Rangefinder cameras are something special: inconspicuous, light, small and quiet. And yet versatile.
There is a kind of gold standard in the rangefinder genre: the Leica M. However, it costs a lot of money. Even Barnack-Leicas are expensive today, and Nikons are anything but cheap. But for those who can't or don't want to afford all that, there is also a versatile rangefinder camera: the Zeiss Ikon Contax.
A camera which sails today on the international market far below the radar of brand-conscious collectors.
A camera that was and is customised to use special lenses: the legendary Zeiss Sonnars by Ludwig Bertele. They no longer rank in the category of ‘sharpness monsters’ 90 years after their first calculation. But depending on the light, they bring their very own character traits to the image...
Here I had the 135 mm Sonnar on the Contax IIa in the midday autumn sun in an old industrial yard in Krefeld, Germany - Fujichrome Velvia 50, open aperture, KR 1.5 filter.
A lens that in turn produces completely different images in different light - Fomapan R100, a statue in Halle an der Saale, Germany, morning light in spring, Rollei orange filter:
So there is a lot to discover in terms of ‘character’ even with a single Sonnar focal length...
Why a Contax??
As I wrote, there is a kind of gold standard for rangefinders: the Leica M. The fact that it will still have this status in 2025 illustrates what a great success the M3 was when it came onto the market 70 years ago. For today's photographers, however, the whole thing has a catch: as was recently listed in a neighbouring forum, you have to shell out around €2,000 for an M3 with a 1:2 standard lens that is ready for immediate use.
That makes my jaw drop, and it doesn't get any better when you have to fork out four-figure sums even for Nikon rangefinder cameras in a comparable configuration.
If you can afford it or want it, you don't really need to read any further.
However, if this is not the case for you (as it is for me), you may still want to enjoy the great advantages of rangefinder equipment: Rangefinder cameras are much easier to carry around than comparable SLR equipment. You can easily save a third of the weight.
And: They are much, much quieter!
Anyone who (like me) has ever had the crazy idea of trying to take portrait pictures with a motorised SLR in a lively Berlin café will know afterwards where the snag was: the noise the camera made; it would have been too loud even without a motor. On the next such occasion in Nantes, France, I took another one with me: the whisper-quiet rangefinder camera.
So what to do if the Leica, the Nikon or the noble Zeiss Ikon ZM are too expensive? The solution is: Zeiss Ikon Contax.
Mind you, this is not about hyping up a historic camera system to compete with the Leica M. It was not for nothing that it was the M-Leica that definitely sent the viewfinder Contax to the scrapheap in the mid-1950s. The M3 was the result of almost 20 years of further development, and its Leitz lenses probably finally began to outperform the Zeiss counterparts to the Contax.
Today, the viewfinder Contax is in a different, less noble league than the Leica M. Period.
However, if you compare the aforementioned second-hand market prices, the Contax no longer looks quite so bad: It costs only about a quarter of a comparably equipped Leica M.
So if you are travelling with an M3 and a normal lens, you can add the complete five-part Zeiss lens scale from 21 to 135 mm to your bag for the same money. Possibly even a second body if you want to shoot colour and black and white in parallel or take several film speeds/development modes with you.
So the price/performance ratio is not bad at all.
A shot of camera history: Which Contax should I choose?
The spring trade fair in Leipzig, Germany in 1936 is our starting point. It was there that Zeiss Ikon managed to turn its false start with the Contax (I) 1932 into an international success. If you like, you can read Hans-Jürgen Kuc's German book Auf den Spuren der Contax I (In the footsteps of the Contax I) to find out how many faults the immature Contax (I) had. That's why this original model is probably best suited to the display case of intrepid collectors today.
In 1935/36, the camera was thoroughly reworked and the Contax II was born: finally a real competitor for the Barnack Leica. A competitor which was ahead in some respects: Speed thanks to the world's first rangefinder, a scale of fast Zeiss Sonnars, a simpler film loading system, more precise distance measurement, advance mechanism, one-button setting of all time, and as an advertising gimmick also the somewhat faster shutter - after all, its metal construction made it insensitive to the sun's rays, which were so fond of burning holes in the Leica's blanket blinds.
Shortly afterwards, Zeiss Ikon followed up with the Contax III, which was one of the first cameras with a built-in light meter.
With such an 88 year old Contax II (or a III of the same age) you can still take excellent photographs today, but they leave something to be desired in the B-grade: the shutter speed adjustment is somewhat laborious, and above all: their shutter makes as much noise as that of a loud 35 mm SLR. At slow shutter speeds from 1/10 sec. it is even louder.
Therefore, if in doubt, the post-war IIa and IIIa models should be used. In terms of handling, they are not so different from their predecessors, but the time adjustment is much less effortful - and above all they have whisper-quiet shutters.
In this respect, we compared my Contax IIa with the well-functioning Leica M2 of an old friend: The quieter one was - the Contax.
In addition, the post-war models were somewhat smaller and lighter. They only seem to have a catch in one detail - and that brings us to the subject of ‘Contax peculiarities’.
Take care when carrying: Eveready case required
As the Californian Contax expert Henry Scherer explains on his very informative webside, the attachment of the strap eyelets in the post-war bodies was somewhat flimsy. Today we can only speculate as to whether a bit of post-war shortages may have played a part in this. Mr Scherer's criticism is, of course, controversial, but I didn't feel like making an attempt myself.
