully mechanical backup shutter speed, 1/50th sec. (that's the control on the bottom right of the mirror housing, next to the lens), TTL flash, and this, that, and the other thing. You can research an exhaustive list of the differences as easily as I can (i.e., not very easily).

Thoughtful design, innovative tech, and careful engineering
But several things deserve mention. It's remembered that Contax eventually went to great extremes, in the RTS III of 1990 (which really was a completely different camera), to ensure film flatness. The engineers and product managers at Zeiss, one of whom I eventually met, were preoccupied by it, in order to better show off the superiority of their lenses. The RTS III's vacuum back sucked the film flat against the pressure plate before every shot, an engineering nicety that might have appealed to buyers conceptually, even though it's doubtful that any of them ever were able to detect the difference visually. This is almost lost to history now, and I don't know that anyone still cares, but that concern with film flatness was already being addressed way back in the RTS II. The back and film path were carefully engineered, with such features as an oversized, extremely high-tolerance pressure plate made of a special material, and an oversized takeup spool. 

Looks perfectly ordinary, but in this case looks are deceiving.

A lot of the differences were things that seem to have been of concern only in terms of "feature competition" at the time—for example, interchangeable focusing screens. The RTS II had no fewer than eight available! But who cares? Who could care? It was simply something that buyers were looking at back them, ticking off their feature lists as they did their shopping. Soon enough, it stopped mattering—feature proliferation was just about to take off in a much bigger way, as we'll see in the next post. The salient point on that score is that the RTS II shipped with a standard focusing screen that differed from the usual. Most cameras at the time had a central circle consisting of a split-image inside a microprism "collar." The RTS II shipped with a standard screen that had a center spot of microprism only—no split image. Of course, various other screens were among the seven additional options, including your choice of a horizontal or 45°-angle split image. If your heart's desire is to make yourself crazy, try finding those now. The RTS II lost some of those comparisons, too—for example, the flash sync speed, soon to become a competition, was only 1/60th, and several other pro cameras of the era featured exchangeable prism housings—only the Leica R4 and the Contax did not.

The RTS II shared with the RTS its then-unique electromagnetic shutter release, which was very light and very precise compared to the competition. At the time it had the effect of spoiling you for anything else, although it's difficult to recover that sense in today's world. I can't seem to find the spec, but my memory is that it offered the shortest shutter-button travel and the lowest shutter lag of any SLR at the time.

But the best features of the camera were both new on the II. Primarily, the prism and the viewfinder were all new, offering 97% coverage vs. 93% in the RTS, and .87X magnification. The prism was engineered with no corners cut whatsoever, and the view through the eyepiece is as close as it gets to perfection. It's bright, even across the field, "snappy" across the whole field (that is, you can detect focus easily anywhere, not the case on the later high-brightness screens). It's large, and offers decent eye relief (I don't seem to find a figure). Most of all, it's supremely clean—all you see is the world through the lens to the edge of the rectangle. In normal shooting there are only two red LED data points in the finder, the shutter speed on the right and the aperture underneath, both outside the image area—but you're not even presented with those unless you want to be. (If in use, exposure compensation, AE/manual mode indication, AE lock, overexposure warning, flash data and battery check are also visible.) It can stand as well as anything as the high-water mark of camera viewfinders, not just among SLRs, not just of that era, but of 35mm cameras overall. Shoot with it for a while and you'll see just how much we have lost with the insanely cluttered and confused finder views of most of today's digital marvels.

The other feature that's really nice and that I've never seen elsewhere is the very effective AE lock system. To see the finder information, you don't half-press the shutter—the information only briefly appears in the finder as the shutter is being pressed. Rather, you press a button on the front of the camera body to turn the finder information on—for 16 seconds, to prevent battery drain. The nifty thing is that there's a very handy collar switch around this button which permanently locks any shutter speed value once you activate it, and holds it until you switch it off again. It's highly convenient, very practical, and efficient. I'll go so far as to wax hyperbolic and say it's probably the best AE lock system ever devised.

And now the other shoe drops
The cameras that the RTS II competed with in its era were the Nikon F3 (1980—one of my studio partners had one, which he called Darth Vader), Canon New F-1 (1981—my brother bought one), Pentax LX (1980—I've owned several, and still have one now) and Leica R4 (1980—I've rented one of those too, although the one I bought for myself was the R4s). I'm pleased to report that after graduating from the Corcoran School of Art Photography Department, I got a job as a part-time teacher at a local college, and used that as a stepping stone to a full-time job as a high school photography teacher. Being paid a whopping $17,000 in annual salary (actually the equivalent of $47,600 now, which is hard to believe), I was finally able to buy a brand new Contax RTS II. Was it worth buying then? More importantly, what's the situation now—is this old camera actually recommendable to film shooters today? I'll give you my considered and informed, but hardheaded and realistic, opinion.

