- ...Loading a Contax is far more difficult than a Barnack, as I found out to my horror half way through the walk when I realised that despite the fact the rewind knob had tension on it, it hadn't been spinning around as I "wound on" for the last two hours. Sure enough, I checked when I got home, and the damn film hadn't moved an inch. I don't care what anyone says; trying to snag a film into the most ridiculous take-up spool design ever, holding it and the spool in place while trying to keep the film flat, ensuring it actually engages with sprockets, and then repositioning the back without anything shifting is far more awkward than the Barnack slot loading setup. I have to stop and sit down with a Contax; the Barnack can be loaded while walking without an issue. I think I'd need two pairs of hands to keep walking while loading a Contax!
I am feeling a bit reluctant to have this somehow deceptive "I use the best, you use the baddest, and the reverse" discussion go ahead once and again, since some other fellow seems to think that it's now been ended and forever
😀, but, besides thinking that eternity may last for too long a lapsetime, especially towards its end
😛, I'd rather say I have no problem whatsoever with loading my old Contaxes, and that no horrid event happened to me yet. Both have their original, German made and properly marked, take-up spool (metal for the Contax II, plastic for the Contax IIa) : this might explain why it works flawlessly for me (most of the old Contaxes being now fitted with funky spools of unknown origin, if not Soviet). And : once you know how to load a MF camera, there is nothing difficult with the Contax, either. Quickly folding the film leader end, so that the take-up spool slot catches it securely, helps very much, too.
OTOH, when I was owning and using my Leica IIIf, I couldn't have it loaded without using a pair of scissors to custom cut the film leader so that it had the typical +/-10cm long triangular shape which is needed for any "bottom loader" LTM Leica (or Canon), AFAIK.
Thus, I suppose that you have more than two hands indeed, to be able to load a Barnack while walking, one for the camera, one (or two) to hold the camera bottom and the take-up spool (which must be pulled off the camera housing), and the third one for the scissors (you may even need a fourth (or fifth) hand to hold the film while using the scissors, if you're like normal people).
😉
Of course, any LTM Leica user will prepare his film stocks at home, custom cutting their leaders on the kitchen table so that the pair of scissors hasn't to be used in the field.
🙂
Joking aside, both those old systems have their pros and cons. What counts is the photographic result quality. The latter being provided by three things (in a random order) : what is photographed, the photographer's talent, and the lens.
Amen, Inshallah, Mazal Tov (in the alphabetic order).
😎