In any case, the way out is as simple as it is recommendable: only carry the camera in its eveready case. Typical of the time, leather straps are attached to the case. If you don't really trust these straps after 70 years, you can have them replaced in a leather workshop.
The cases themselves are sturdy and well made from solid materials (as was usual for cameras in this price range at the time) and can still withstand normal use today. The front flap cannot be removed (unlike on the Exakta, for example), but you have to live with that.
If you look very closely, you can see a difference between the cases for the Contax IIa and IIIa: the case for the IIIa is a few millimetres higher to accommodate the built-in light meter. With my IIIa, however, I have tried out that it also fits in the smaller case.
One small drawback is that the cameras really only fit into the closed post-war cases with the normal lens. And with the exception of the retractable lenses, the maximum that will fit is a filter, so the lens cap has to be left off. The case for the (pre-war) Contax II is somewhat more generously dimensioned: The II fits in there even with a 35 mm wide-angle lens attached.
Incidentally, the cases are not mutually compatible: the post-war body is shaped differently to the pre-war camera and is somewhat smaller.
À propos pre-war and post-war Contax: this unusual story cries out for a short...
Excursion: The Contax and politics
You can say what you like about the Leica M. In one discipline, the Contax puts it far in the shade: in historical content. Because the Contax reflects the fractures and abysses of the past century like few other cameras.
It came onto the market in the sad final phase of the Weimar Republic. ‘The camera of 1932’ was how the Contax was initially advertised.
With its ground-breaking 180 mm Olympia-Sonnar lens, it immortalised the 1936 Olympic Games of all things, which - Nazi lie show, which the Summer Games in particular were - would have been better off never having taken place. And later, in addition to Leicas and Rolleiflexes, the arsenal of Nazi war correspondents also included standardised Contax equipment with normal lens, 135 mm, clip-on viewfinders and spare films in the custom-made, robust wooden box.
But the legendary war photographer Robert Capa also had two Contax II bodies (probably with normal lenses) with him when he crawled ashore with the US troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day 1944. The pictures he took for LIFE magazine went around the world as ‘Magnificient Eleven’. And when Capa tragically stepped on a mine during the Indochinese War in 1954, a Contax IIa was later found next to a Nikon. Perhaps the one he was wearing in a photo taken shortly beforehand: in a eveready case and with a 35 mm Biogon.
The Contax itself was still being built at Zeiss Ikon in Dresden until around 1942 - primarily for export in exchange for foreign currency. The Contax production was also affected by the bombing raids in February 1945 - but it was completely dismantled after the end of the war. This took place in batches and via complicated detours via Jena - but in practice it seems that not a single screw or piece of paper was left behind in Dresden. On the ZeissIkonVEB portal, which is well worth reading, you can find a source from October 1945 that shows how engineers in Dresden were planning to reconstruct their own camera by the summer of 1946 - in some cases literally from memory. After all, everything was gone. The Dresden engineers never managed it.
Many of their colleagues in Jena had been taken by the Americans to their occupation zone shortly before the US troops left; and it was from there, from Stuttgart, that the aforementioned post-war Contax came: modernised versions of the Contax II and III, recognisable by the suffix ‘a’. The IIa and IIIa were produced until the early 1960s, after which Zeiss Ikon focussed primarily on SLR cameras. The Contarex was presumably intended to be the Contax's professional successor, but that is a (dismal) story of its own, full of bad management decisions.
The dismantled production of the pre-war Contax had been rebuilt in Kiev in the Soviet Union and, as is well known, the ‘Kiev’ was built there as a copy of the pre-war camera until 1987. Including replica system accessories and replica ‘Jupiter’ lenses. The Contax II/III was therefore built under two names for over half a century without any fundamental changes - certainly a record in the history of photographic technology. By then, the production of the viewfinder Contax had long been a thing of the past, even in the West...
But back to today's practice:
The bayonet mount and the issue of ‘speed’
It's a bit unusual for Barnack Leica photographers who screw in their lenses: the Contax mounts its lenses via a bayonet - a double bayonet to be precise. The inner section is intended for standard lenses. They therefore do not have a helical mount, which is located in the camera bayonet. The distance is adjusted either by turning the lens as usual or by using the small wheel that should be under the middle finger of the right hand.
In the 1930s, this was considered particularly suitable for snapshots: you set the distance with your right middle finger and release the shutter with your index finger.
Sometimes people on the web wonder why this wheel had a locking function in the infinity position (which is released as soon as you put your middle finger on the wheel and automatically press down the small lock next to it). However, this is necessary in order to be able to comfortably remove the standard lens after releasing the bayonet lock.
The external bayonet accepts all other lenses. A small lever automatically releases the locking mechanism of the distance wheel.
Before attaching one of these lenses, the inner bayonet should be set to infinity (this is another reason why the distance wheel on the housing is locked in this position). After attaching the lens, set the distance ring of the lens to infinity if you have not already done so. The coupling of the lens distance ring with the rangefinder mechanism then engages in the housing with a quiet but rich metallic ‘smack’.
The viewfinder system
Here we come to the decisive point in which the Contax cannot keep up with the Leica M. With the rangefinder, we are looking at a device that was state of the art in the mid-1930s and still quite usable in the early 1950s - but the Leica M ushered in a new era for professionals in 1954.
Like the screw-mount Leica, the Contax did not yet have variable light frames for different focal lengths. You have to learn to live with that - but there are good aids.