But before I do that, I have to say that, unfortunately, all of the foregoing, about the features and technology of the RTS II, is actually beside the real point, and doesn't matter all that much in understanding the camera. To put the RTS II in proper perspective and learn the actual significance of it and of the other top cameras of that era, stay tuned for Part III.

I hope you're enjoying reading this, even if, quite understandably, you don't care much (or at all) about old film cameras.

Mike

*I won't watch or listen to him to this day. If you don't naturally empathize with innocent travelers who suddenly find themselves trapped and drowning in freezing water after a traumatic impact, you're a psychopath, and that's the end of the discussion.

**"Still best," thanks in part to Letterman's head writer and then-girlfriend Merrill Markoe, who deserves credit for a lot of the original features on that show. I had been living without a TV, but I bought one specifically to watch two programs: the 1983 Super Bowl, and Late Night. I later bought a tiny B&W TV with a screen about the size of a piece of 4x5 film. Know why? Because I could put a small sheet of Rubylith—transparent red masking film—over the screen, and watch football games—and Late Night, often enough—in the darkroom.

***I bought twenty of them before I bought my first CD player.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Rob Griffin: "Your writings on the Contax cameras and the RTS and RTS II are a wonderful read. Great stuff! From the mid-'70s to mid-'80s I worked full time at what I believe was the best camera store in Phoenix, The Guild. I think we may have been the biggest Contax dealer in the Southwest. Your impressions and thoughts about the Contax line are right on point."

Mike Cawley: "Wonderful! My first serious camera was the RTS II. Coupled with the W-2 motor drive, I felt like a real photographer. Didn't have enough $ to buy the III when it was introduced, but managed to handle it at a camera show. It had that same 'solid brick' feeling of quality like the II.

"Keep 'em coming!"

Comments

[Janice C]

I hope after this you'll move on to the 167MT.
It was the first camera with "ABC", auto-exposure bracketing control. I'm not sure, but... I think it was also the first camera with a built-in motor drive. It's only fault was that there was no shutter speed dial, but for aperture-priority shooting it was a dream. The body was "rubberized" and one of the most comfortable to hold.
It was bettered later by the Aria...
Too bad we'll never see a digital Contax!

[xf mj]

That darkroom TV idea is brilliant.

Letterman’s brief daytime show was also very good. My mom became a fan and used technology to keep up with his new show’s time. She taped each episode of Late Night overnight using the timer feature on my family’s new VHS VCR. She could then watch it in the morning once she had shuffled us all off to school. I remember coming off the bus, hoping he had thrown weird stuff off a building the day before, and rewinding to see. My mom’s joy and devotion over early Letterman had her talking about “that Dave” like he was a member of our family.

[Bob G.]

Mike,
Keep the series coming! I enjoy it as well as possibly others you may have… love the historical placement as well as the personal relevances. Often, I read about a camera or technique without knowing anything about its provenance or place in relation to the time. Sometimes, just a simple review. Even though some of us probably photographically lived and worked when this camera came out, I’m sure your perspective is at the very least, for me, entertaining and enlightening…

[Rick Popham]

“ ***I bought twenty of them before I bought my first CD player.”

Oh, I know how that works! I bought batteries and a charger for the D800 I didn’t have yet.

[Paul]

Fun to read Mike. Brings back lots of nostalgic memories of a time long gone in so many ways.

[Mike Boyle]

Ah yes, the sublime CONTAX RTS2 my favourite! along with it’s big brother the CONTAX 645 my other favourite!
Thanks for the memories, the RTS2 & 18 f4 distagon was the combo that took my favourite image to this day on big beach Maui Nov. 1987
1/15@f4 handheld at minimum focus, Kodachrome 25 as the light faded, I can almost feel the camera in my hand , the image called impermanence a self portrait of sorts a one image documentary of my life here on earth
I could send a small file if you wanted to see it although I’m sure you get a lot of that
Thanks so much for the article
Mike Boyle Vancouver

[Peter F]

I am loving this. The mix of personal, world, and photographic context is deeply satisfying.

[Dave]

The old ("3M") Pentax film cameras also had the microprism-only focus screen. No finder blackout in dim conditions and the surrounding area served as a ground glass focusing screen, so you could focus around the microprism part if necessary.

These old cameras had some neat features.

