One of the best

[Pál_K]

…I would put money down on an early 60s Spotmatic being more likely to have all of it's shutter speeds working well than an early 60's Contax having any shutter speeds working at all, if neither of them have had any servicing since they left their manufacturers.

(This turned out to be very long-winded; maybe just read the first and last paragraphs)

Whether the Contax shutter would be functional may rely on design tolerances and expected periodic maintenance throughout its lifetime. Mechanisms with high precision and close tolerances are more likely to have failures than another mechanism with looser tolerances.

For example, long ago on a favorite mechanical watch website, TimeZone, a highly respected and experienced watchmaker stated that the small dirt particle found in a friend’s still-working 30 year old Rolex would’ve stopped a Patek Philippe in its tracks. Think of the Rolex movement more like a Chevy 350 and the Patek Philippe as the diabolical Porsche 550 quad-cam. For a less tony example, consider that a military rifle will have tolerances and a chamber to accept ammunition from a wide range of suppliers of varying quality and is designed to not fail in harsh environments with dirt, sand, snow - whereas a high-precision benchrest target rifle of the same caliber will have a tight chamber and throat and may not even be able to chamber the military version of the round (e.g. 7.62x51 vs .308).

I don’t intend to imply the Spotmatic is a crude battle-axe (I’ve worked on them and they’re wonderfully designed). Rather, I think the Contax suffers from its own brilliance. DAG said the Leica M5 was overengineered; I think the same may be true with the Contax.

But perhaps design for longevity and resistance to the elements is perhaps the better design.

 

[Bingley]

I love that lens. My copy is a 1943 LTM model and is a joy to shoot on an M3.

 

[David Hughes]

The last Contax iia/iiia rolled out of Zeiss in 1961, the first Spotmatics appeared in 1964. I have had my hands on a lot of Contax cameras of every generation, and a lot of Spotmatics too. I would put money down on an early 60s Spotmatic being more likely to have all of it's shutter speeds working well than an early 60's Contax having any shutter speeds working at all, if neither of them have had any servicing since they left their manufacturers.

Yes, but; if we confine the sample to neglected and unserviced it's a different story. But we started discussing cameras without the reservations.


The nuisance is that this is all too vague. I've a Leica I've had for decades but it was secondhand when I bought it despite being only 2 or 3 years old; I know its history and how often its been back for repairs and how many films have been through it and so on. We'd need that info for all the cameras and hundreds of the things before we could say which were unreliable and so on. And how we'd define unreliable is a vague question with a vaguer answer. I really don't think there is an answer we can rely on...



Regards, David

 

[David Hughes]

David, I'll reply by Telex!

I'll tell them to light the beacon as soon as we get it...

Regards, David

 

[Dralowid]

David, I remember Mintel being marketing/sales statistics, often released daily?

Back to the Contax I, they are beautiful to look and feel great in the hand. The range of lenses was excellent for the time. Ergonomics was a barely understood science at the time...

 

[Erik van Straten]

Ergonomics was a barely understood science at the time...

It is therefore a wonder that the Leicas from that time excel in ergonomics!

Erik.

 

[Gben]

(This turned out to be very long-winded; maybe just read the first and last paragraphs)

Whether the Contax shutter would be functional may rely on design tolerances and expected periodic maintenance throughout its lifetime. Mechanisms with high precision and close tolerances are more likely to have failures than another mechanism with looser tolerances.

For example, long ago on a favorite mechanical watch website, TimeZone, a highly respected and experienced watchmaker stated that the small dirt particle found in a friend’s still-working 30 year old Rolex would’ve stopped a Patek Philippe in its tracks. Think of the Rolex movement more like a Chevy 350 and the Patek Philippe as the diabolical Porsche 550 quad-cam. For a less tony example, consider that a military rifle will have tolerances and a chamber to accept ammunition from a wide range of suppliers of varying quality and is designed to not fail in harsh environments with dirt, sand, snow - whereas a high-precision benchrest target rifle of the same caliber will have a tight chamber and throat and may not even be able to chamber the military version of the round (e.g. 7.62x51 vs .308).