First and foremost, I'd recommend the so-called universal clip-on viewfinder. It is constructed according to a kind of turret principle and - this is the highlight - always offers a viewfinder image of the same size, similar to the SLR, regardless of whether you attach a wide-angle, normal or telephoto lens. In other words, a different principle to the mirrored illuminated frames of the Leica M.
Zeiss Ikon introduced the universal viewfinder back in the 1930s, and these old viewfinders are still very usable today. If you want to save money, you can also fall back on Soviet ‘KMZ’ replicas. In the hope that they are precisely centred.
Of course, this means that you have to allow for greater parallax and adjust the focal lengths manually. To measure and adjust the distance, you have to switch to the camera's own rangefinder, then back to the clip-on viewfinder. The parallax compensation for short distances has to be adjusted manually on the clip-on viewfinder. But all this was no better 75 years ago.
In addition, Zeiss Ikon offered other types of clip-on viewfinders; however, some of these seem to me to be less useful in practice. If you disregard the really special systems for special lenses: the 21 mm Biogon, which was a sensation in the 1950s, and the 180 mm Olympia Sonnar, which (as already mentioned) opened up new dimensions for sports photography around the 1936 Olympic Games.
Today, however, the Contax version of this Sonnar is more for collectors than for photographers: rare and expensive; the version most commonly produced at the time required a highly rudimentary mirror box. And in general, I ask myself whether you are not better off with an SLR at 180 mm than with a rangefinder camera. Especially as somewhat more recent M42 versions from Jena cost only a tiny fraction of an optically comparable old Contax Sonnar.
This viewfinder attachment for the rangefinder is also not very comfortable: it is definitely not suitable for spectacle wearers and also takes some getting used to for those without glasses, as the viewfinder image is relatively small. In practice, a small square mask is placed in front of the viewfinder window, which limits the image section for either 85 or 135 mm; the image is therefore even smaller than the image for the standard lens. In addition, the viewfinder contains a parallax compensation in the form of a very small viewing hole that can be adjusted manually. With a 1a-clean and bright Contax viewfinder, this attachment is perhaps halfway usable on a bright day - but even then I would always prefer the universal viewfinder.
I almost forgot the...
Flash synchronisation
Flashing with a 50s camera is not very comfortable. There is also the fact that the Contax only received the usual coaxial cable connection from around 1953.
Post-war bodies previously had a mechanical flash synchronisation, for which there were adapters to the electrical system, which can still be found on second hand markets today.
Pre-war bodies had no synchronisation at all ex works; however, today you often find such cameras with a coaxial cable connection: the synchronisation was retrofitted there. In the picture above you can see the connection on the front left of the body.
By the way, the shortest flash sync speed of the post-war shutter was 1/50 sec. Naturally, I did not find any information on the pre-war shutter in the old books.
The lenses: Basics
This is where it gets interesting, because you can enjoy one of the advantages of analogue photography in the 21st century: Taking pictures with character. See the colour image above. The Sonnars and Biogons etc. for the Contax were world class 75 years ago; compared to the computerised lenses of the digital present, they obviously reveal their weaknesses - but these can be exploited as ‘characteristics’.
Basically, we have two types of lenses here: uncoated lenses from the pre-war period and coated lenses, which are almost exclusively from the post-war period. Incidentally, my impression is that pre-war lenses mostly have a heavy brass mount, while post-war lenses mostly have a mount made of light metal. Predominantly - but obviously not universally.
As a second distinction, there are lenses manufactured by Carl Zeiss Jena (beginning in 1932) and others by Zeiss Oberkochen, West Germany. Oberkochen lenses exclusively from the post-war years. They can be recognised by the engravings ‘Zeiss-Opton’ (abbreviation for ‘Optische Werke Oberkochen’) or (from the early 50s) just ‘Carl Zeiss’ without ‘Jena’.
To shed some light on the coating mess: Coated lenses from Jena and Zeiss-Opton are labelled with a red ‘T’ (for ‘transparency’). The more recent engraving ‘Carl Zeiss’ (Oberkochen) already omitted the ‘T’ because coated lenses were the standard.
So anything labelled ‘Carl Zeiss Jena’ without the ‘T’ is uncoated. Of course, you can also see this in the colourless reflective lens surfaces.
This is a matter of taste: by conventional standards, uncoated lenses clearly lose out because they deliver less crisp contrasts, less saturated colours and are more susceptible to stray light.
Conversely, however, the older lenses with their weaknesses can add remarkable effects to an image in certain lighting situations.
I noticed this when I was out and about in Nantes, France, in the evening with the uncoated normal lens (Fomapan R100 slide film):
Apart from the blur at 1/2 second, which was my fault, the Sonnar with its overexposure put the icing on the cake for me. There were strange contrast gradations around the church window in the background, which I can't really explain, but which we will come across again in a moment.
Why did I add the speed of 1:2 to the 50? Because this was a big issue in the Contax era...
The most common lenses in detail
Standard lenses
The Contax first became known for its standard lenses, and we'll start with those: In addition to two Tessars 1:3.5 and 1:2.8, there are two Sonnars - which are certainly the more interesting ones today, as Tessars from that time are now available for Exakta, M42 and many other mounts like sand on the sea. And while you could save a lot of money with a Tessar back then, Tessars for the Contax are not that much cheaper today than the 1:2 Sonnar.