[Lothar Adler]

My God, what a rodeo ride through that time and the content, goals of 35mm camera technology at that time.
Simply great. You don't get to read anything like that anywhere else, in that quality.
Yes, this technical content and features were in our minds and kept many of us busy, during the day and especially during our sleepless nights.
When I read your text and the description of the Contax Model II and the struggle of Zeiss to achieve technological perfection, I feel the probably nonsensical desire to want one, although ...
Which reminds me, many, many years ago, the Windows 95 operating system came out. It was so glowingly reviewed and praised in the computer magazines and the newspapers that, supposedly, lots of people wanted to buy it, even those who had no computer at all ... .
That's what I call passion.

[Earl Dunbar]

Of course it’s worth the writing and the reading. I almost pulled the trigger on an RTS II a few months ago, primarily for the Zeiss 50/1.4 and some other lens. And the design, of course.

It’s still in the back of my mind, but hi-fi purchases were a higher priority, and will remain so for a while. Besides I have OM bodies, good Zuikos, the Rolleiflex and Chamonix. Too much, yes, but there you go.

[Jim Baldwin]

Outstanding post Mike

[Bahi]

I haven’t used a film camera for a few years but this series is utterly compelling. Thank you!

[Jeff Hohner]

Loving the camera history, especially the serialized format. And Rubylith over a tiny TV in the darkroom? Effing brilliant! But it would have ruined the darkroom for me. My darkroom was like Dr. Who's T.A.R.D.I.S. No, it wasn't bigger on the inside, but it did allow me to time travel. I'd step inside at 6:00 p.m. and step out at 11:00, after what I thought was only an hour or two having passed. Having a game or a show playing while I worked would have grounded out that magic.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

We did the business of buying CDs before buying the player also. Something around the same number, and close to the same year, for that matter. We had set a price point for a satisfactory player ("satisfactory" was still a judgment call though), and would buy the player as soon as we found one. I think I've only ever owned 2 CD players, the other is still in the rack across the room from me (not counting drives in computers of course).

There's a thing about "high-end" cameras that affected the competition, maybe, that you don't mention. A bunch of people, and not just old people (the group included me, and I wasn't old in 1980) were rather averse to auto-exposure. Furthermore, most of us thought in terms of picking a shutter speed (needed to stop motion) and then finding the aperture that worked with it, when working manually (might have to constrain the apertures for depth of field, but for a remarkable range of things it was never an issue). So the fancy things you could easily do with an electronically-controlled shutter—didn't interest us, even put us off a bit. Electronic shutters were also more accurate, that was of some value, at least in theory.

[William Cook]

Previous commenters have said it better than I can, but what a great post! I remember lusting after Contax cameras back then— but could never afford one. The camera/film/ darkroom store I frequented in Berkeley, CA, had a rack of camera brochures and I always rummaged through it looking for anything Contax. I seem to remember one of those bodies having an autofocus system whereby it moved the film plane forward and back. Could be wrong about though, my memory isn’t what it once was.

[Mike Plews]

I seem to recall reading that W. Eugene Smith also had a tv with a gel over it in his darkroom.
Great minds...

[Zave Shapiro]

Minolta never had a tilt lens but I believe they had two with a plane of focus that could be adjusted from concave to convex. Doesn't this rank with the Contax "vacuum"? I'd love to hear about more of these unique solutions.

[Mark L]

I've fancied an rts3 with a 25mm zeiss lens but they are getting old now, many seem to have bleeding lcd's in the Finder, the rubber body covering shrinks and peels off, the mirrors are only held in place with double sided tape which perishes and of course any fault electronically is a death sentence.
Because you can adapt the lenses to mirrorless the 25mm Zeiss I lust after is worth twice what the body goes for.
Maybe best left as a fantasy for me.
All the best, Mark

[Renaud]

Regarding the origin of emoticons,I don't know if it had any effect but I always found this quote (quotation?) fascinating:
"It occurred to him that, with their turned-up little smiles and round, empty eyes, they looked like a row of umlaut U's."
Trevanian, The Eiger Sanction, Crown (NY) 1972

[Jeff]

Howard Stern didn’t actually call the airline, phrased the simulated call differently, and was fired about six months later. That, of course, doesn’t negate any of the outrage that followed. Stern has since talked about his rage, his extended psychotherapy, and his apologies to many people. His long term relationship with Letterman has also been discussed by both parties, in books and in various shows and interviews.

[Jeff]

I meant to attach this link…

https://www.insideradio.com/free/stern-on-stern-i-had-a-lot-of-rage-and-i-was-going-to-let/article_13263a96-656a-11e8-93d6-8f4a0c7ff8b0.html

[darlene]

A beautiful piece of writing. Even though I have never seen a Contax RTS II (I was shooting a Canon AE-1 around that time), I feel like I missed out on a piece of gear I might have enjoyed. The background of historical moments shared with your time with the Contax is captivating for us around your age. Thanks for an interesting series about a camera I have never heard of before.