I don’t intend to imply the Spotmatic is a crude battle-axe (I’ve worked on them and they’re wonderfully designed). Rather, I think the Contax suffers from its own brilliance. DAG said the Leica M5 was overengineered; I think the same may be true with the Contax.

But perhaps design for longevity and resistance to the elements is perhaps the better design.

Nicely said. I was trained to repair mechanical watches, went to school for running machine tools, worked in a metal-fab shop, a journeyman electrician, worked as a mechanic at a Ducati dealership, and have been welding with gas and electric my entire life and working on cars, British bikes etc.. So I can see exactly what you are saying.

I am pretty sure that the Contax problems come from the way they had to design around the Leica patents. The Leica is a brilliant idea, and to jump onto that train of miniature 35mm camera design without being able to use the most simple mechanical path is a herculean task. Zeiss got the job done eventually but it was a tough climb.

We are lucky today that Leica, Zeiss, Voigtlander and others did not cooperate so much as we ended up with a much larger variety of cameras.

What is the AK-47 of rangefinders?

 

[santino]

The Leica II?

 

[Dralowid]

It is therefore a wonder that the Leicas from that time excel in ergonomics!

Erik.

In Wetzlar it just came naturally.

 

[Pál_K]

…
What is the AK-47 of rangefinders?

You’re not going to like it: Argus C3.

Tough, reliable, simple to operate.

Ducati, eh? Love the 900SS!

 

[Gben]

You’re not going to like it: Argus C3.
Tough, reliable, simple to operate. Ducati, eh? Love the 900SS!

I have the highest respect for the Argus C, I have quite a few of them because here in the USA you can buy them for five dollars each. I have some of the very early examples from before WWII, right on through to some of the later models. I am pretty sure I also have an Argus A and a "K", which I think is very uncommon. I have heard more than once that the Argus C standard lens is a Leica Elmar copy, and it is very high build quality. If Someone took all of my cameras away and left me with one Argus C that would be okay.

I had the C in mind when I thought of the AK-47 of rangefinders.

Ducati bikes are nice, but while working at the dealership watching the bill for a customer's 916 go up and up for routine maintenance, I thought how I would much rather have an RC51 or any other Honda sport bike. My father was a dealer/racer of British bikes in the 1950s/60s, and working on those for decades gave me an appreciation for what they are not, reliability. I have had a lot of fun riding mostly Norton bikes, but I will always tell anyone young that wants a bike to get a Japanese bike and have fun riding, because riding is what motorcycling should be about, and taking photos is what photography should be about, and neither should be dependent on any specific hardware. Any old material goods I have laying around were put in my way, I did not seek them out nor pay dearly for them.

 

[David Hughes]

David, I remember Mintel being marketing/sales statistics, often released daily?

IIRC ours came from France Telecom and we were wondering about something similar; this was long before the internet and, of course, gave us access to the Telecom France telephone directories' database. Long article here:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

My interest in it was because by then I was getting all the weird, unsolvable problems dumped on my desk; fascinating at times with hackers and so on.

Regards, David

 

[David Hughes]

...Ducati bikes are nice, but while working at the dealership watching the bill for a customer's 916 go up and up for routine maintenance, I thought how I would much rather have an RC51 or any other Honda sport bike. My father was a dealer/racer of British bikes in the 1950s/60s, and working on those for decades gave me an appreciation for what they are not, reliability. I have had a lot of fun riding mostly Norton bikes, but I will always tell anyone young that wants a bike to get a Japanese bike and have fun riding, because riding is what motorcycling should be about, and taking photos is what photography should be about, and neither should be dependent on any specific hardware. Any old material goods I have laying around were put in my way, I did not seek them out nor pay dearly for them.

Interesting, I would have said that a lot of British bikes were designed far too long before the materials needed had come along. FED and Zorki had a similar problem with lubricants but that was deliberate and a result of the cold war; I forget what they did to deserve it.

Regards, David

 

[Gben]

Interesting, I would have said that a lot of British bikes were designed far too long before the materials needed had come along. FED and Zorki had a similar problem with lubricants but that was deliberate and a result of the cold war; I forget what they did to deserve it.Regards, David

The problem with the most popular British bikes post-war was not a materials problem but design problems and greed. At the exact same time the British were selling the public these poor obsolete designs, Honda was selling reliable motorcycles with overhead camshafts and electric starters.