This 1:2-Sonnar 50 mm seems to be something like the upscale standard equipment of many Contaxes on the market today. This is how I got hold of the uncoated 1937 version and the coated version, which is about ten years younger. Both are unproblematic and pleasant to use in practice - with the aforementioned specifics depending on whether they are coated or uncoated.
You can sometimes read that Oberkochen lenses are of better quality than the somewhat older coated lenses from Jena. In some cases there are different calculations, so this could be the case. However, I have not yet had the opportunity to compare them.
The 50 mm Sonnar 1:1.5, which was first developed in 1931 and made a huge impression with the introduction of the Contax (I) in 1932, has become a legend. It was already redesigned in the 1930s and possibly again later. And in this millennium, Zeiss has once again presented a redesign of this classic with a Leica M bayonet. In this test report and in that other one specifics are described very nicely - here you can find a direct comparison to the ‘more modern’ Planar 1:2/50 ZM.
Whereby the ‘original’ old optics naturally have a whole lot more character. At least for those who like it that way. You can read about the differences between them and the ‘new edition’ here, including the popular topic of ‘bokeh’.
You should note that with the 1:1.5 ‘original’ (as I learnt from a professional photographer with experience of old glass) there is a slight focus shift, at least at close range around 1 m, depending on the aperture setting. In this test report of the new C-Sonnar you can find sample photos. Here it is explained with technical details. Unfortunately, I don't know what practical relevance this has with the old originals and how you can deal with it in practice, as I never had the lens at my disposal.
However, it seems to be characteristic of the uncoated version in particular that it intensifies the peculiarities mentioned above for the 1:2 version. Especially as far as overexposure is concerned.
The most common telephoto lens
For many people, the second bread-and-butter lens after the 50mm was a 135mm. Here we are dealing with the well-known Sonnar 1:4. Like the 50mm 1:2 before and the 35mm Biogon afterwards, it has a 40.5 mm filter thread.
Last summer I was lucky enough to get hold of an uncoated Jena lens from 1938 in addition to my coated Zeiss Opton (ca. 1952). I have not yet been able to develop analogue photographs with it; the differences in stray light and contrast are probably similar to those of the standard lens above.
On film, the coated 135 Sonnar already gave me the unusual effect of the above colour photo of the industrial yard. I wonder whether this effect might be a Sonnar characteristic. Because in an article about the recalculated 50 mm ZM Sonnar, it also appears on a digital image, albeit in a much weaker form: especially on the window frames and panes slightly to the left of the centre of the image.
In addition to the standard lenses, the 135 Sonnar seems to have been sold the most during the Contax heyday. In any case, it can be found relatively frequently and consequently at good prices on the second-hand market today.
The portrait telephoto par excellence
Let's go down a step in the focal length scale and end up with one of the Zeiss classics for the Contax: When this lens came onto the market in the 1930s, it hit the market like a bomb with its image quality due to its speed. The Sonnar 1:2 / 85 mm.
As is well known, there was no coating at the time of the first calculation of this lens. Zeiss might have been able to produce a planar lens, but because of the many glass/air surfaces (to exaggerate) not much more would have been seen apart from stray light. Ludwig Berteles Sonnar with its only three elements and correspondingly fewer glass/air surfaces was the solution.
My specimen is a Jena piece from around 1946/47, with a distance scale in feet. Perhaps Jena was thinking of buyers in the western hemisphere with a strong currency (according to Henry Scherer, many Contaxes went to wealthy buyers in the US).
The 85 mm Sonnar is easy to use. In practice, I set the distance in the rangefinder (as I did with the 135) and then switch to the attached universal viewfinder. However, unlike the 50, 135 and the 35, which is still to come, the 85 has a 49 mm filter thread.
As an example image, let's start with a parallel shot of the aforementioned Krefeld industrial estate on Fomapan R100, aperture 2. Here, too, there seems to me to be the peculiar gradation on the struts of the window frames:
Another domain of the old Sonnar is portraits - or pictures of church interiors (aperture 2, 1/15 sec, Fomapan R100, freehand shot, Contax IIIa):
I recently came across this unconventional and unusual result of this Sonnar with its typical imperfections on a digital sensor in a neighbouring forum. As the photographer assured me on enquiry, it is the coated version - similar year of manufacture to mine.
A prime example (in my opinion) of the fact that these old optics can show their considerable strengths in very specific lighting conditions and subjects. This is a different discipline than that of sharpness and brilliance, in which they could shine decades ago - it is rather the discipline of ‘painterly effect’.
I'll leave out a few other telephoto lenses for now, as I don't have them: the Triotar 1:4 / 85 mm, once a lens for those on a budget, is no longer so much cheaper than the Sonnar. For the 180 mm ‘Olympia’ Sonnar, which I have in two SLR versions from Jena and Oberkochen, see above; and the telephoto Tessar 1:6.3 / 180 mm didn't really interest me with the viewfinder Contax either. Exotics like the 300 mm Sonnar certainly did not.
Wide-angle lenses
Since I don't have the legendary 21 mm Biogon, the pre-war Tessar 1:8 / 28 mm, the Biometar 1:2.8 / 35 mm or the Planar 1:3.5 / 35 mm, I'll limit myself to a tried and tested lens from the early 50s: the Biogon 1:2.8 / 35 mm.
As a user of a post-war Contax, you have to be careful here. There are two versions of the 35 mm: the pre-war model from Jena is somewhat bulkier and therefore only fits into the somewhat larger ‘interior’ of the pre-war Contax. This certainly also applies to the Soviet ‘Jupiter’ replicas of the Biogon, as they are probably all based on the pre-war version.
