Excited New G2 Owner

[sooner]

After lurking and thinking I'd get a G1 outfit, I jumped on Meleica's sale here on RFF of his G2 and 45 and 90 lenses, as the price seemed very reasonable. So far I love the camera. You people talked about the heft, but equally impressive is the shutter sound. It's not loud but speaks the way the sound of a silencer is equated with a professional assassin (I'm talking on TV here, folks). It's sweet. My first test roll came out focused just fine, and slow shutter speeds weren't too bad either.

Anyone have any advice on taking great pictures with a G2? Anyone have a 28mm they want to sell?

Thanks......sooner/John

 

[jano]

Nice shot, lots of grain, though -- what film/developer combo?

Some tips? My favorite one is about the focus button on the back.. here: http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000378.html

 

[Nuno]

Great choice John!
I think you're just missing the Biogon 28.
I have one, but I'm not selling it...

Contax G1 + Biogon 28/2.8

 

[ghost]

as a camerawarming gift, get yourself a copy of 'winterreise' by luc delahaye. he used a contax g2 for it. 😀

 

[Dougg]

Congratulations, John; that's a great rig! I bought mine primarily as a vehicle for the 21mm Biogon, and had that combo out today for a walk that used up a 24-exp roll. The 28 is a fine lens too... good luck finding a good one for a good price, as I see G2 gear is holding its value pretty well on eBay these days. The 35 is higher now than last year, must be a surge of interest in that one.

 

[charlesfoto]

Congrats, Sooner. Although I use the 45 & 90 for about 90% of my work, I did pick up the 28 from keh.com in Atlanta for a great price. Also picked up a second G2 from keh, so I can have the 45 & 90 attached at all times with the 28 in the bag. Enjoy this great, great camera.

 

[sooner]

Thanks for the tips and well wishes, it's nice to have somewhere to vent my excitement. This is definitely the most I've ever spent on a camera.

Jano, I used Tri-X (400) developed in HC-110 dilution D (half of B). Yeah, it was very grainy, not sure if that was the developer or just my bad scanning or what (I use an Epson 2400 flatbed). Any advice on reducing grain or getting better scans for grain would be appreciated.

--John/sooner

 

[LazyHammock]

That is a great setup you have - the 28mm is a wonderful lens, I'd highly recommend getting one. KEH has one for $265, I picked one up last week on ebay for about $200. I'm definitely considering the 21mm, I've seen some great shots on contaxg.com.
Cheers,
Nick

 

[gefoto3]

The 28 Biogon is a fantastic optic. I use it a lot and love the results. I also used to own the 28mm Distagon for the Contax SLR's but this is better. Here are a couple shot from the 28mm Biogon (Agfa APX100)

Cheers
Gary

 

[John]

You got a great deal on that G2 set, especially considering the Ex+ or pristine condition. The lithium batteries last a long time if you don't forget to shut it off. Tony Rose has a 28mm for $200 right now I think. 🙂

 

[dgray]

Read the guidelines on contaxg.com for the details on how exactly to use the brackets in the viewfinder to know precisely what you are focusing on. Not such a big deal for landscapes like the one posted, but wide open and in closer and you have to be a bit more careful, especially with the 90/2.8. If you work at delivering the focus carefully, the lenses give you outstanding images.

 

[jano]

I went back and looked at that article where the guy talks about the focus brackets.. my head hurts now. Didn't really understand a bit of it, except maybe something to do with a line somewhere or elsewhere.

 

[dgray]

You can also learn how the brackets work with a little practice in your living room. Play around with focusing on a single spot that is completely isolated from its background, for example the tip of a candle in the middle of the room. Get close, move back... and play around with where in the brackets you put the candle tip. You'll get the hang of it quickly when you realize you think you are focusing on the candle but the readout says you are focused on the back wall. That's why you keep the candle far away from the background, so it's real obvious what you are focusing on - no ambiguities. Make sure you move in close so you understand how the parallax compensation works when the brackets aren't in the middle of the frame any more because the frames shifted. After you've played and get an intuitive sense of it all, THEN go back and read the article and hopefully it will make more sense and confirm what you know. I hope that helps and doesn't discourage you. It really is a wonderful camera, but I know I was a little frustrated at first because I love headshot portraits, and the 90 looks so beautiful when it was on, but I missed the focus of so many shots that way I started to feel I couldn't trust the camera until I played around like this. Of course if you don't take a lot of those up close wide open shots then you don't need to worry about this nearly as much. Enjoy!

 

[jano]

Thanks, I guess I'll play with it. I've yet to have any focus problems with my G2, though, been using it for almost a year now 🙂

 

[jdos2]

Whenever I get a G2 body (I'm rolling my eyes here because I've had a few kits by now!) I spend time to figure out exactly where that focus point is in the focus brackets. For the last camera it was a line the width of the focus brackets, but only a horizontal line, and only at the TOP of the brackets. I figured it out using a stump in a pretty open field. After that, I knew where it thought focus was, and all was well.
Except the 90mm didn't focus right wide open. So I sent it it to NJ.
It came back focusing as perfectly as I'd like.
Except now the TTL sensor was broken, and the camera had to go back...