The USA/U.K. have never had any excuse to sell sub-par goods to the public as they have always had the resources/materials from the start of the industrial revolution. This in contrast to the many countries around the planet that the USA/U.K. have/are attacking economically and militarily to maintain global hegemony to last so many centuries.

 

[Gben]

David, I remember Mintel being marketing/sales statistics, often released daily?

Back to the Contax I, they are beautiful to look and feel great in the hand. The range of lenses was excellent for the time. Ergonomics was a barely understood science at the time...

Thank-you for trying to stay on subject, it is a rare talent. I agree what you say about the Contax I. To engineer a camera around Leica patents and at the same time keep it's controls ergonomic was a tough assignment.

The Leica was light and small and simple when it first came out, which was the idea behind 35mm cameras originally. When a rangefinder was added, fast lenses, then light-meters and other things to make them easier to use they started to get bloated and heavy. Zeiss seemed to run in this direction, but the most bloated Contax III with a big chunk of glass hanging from it, is still better to carry around than a larger format Camera of the 1930s/40s. The Contax I is a beautiful piece of what was cutting-edge technology in the early 1930s, and it is maybe the fork in the road that led away from the simple, light camera that the Leica originally was, something to carry around in a pocket that was unimposing and could be whipped out for a candid shot. You could break someone's skull with a Contax I, it is quite a hunk of metal and glass.

 

[David Hughes]

i thought I pointed that (Leitz's patents) out a few days ago, so on subject. Ducati took us off topic.

Regards, David

 

[Dralowid]

Not wishing to stir things up but...

I have never seen record of these 'Leitz patents' that Zeiss was so afraid of. I'd like to know the source of this.

Does anyone have detail? I very much doubt that Leitz could have patented horizontal cloth focal plane shutters, 35mm film transport or even coupled rangefinders, surely these existed beforehand? Apart from the actual product's design, what else could they have patented?

My understanding is that Zeiss at the time was huge business by comparison with Leitz, if so, it wouldn't have taken much to gobble them up.

 

[Highway 61]

I have never seen record of these 'Leitz patents' that Zeiss was so afraid of. I'd like to know the source of this.

Does anyone have detail? I very much doubt that Leitz could have patented horizontal cloth focal plane shutters, 35mm film transport or even coupled rangefinders, surely these existed beforehand? Apart from the actual product's design, what else could they have patented?

My understanding is that Zeiss at the time was huge business by comparison with Leitz, if so, it wouldn't have taken much to gobble them up.

I agree. It was rather that Zeiss Ikon wanted to innovate with a metallic vertically travelling focal plane shutter, reaching 1/1000s (then 1/1250s), and immune from the sunburnt pinholes. They rather wanted to proof that they could build a better (to be read with the criteria of that era) camera than the simple Leica. Marketing a Leica-clone would have been the easy way to go. So, metallic blinds shutter, bayonet lens mount, fully removable back, combined RF/VF, superfast shutter, self-timer : the Contax II, marketed at the same time as the still very basic Leica IIIa, was Zeiss Ikon's victory. The Contax I can be seen as an half working (thus, half not working) prototype, too quickly marketed for beta-testers of that time.

As for the famous "patents", well, they rather were on Zeiss' side, for the lenses : it took a two more decades timelapse - and a world war run through it - for Leitz to achieve very good fast 35-50-90 lenses, because of the extraordinary Sonnar and Biogon patented formulas, which they couldn't copy, so they had to follow another path (double-Gauss etc). They had copied the Tessar formula with their 5cm f/3.5 Elmar, but it was all about it.

 

[Dralowid]

and if I remember correctly the Leitz Xenon/Summarit WAS a bought in patent design from Taylor, Taylor and Hobson?

 

[jcb4718]

I think Taylor Taylor and Hobson licensed the lens to Leitz. That would have been a normal business arrangement, unlike the relationship between Leitz and Zeiss which was highly competitive.
I think the Leitz patent covered the rangefinder-to-lens wheel. That's why Zeiss had to go to all the trouble of in-camera focussing for their 50mm lens. As Highway 61 says, they were also trying to develop a more innovative camera.