The post-war camera has modified shutter blades. Therefore, only the somewhat smaller post-war Biogon, which was calculated at the beginning of the 1950s, fits on it. These lenses can be recognised by the engraving ‘Zeiss Opton’ or ‘Carl Zeiss’ - without ‘Jena’.
Use: unproblematic. For me, a typical 35 mm wide-angle lens. Its imaging qualities must have been very good by the standards of the early 1950s.
(Dresden, Germany, Zwinger, Biogon with open aperture, yellow-green filter, Fomapan R100.)
70 years after its last professional use: the Contax in practice today
It has already been mentioned: In terms of handling, the Contax 1954 and 2024 are no competition for the Leica M, especially due to their viewfinder. However, the old Zeiss-Ikon system scores today with its favourable second-hand price. Ultimately, I'd say, a Leica photographer can only dream of so much rangefinder system for so little money.
Of course, the Barnack Leica is smaller than the Contax, even if the Contax IIa with its retractable Sonnar is only one and a half times as wide, just as high and only slightly less flat than the Rollei 35 pocket camera. The IIIa with its light meter is easily as wide and high as the small Pentax MX, only flatter. And I personally always liked the elegantly rounded Leica body better than the typical Zeiss-Ikon "brick".
But we're talking about a photographic tool here, and as such the Contax should ultimately have outperformed the screw-mount Leica (not the Leica M, of course).
Especially as Zeiss Ikon apparently discovered in studies at the beginning of the 1930s that the ‘brick’ shape facilitated freehand shots at long exposure times. I have not yet been able to compare the Contax with the Barnack Leica, but in the 1/10 or 1/5 second range, the 85 Sonnar also worked relatively well.
Film loading is more modern than with the Barnack Leica, but you have to be a bit more careful than with a typical SLR: the original plastic film take-up spool may be worn out at its nose for engaging the film perforation after 70 years. In my experience, it works well if you guide the film, as shown here, with tension over the toothed drum (whose teeth should of course engage correctly in the perforation) to the take-up reel and then attach the back plate. If you work sloppily, the end of the film may slip off the take-up reel. You will notice this the first time you transport the film - then you have to do it all over again.
Ihagee solved this problem much better with the Exakta with its clamping system under a metal tab (and a full metal spool) than Zeiss Ikon did with the Contax.
In typical zeiss-ikon fashion, the rear panel itself is fitted from the ‘bottom back’, pushed up a little and then locked in place with the two twist locks on the underside.
In connection with this locking mechanism, there was also a contax system with special film cartridges that you can still get used today and with which you can wind from one cartridge to the other. However, I never explored this further.
The actual operation is then self-explanatory: anyone who has ever held any camera from the 1950s will find their way around immediately.
Some people have criticised the fact that you always have to be careful not to cover the right-hand rangefinder window with your hand. Heinrich Freytag described the so-called ‘Contax-Haltung’ for the right hand in his 1938 book Contax-Praxis: Grip the camera normally, then place the index finger on the shutter release, the middle finger on the range wheel, ring finger slightly downwards if necessary so that the window has a clear view. Sounds more complicated than it is. ‘Practise hard!’ Freytag recommended though.
Changing lenses reminds me a little of the Canon FD bayonet, especially as the release mechanism is in a similar position on the lenses with an external bayonet. So changing lenses is just as tricky as with the FD, and it's not as quick and easy with one hand as with the Exakta, the Leicaflex or the Contax/Yashica bayonet. The 85 mm Sonnar can be easily removed with one hand (in order to attach a normal lens with the other hand, for example). This is somewhat more difficult with the 135 mm - depending on how tightly it sits in the bayonet; with the 35 mm Biogon it is almost impossible. So you need two hands. Even when removing the normal lens, you need at least one finger of the second hand to push down the spring-loaded latch of the bayonet.
The only consolation is that everything here is made of solid metal - no plastic release buttons like on the Leicaflex SL.
When storing the camera in a photo bag, for example, the lenses that are not needed should be covered: The rear lens of the Biogon in particular is highly scratch-prone; and on the whole, the coatings (and sometimes also the glass types) are not as hard as their modern counterparts.
As far as the lenses themselves are concerned and the question ‘coated or uncoated’, after the latest test films I tend to take uncoated lenses for situations with bright sun or strong contrasts in the dark, see the picture from Nantes above. Whenever things get a little more poetic.
Coated lenses would then also be recommended for the poet for light with weak contrasts, diffuse light, outdoor shots in cloudy skies, etc. But of course also for critical side or back light falling into the lens. For shots that are not particularly ‘poetic’ anyway.
Curiously, the shutter noise also changes at short shutter speeds: While at 1/1250 sec. it typically clicks quietly with a certain ‘sharpness’, this changes more and more towards 1/25 sec. to a gentle click, so it tends to become even quieter. With the escapement, which works from 1/10 sec, the designers have really gone the extra mile: whisper quiet.
Mind you, we are talking here about the post-war Contax. The shutters of the pre-war cameras bang like the titanium shutters of the Contax RTS II, and their escapements make a similar noise to the movement of the Exakta Varex VX.
The Contax IIIa's light meter uses a selenium cell, which is typical of the time. It still works on my camera and even shows mostly plausible values; but I only want to rely on it if I really don't have anyone else to hand.
