Let's see your vintage Contax

In my photo they're lined up from left to right as a Contax I Version 4 (d), Version 5(e), Version 7 (f) when sticking too Kuc's way of classifying them.
It looks like the shutter release button collars are all factory.

The Contax I(d), Version 4, had the "Cylinder" release button, without the raised collar.
The Contax I(e), Version 5, came both with and without the raised collar around the cylinder release button.
The Contax I(f), Version 6 and 7, only came with the raised collar.

The Version 1 to 3 came with the cylinder release and a plunger style release button. None had the raised collar.
 
James Evidon said:
You can say that again. I am 5 years older than this camera and I am still functioning as well, although not as well as the camera.
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You have a few years on me, I am just a tike of 84. And damned grateful for today's medical science. I am way past my sell-by date and having fun. And I hope I am frustrating the actuaries who calculated my annuity fund. LMAO
 
I was just re-reading this thread and there was some grumbling about the shutters on these. Yeah, prone to have failing shutter ribbons. And they are loud. OK, send it to Oleg (?) for a CLA or overhaul/restore. These things are gorgeous machines which can make a photograph. The wartime ones are, to me, the height of the camera maker's art. Yeah. yeah, yeah, Leica. Those are good. But when I see a Contax II I know I am looking at a real, no BS, honest-to-God it-is-for-real camera. Nikon made a real close copy which also makes me a bit weak in the knees. Loud? Matters not to me. OTOH, I do not have one so they are totally silent in my real world. If I were to run out and get one, I would hope to hell that it sounded like a clanging gate when I shot it. I would want the world to know what I had in my hands. Yeah, ego problems. LOL
 
boojum said:
I was just re-reading this thread and there was some grumbling about the shutters on these. Yeah, prone to have failing shutter ribbons. And they are loud. OK, send it to Oleg (?) for a CLA or overhaul/restore. These things are gorgeous machines which can make a photograph. The wartime ones are, to me, the height of the camera maker's art. Yeah. yeah, yeah, Leica. Those are good. But when I see a Contax II I know I am looking at a real, no BS, honest-to-God it-is-for-real camera. Nikon made a real close copy which also makes me a bit weak in the knees. Loud? Matters not to me. OTOH, I do not have one so they are totally silent in my real world. If I were to run out and get one, I would hope to hell that it sounded like a clanging gate when I shot it. I would want the world to know what I had in my hands. Yeah, ego problems. LOL
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My Contax II and III are actually pretty quiet. They are very close to my Leica IIIa, and perhaps just as quiet--I don't have a decibel meter to check on this. So if your ego needed a loud camera I suggest that you go for an SLR of some sort. The worst that I have ever owned was a Practice L that had a version of a Copal metal focal plane shutter. The Pentax 6x7 is a lot louder than that, but I have never owned one, only played with one briefly, and ruled it out in part because of the noise.
 
Cascadilla said:
My Contax II and III are actually pretty quiet. They are very close to my Leica IIIa, and perhaps just as quiet--I don't have a decibel meter to check on this. So if your ego needed a loud camera I suggest that you go for an SLR of some sort. The worst that I have ever owned was a Practice L that had a version of a Copal metal focal plane shutter. The Pentax 6x7 is a lot louder than that, but I have never owned one, only played with one briefly, and ruled it out in part because of the noise.
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LMAO I had just read the carping about shutter noise. Personally I would not care if you could not hear banging pots and pans when the shutter fired. The II is just so beautiful. The Nikon S2 is kind of nice, too.

Miles brought his beautiful II to the Portland meet-up and I was charmed by it. They are just such beautiful machines. Granted I may have imprinted on them back in '53 or '54 when I first saw a II. But I am not alone. Un-imprinted folks think they are grand, too.
 
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boojum said:
The wartime ones are, to me, the height of the camera maker's art. Yeah. yeah, yeah, Leica. Those are good. But when I see a Contax II I know I am looking at a real, no BS, honest-to-God it-is-for-real camera.
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Oh, hellllllll no.

They're cameras made by engineers for engineers. Every single thing on them is so heavily over-engineered that the whole camera barely makes any sense.

The best way to understand the difference between the mentality of the engineers at Leitz and Zeiss (and the Leica and the Contax overall) is to adjust the rangefinder of both.

Horizontal alignment out on a Leica II? Remove one screw, adjust a hidden screw behind it, replace the screw.

