New user question

[jpressman]

Hello all. I've recently acquired a G2 after doing a lot of research, and I'm excited about using this fine piece of equipment. But... I've noticed that when I focus on different things, the viewfinder changes it's size differently - sometimes reducing the viewable area, and sometimes not. As though the camera thinks a different size lens is in use. I'm using the 45mm normal lense, and I expected that the viewfinder size would change the same way for each shot, but that's not the case. Am I missing (or not understanding) something?

Thanks for your help.
Jeff

 

[thedilettante]

G'day Jeff
Don't worry,it's supposed to do that. It's the automatic parallax correction. You'll notice that it changes more when focussing on objects closer to you & vice versa.
I use a G2 & a Bessa R and while I prefer the Bessa's viewfinder the G2 feels so much better in the hand than the Bessa ( duh! ) and the lens is a knockout. I found it took a while to get used to the focussing on the G2 so the best advice I could give would be to shoot as much as you can until it feels comfortable.
Good luck
Ben

 

[Doug]

Welcome to RFF, Jeff! I'm a recent convert to the Contax G2 as well, and getting to like it a lot. One of its features I'm sure you know is a zooming viewfinder that is keyed to zoom to a certain spot by the presense of different lenses. Because of this zooming ability, it can also zoom very slightly as the lens is focused to present the user with framing very nearly correct for the lens... at the focused distance.

As the lens focuses, there are two factors that call for correction: One is parallax, which is not really correctable, but more like "compensated" and correct only for objects at the focus distance. Things closer and beyond will have a slightly different relationship with the subject on film than you see in the VF. This is simply due to the fact the lens and the VF see the subject from slightly different positions. Secondly, there is field size... As the lens focuses closer its effective focal length gets longer, by the proportion of its movement away from the film. So as the lens moves further from the film to focus, its field size shrinks a little, apart from the subject looking larger simply due to being closer! And its this field-size correction of the zooming viewfinder that you're seeing. At some times, the subject is closer than the previous subject, and on other occasions, it's farther, so the zooming will go in different directions depending on what was focused on the previous time. Make any sense? 🙂