Basically, it has its intended peculiarities: The protective cap always very strongly shields the light ‘from above’, i.e. from the sky. As a result, the measured values are already high. Difficult for slide photographers (like me), no problem for negative photographers.
The measuring mechanism itself - as you can read in Otto Croy's ‘Contax book’ - is set up for ‘fine-grain film’. This means that the time is also measured very richly in this respect, on average specifically one f-stop too rich.
However, you have to bear in mind that the DIN system was changed around 1960: previous 18-DIN film was now reclassified as 21-DIN. This makes up for the previous effect described by Croy, and the Beli of the Contax IIIa can be set quite normally - as is well known, to the second number of the ISO value. In the case of an Ektachrome E100, this is 21 DIN (an ASA scale is only engraved on export models).
The light meter is operated by turning the outer chrome ring to set the pointer in the metering window to the diamond visible there. The time/aperture combination can then be read off the scales on the left.
The light meter is not coupled. The design basis from the 1930s - when the built-in light meter was still revolutionary - no longer allowed for this.
As an exclusive SLR user for decades, I initially had difficulties getting used to the basic handling of the viewfinder and lenses. In Contax-specific terms, you may have to set the appropriate telephoto or wide-angle focal length on the universal viewfinder. After a few films, however, I had the necessary practice and it soon became routine. I often set a telephoto focal length on the universal viewfinder and then switch to the built-in rangefinder when quickly switching to the normal lens, without readjusting the universal viewfinder.
The usual TTL metering is of course also missing, but as a result I have started to discover light metering with the Gossen Lunasix F and am taking my first steps with the zone system.
On the subject of robustness, I can contribute the experience that my freshly overhauled Contax IIa once fell unchecked from chest height onto a meadow during a photo shoot with a standard lens attached. It still worked afterwards and still works today. Even with known critical shutter speeds (see below).
One more tip: As you can read in well-informed texts, you should not leave a Contax in a cocked state in the cupboard for ages. If it is to be stored for a long time, then with the shutter released.
According to Henry Scherer, if you want to be really careful, you should pick up unused bodies every fortnight and release all shutter speeds. This will keep the shutter lubricated and running smoothly. With my cameras loaded with colour film, however, it usually takes much longer than two weeks before I release them again. So far without any particular problems.
Manufacture camera: experiences when buying
Firstly, a word about the ‘Kiev’, the Soviet pre-war Contax copy. Curiously, compared to the Dresden original, it is traded at comparatively high prices, just like its ‘Jupiter’ lenses. One of the reasons for this may be that Kiev and Jupiter lenses are probably better known internationally than the German original due to their sheer number. This seems to stimulate demand.
This is probably helped by the fact that the Soviet Jupiter lenses are said to have characteristics which, when viewed in the light of day, can be traced back to the Sonnars and Biogons, of which they are copies. Of course, the optical shortcomings of the Jupiters can also be categorised as ‘characteristics’, as I did above with the Zeiss lenses. Recently, however, Ukrainian offers of film-tested Kiev-2s with Jupiter counterparts for 1:2/50 mm Sonnars appeared, which were priced even higher than comparable Contax IIs - I would rather keep my hands off them.
According to Henry Scherer, the main problem with this camera and its Jupiter lenses is the variance in quality right from the factory. According to Mr Scherer, you can be lucky and get very good specimens, but you can also get something lousy. Example shutters: ‘Kiev shutters range in quality from a “10” (equivalent to German quality), to a (1) (real trash).’ Whether you want to do something like this today for a comparatively high price is certainly an individual decision.
All in all, the price/performance ratio should be better even with a pre-war Contax than with a Kiev. For post-war models anyway. Even coated Zeiss-Jena lenses, which were among the best ones in the world until the late 1940s, were probably better on average than their Soviet copies from the 1950s.
After all, neither the pre-war nor the post-war Contax lenses could seriously be said to have had any variation in quality ex works. And certainly even less so with Zeiss Jena or Oberkochen lenses.
Obviously, the Contax production in Dresden in the 1930s and Stuttgart in the 1950s should not be thought of as mass production, but rather as a manufactory in which specialists with a great deal of experience (which probably did not exist in this mass in Kiev either) assembled each individual camera.
With a used Contax today, you are therefore mainly confronted with typical age-related problems (which are likely to be added on top with Kievs).
Like any high-quality camera from the mechanical era, I would have a Contax professionally CLA'd and any defects repaired as soon as possible after purchase.
As usual with 50s cameras, the body should be thoroughly tested before purchase. There is no need to worry about light seals: the camera has none because it doesn't need them.
As is well known, the Contax shutter is a notoriously complex affair: Zeiss Ikon had to design the shutter without infringing Leitz patent rights - the result was an independent technology with its own pitfalls; no wonder that Nikon preferred to orientate itself on the Leica shutter in the 50s. So test all speeds with the back and lens removed - even the short ones. Often the shutter does not open correctly at 1/1250 sec. with every shutter release. This has to do - I refer again to Henry Scherer - with the spring control of the fast speeds.
If there are any problems here, a repairman with knowledge of the subject will have to be called in - according to Mr Scherer, hair-trigger manipulation of the spring won't help much. For amateur mechanicians, a viewfinder-Contax as a whole is probably an unsuitable test object: it seems to be incomparably more complicated than a Leica or Nikon.
Since the shutter is extremely difficult to maintain, I would only buy a body from the outset in which the shutter works. With the others you can directly add three-digit repair costs. Well, you can do without the 1/1250 sec. But the other speeds should work.