Horizontal alignment out on a Contax II? Remove the entire faceplate (no easy feat - you need to peel back some leather and manipulate it carefully over the lens mount. Also, special bonus observation: you need to take out six screws to do this, and they're not all the same length), loosen a couple of screws, awkwardly shift a prism, retighten the screws and hope the prism didn't shift while you did this. Also, hope that the small amount of adjustment available here is enough, because if you need to do anything more drastic, you'll need to dismantle basically the entire camera.

Vertical alignment out on a Leica II? Remove the bezel/surround on the RF window and turn a prism.

Vertical alignment out on a Contax II? Don't even bother. You'll need to remove the faceplate, the top plate, and if I remember right, the lens mount too. Then you'll need to dissolve some glue, reposition a prism, and hope and pray you glue it into the right place.

Contaxes are pretty things, but there's a reason the Leica became the pattern more or less every camera was based on. Zeiss were borderline insane, and they seemed to design things based on the idea that they could never possibly go wrong and no one would ever have to adjust anything. Leitz wisely understood that things would need adjusting and made fixing them very easy in comparison.
 
As for noise: there's going to be a lot of sample variation. My Contax IIa sounds like a metallic gunshot for some reason. My Contax II sounds like a quiet snick. My Leica IIIf is also weirdly loud thanks to a technician in London that overtensioned everything to "repair" it, but my Leica Ic is quiet as a whisper.

But one thing that's always made me laugh about pre-war Contaxes and Kievs vs any Leica or Leica-based design is the slow speed mechanism. Firing a Leica at 1/4 is a beautiful and subtle noise. Firing a pre-war Contax or Kiev at 1/5 makes a sound like the dying wheeze of an old man with emphysema. I've never heard anything else like it!
 
Muggins said:
Ah, that slow speed noise! My III sounds like a very small cow mooing!
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That is such a good way to put it, actually. I'm not sure what's different between the II and IIa's shutter design to so clearly change that noise, but it's a welcome improvement.

...I just wish they hadn't also changed the direction of the focusing wheel at the same time.
 
Removing the front plate of the Contax IIIa just to clean the finder glass is a very intense operation. I use TWO ice cube trays to keep the parts in order. As I was taking it apart- "German Over-Engineering" also encountered in the Retina series came to mind. The Leica III and IIIa- "So Simple and Elegant" by comparison. BUT- I love the Contax, as I am an Engineer...
 
Sonnar Brian said:
Removing the front plate of the Contax IIIa just to clean the finder glass is a very intense operation. I use TWO ice cube trays to keep the parts in order. As I was taking it apart- "German Over-Engineering" also encountered in the Retina series came to mind. The Leica III and IIIa- "So Simple and Elegant" by comparison. BUT- I love the Contax, as I am an Engineer...
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It's true - I'm comfortable disassembling Barnack leicas to some degree, but the innards of the post-war Contaxes look a lot more daunting. I'm still trying to understand why my IIa's rangefinder overshoots at infinity but focuses correctly up close, that doesn't even make sense.
 
qqphotos said:
I'm still trying to understand why my IIa's rangefinder overshoots at infinity but focuses correctly up close, that doesn't even make sense.
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Oh, god. I'm getting flashbacks to the last time I tried dealing with this.

There's a couple of adjustment points/methods on the Contax/Kiev rangefinder. I don't know if it's different on the IIa, but I can't imagine it changed a lot.

The "easy" fix is the one below the RF window, accessible by removing the front plate. That shifts the rangefinder mechanism side-to-side and will give you a small amount of adjustment for the whole range of travel. Unfortunately, if you're in focus at one end but not the other, this won't be enough.

The more substantial fix is to remove the entire top of the camera and rotate the RF prism/lens at that end. Note that the adjustments for this are below the long prism that brings the image over to the viewfinder, so adjusting this necessitates removing the prism, making an adjustment, and replacing the prism to find out if you got it right.

Usually, a combination of those two should bring everything into line - if you're lucky.

The ninth circle of hell is if the lens mount has been removed and the gearing between the focusing helical and the rangefinder mechanism has changed. Now you've got to reposition that and adjust the other two parts of the rangefinder mechanism until everything agrees. Good luck with that - it's a constant process of removing parts, making small adjustments, putting parts back, checking both ends of the scale, removing parts, making more adjustments, and so on.

I can see why so few people work on these things. They're a nightmare.
 
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