[Stan B.]

Didn't know that about Stern, but then I only listened to him once or twice and didn't find him funny, at all. Instead, he along with Springer and Morton Downey Jr. (the 3 stooges of their day- no knock to the originals) all operated under the same rubric, to appeal to the lowest common denominator and in so doing profit from and contribute to the dumbing down of America. The results of which are so prominently evident today...

[Geoff Wittig]

Great post, Mike.
I really have bonded with the lovely jewel-like silver finish Fujifilm XT cameras and their equally lovely silver Fujicron lenses. But I do sorely miss the Pentax film camera system I sold to fund my first digital SLR.
It didn't have the clean simple finder of the Contax, but the Pentax MZ-S to me still had the best ergonomics and exposure control of any film SLR, ever. It was a half-size smaller than Nikon or Canon equivalents; the top plate was angled toward the user so the little settings LCD and dials were always visible. With a sinuous, organically shaped extra battery grip it fit my large hands like it was designed just for me. I always used it in spot-meter mode, used the lens ring to set aperture and the right dial for shutter speed, and placed the exposure dot where I wanted it on the viewfinder's simple pos/neg scale along the bottom. Even with unforgiving slide film, exposure was invariably spot-on.

[Cliff McMann]

@Mike don’t knock that local college or your contributions. I took most of my photography classes at the London campus, but my first few were in Springfield,since my wife to be was in “real” college, just down 95 in Fredericksburg. I jumped behind the wheel of a ‘76 spitfire and crossed my fingers the car would make a class many nights. Young, dumb, in love, and supremely confident! Life doesn’t get much better! You’ve probably made more of a difference in this world than you realize. Hopefully I passed a small portion on too.

[David B.]

Yes, William Cook, Yashica/Contax DID make an autofocus Contax ..the AX. The whole mechanism shifts back and forth - up to 10 millimetres - inside the body, so you could use any of the manual focus lenses and the camera will autofocus with all of them.

I have one, and it's a great - if rather heavy - camera. (I did have another, briefly, with a Leica R mount, but that had a screw or two loose, would get stuck, and I sent it back to its previous owner.)

For anyone with an older Yashica or Contax and a stash of assorted lenses, buying the AX meant you could continue with all the lenses you already had - instead of buying new ones with built-in motors or screwdriver sockets like Nikon - and just continue as you were, but now with autofocus!

It's large (top to bottom, and front to back) and heavy (1130 grams - 2½ pounds) but you don't notice that, as it's so ergonomic (everything's in just the right place) and smooth, with an excellent handgrip, and works effortlessly, with surprisingly FAST autofocus.

It's also versatile, with Aperture or Speed priority auto (or manual) exposure, as brief as 1/4000th sec manual shutter speed (1/6000th in auto mode), flash sync at 1/200th sec, anything and everything you could want from a camera ..including astonishingly close Macro focus with ordinary lenses (set them to closest focus, and the movable film plane does the rest), auto-wind and auto-rewind (and you can choose to leave the film tab out, for 'half-used' films, or for easy loading into your own developing tank).

Everything you could possibly want of a camera ..all in a single device.

[John Squillace]

Hi, Mike - what a great pair of articles! I own an RTS II and it's one of my favorite cameras. I originally bought it in response to a Craiglist posting from model turned photographer Steven Patenaude, who lived in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Some time later he asked if he could buy it back, so I sold it back at the same price. He later offered it back to me and I bit; then he bought it back; then finally I bought it from him again and it's remained in my hands since, following those 3 full round trips LOL. I did eventually re-cover it, though, since the leatherette had disintegrated and was patched with bits and pieces of electrical tape. Took some great photos with it last year on vacation and will be bringing it along again this year.

[James Weekes]

Mike,
I think you are ripe for this. Based on your column about the Takumar 50 f/1.4, I got one on eBay and an adapter for micro 4/3. It was nice, but I am not a fan of the 100mm length, which it was. I now have several full frame L mount cameras, including an fp. Got an adapter for that and have loved the results. What a lens. For $65.00!

[george4908]

>>On January 14th, Air Florida flight 90 hit the 14th Street Bridge shortly after taking off from what was then called National Airport, and plunged into the freezing Potomac River, killing 78 people, including both pilots and four motorists on the bridge.<<

Related trivia: A bystander named Lenny Skutnick dove into the frigid waters and pulled a drowning passenger to safety. Shortly thereafter, President Reagan invited him to attend the State of the Union address, calling him out for an ovation. It was a touching and heartfelt moment -- but ever since, no State of the Union address is complete without an ever-growing group of heroes to be saluted. Not that they're not worthy, but what was once spontaneous is now a highly programmed and often politically partisan PR event.