Defects can be repaired, but workshops that can do this are much rarer than, for example, Leica workshops. Fortunately, there are still a few. However, you should ask them beforehand - and never confuse them with workshops that specialise in Contax/Yashica SLRs or even just the Dresden mirror Contax. They use completely different technology.
I had the necessary luck with my three bodies, although I bought them without prior inspection only on the basis of the item description and via mail order: a Contax IIa and a II exposed their test films perfectly, but were nevertheless given a CLA to be on the safe side, which cost €200 each (although the II showed the aforementioned errors after a year with the short times from 1/250 sec. - it is currently still in the workshop). A IIIa, which I've had for almost two years, is still waiting for its CLA (because I'm still waiting for the II in question to be finished), but it also worked straight away - only recently did I notice individual errors at 1/1250 and at B. But for now I can live with that. On a whole series of films from various, even strenuous journeys with some shaking, the camera has so far shown no failures.
There's not much to say about the Zeiss lenses: you should pay attention to the same things as with any other older lens.
Plus:
* small, light
* post-war shutters very quiet
* flexible
* character of the classic coated Zeiss post-war Sonnars
* additional attractive special effects in certain light thanks to uncoated pre-war Sonnars
* Very good price/performance ratio today, especially with post-war cameras
Minus:
* rangefinder was still the same as in 1936
* pre-war shutters loud
* You usually need two hands to remove the lenses (exception: 85 mm Sonnar).
* Care is advised when loading film.
* Clarify repair and maintenance options for future situations - find a competent workshop if possible.
There is a kind of gold standard in the rangefinder genre: the Leica M. However, it costs a lot of money. Even Barnack-Leicas are expensive today, and Nikons are anything but cheap. But for those who can't or don't want to afford all that, there is also a versatile rangefinder camera: the Zeiss Ikon Contax.
A camera which sails today on the international market far below the radar of brand-conscious collectors.
A camera that was and is customised to use special lenses: the legendary Zeiss Sonnars by Ludwig Bertele. They no longer rank in the category of ‘sharpness monsters’ 90 years after their first calculation. But depending on the light, they bring their very own character traits to the image...
Here I had the 135 mm Sonnar on the Contax IIa in the midday autumn sun in an old industrial yard in Krefeld, Germany - Fujichrome Velvia 50, open aperture, KR 1.5 filter.
A lens that in turn produces completely different images in different light - Fomapan R100, a statue in Halle an der Saale, Germany, morning light in spring, Rollei orange filter:
So there is a lot to discover in terms of ‘character’ even with a single Sonnar focal length...
Why a Contax??
As I wrote, there is a kind of gold standard for rangefinders: the Leica M. The fact that it will still have this status in 2025 illustrates what a great success the M3 was when it came onto the market 70 years ago. For today's photographers, however, the whole thing has a catch: as was recently listed in a neighbouring forum, you have to shell out around €2,000 for an M3 with a 1:2 standard lens that is ready for immediate use.
That makes my jaw drop, and it doesn't get any better when you have to fork out four-figure sums even for Nikon rangefinder cameras in a comparable configuration.
If you can afford it or want it, you don't really need to read any further.
However, if this is not the case for you (as it is for me), you may still want to enjoy the great advantages of rangefinder equipment: Rangefinder cameras are much easier to carry around than comparable SLR equipment. You can easily save a third of the weight.
And: They are much, much quieter!
Anyone who (like me) has ever had the crazy idea of trying to take portrait pictures with a motorised SLR in a lively Berlin café will know afterwards where the snag was: the noise the camera made; it would have been too loud even without a motor. On the next such occasion in Nantes, France, I took another one with me: the whisper-quiet rangefinder camera.
So what to do if the Leica, the Nikon or the noble Zeiss Ikon ZM are too expensive? The solution is: Zeiss Ikon Contax.
Mind you, this is not about hyping up a historic camera system to compete with the Leica M. It was not for nothing that it was the M-Leica that definitely sent the viewfinder Contax to the scrapheap in the mid-1950s. The M3 was the result of almost 20 years of further development, and its Leitz lenses probably finally began to outperform the Zeiss counterparts to the Contax.
Today, the viewfinder Contax is in a different, less noble league than the Leica M. Period.
However, if you compare the aforementioned second-hand market prices, the Contax no longer looks quite so bad: It costs only about a quarter of a comparably equipped Leica M.
So if you are travelling with an M3 and a normal lens, you can add the complete five-part Zeiss lens scale from 21 to 135 mm to your bag for the same money. Possibly even a second body if you want to shoot colour and black and white in parallel or take several film speeds/development modes with you.
So the price/performance ratio is not bad at all.
A shot of camera history: Which Contax should I choose?
The spring trade fair in Leipzig, Germany in 1936 is our starting point. It was there that Zeiss Ikon managed to turn its false start with the Contax (I) 1932 into an international success. If you like, you can read Hans-Jürgen Kuc's German book Auf den Spuren der Contax I (In the footsteps of the Contax I) to find out how many faults the immature Contax (I) had. That's why this original model is probably best suited to the display case of intrepid collectors today.
In 1935/36, the camera was thoroughly reworked and the Contax II was born: finally a real competitor for the Barnack Leica. A competitor which was ahead in some respects: Speed thanks to the world's first rangefinder, a scale of fast Zeiss Sonnars, a simpler film loading system, more precise distance measurement, advance mechanism, one-button setting of all time, and as an advertising gimmick also the somewhat faster shutter - after all, its metal construction made it insensitive to the sun's rays, which were so fond of burning holes in the Leica's blanket blinds.
Shortly afterwards, Zeiss Ikon followed up with the Contax III, which was one of the first cameras with a built-in light meter.
With such an 88 year old Contax II (or a III of the same age) you can still take excellent photographs today, but they leave something to be desired in the B-grade: the shutter speed adjustment is somewhat laborious, and above all: their shutter makes as much noise as that of a loud 35 mm SLR. At slow shutter speeds from 1/10 sec. it is even louder.
Therefore, if in doubt, the post-war IIa and IIIa models should be used. In terms of handling, they are not so different from their predecessors, but the time adjustment is much less effortful - and above all they have whisper-quiet shutters.
In this respect, we compared my Contax IIa with the well-functioning Leica M2 of an old friend: The quieter one was - the Contax.
In addition, the post-war models were somewhat smaller and lighter. They only seem to have a catch in one detail - and that brings us to the subject of ‘Contax peculiarities’.
Take care when carrying: Eveready case required
As the Californian Contax expert Henry Scherer explains on his very informative webside, the attachment of the strap eyelets in the post-war bodies was somewhat flimsy. Today we can only speculate as to whether a bit of post-war shortages may have played a part in this. Mr Scherer's criticism is, of course, controversial, but I didn't feel like making an attempt myself.
In any case, the way out is as simple as it is recommendable: only carry the camera in its eveready case. Typical of the time, leather straps are attached to the case. If you don't really trust these straps after 70 years, you can have them replaced in a leather workshop.
The cases themselves are sturdy and well made from solid materials (as was usual for cameras in this price range at the time) and can still withstand normal use today. The front flap cannot be removed (unlike on the Exakta, for example), but you have to live with that.
If you look very closely, you can see a difference between the cases for the Contax IIa and IIIa: the case for the IIIa is a few millimetres higher to accommodate the built-in light meter. With my IIIa, however, I have tried out that it also fits in the smaller case.
One small drawback is that the cameras really only fit into the closed post-war cases with the normal lens. And with the exception of the retractable lenses, the maximum that will fit is a filter, so the lens cap has to be left off. The case for the (pre-war) Contax II is somewhat more generously dimensioned: The II fits in there even with a 35 mm wide-angle lens attached.
Incidentally, the cases are not mutually compatible: the post-war body is shaped differently to the pre-war camera and is somewhat smaller.
À propos pre-war and post-war Contax: this unusual story cries out for a short...
Excursion: The Contax and politics
You can say what you like about the Leica M. In one discipline, the Contax puts it far in the shade: in historical content. Because the Contax reflects the fractures and abysses of the past century like few other cameras.
It came onto the market in the sad final phase of the Weimar Republic. ‘The camera of 1932’ was how the Contax was initially advertised.
With its ground-breaking 180 mm Olympia-Sonnar lens, it immortalised the 1936 Olympic Games of all things, which - Nazi lie show, which the Summer Games in particular were - would have been better off never having taken place. And later, in addition to Leicas and Rolleiflexes, the arsenal of Nazi war correspondents also included standardised Contax equipment with normal lens, 135 mm, clip-on viewfinders and spare films in the custom-made, robust wooden box.
But the legendary war photographer Robert Capa also had two Contax II bodies (probably with normal lenses) with him when he crawled ashore with the US troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day 1944. The pictures he took for LIFE magazine went around the world as ‘Magnificient Eleven’. And when Capa tragically stepped on a mine during the Indochinese War in 1954, a Contax IIa was later found next to a Nikon. Perhaps the one he was wearing in a photo taken shortly beforehand: in a eveready case and with a 35 mm Biogon.
The Contax itself was still being built at Zeiss Ikon in Dresden until around 1942 - primarily for export in exchange for foreign currency. The Contax production was also affected by the bombing raids in February 1945 - but it was completely dismantled after the end of the war. This took place in batches and via complicated detours via Jena - but in practice it seems that not a single screw or piece of paper was left behind in Dresden. On the ZeissIkonVEB portal, which is well worth reading, you can find a source from October 1945 that shows how engineers in Dresden were planning to reconstruct their own camera by the summer of 1946 - in some cases literally from memory. After all, everything was gone. The Dresden engineers never managed it.
Many of their colleagues in Jena had been taken by the Americans to their occupation zone shortly before the US troops left; and it was from there, from Stuttgart, that the aforementioned post-war Contax came: modernised versions of the Contax II and III, recognisable by the suffix ‘a’. The IIa and IIIa were produced until the early 1960s, after which Zeiss Ikon focussed primarily on SLR cameras. The Contarex was presumably intended to be the Contax's professional successor, but that is a (dismal) story of its own, full of bad management decisions.
The dismantled production of the pre-war Contax had been rebuilt in Kiev in the Soviet Union and, as is well known, the ‘Kiev’ was built there as a copy of the pre-war camera until 1987. Including replica system accessories and replica ‘Jupiter’ lenses. The Contax II/III was therefore built under two names for over half a century without any fundamental changes - certainly a record in the history of photographic technology. By then, the production of the viewfinder Contax had long been a thing of the past, even in the West...
But back to today's practice:
The bayonet mount and the issue of ‘speed’
It's a bit unusual for Barnack Leica photographers who screw in their lenses: the Contax mounts its lenses via a bayonet - a double bayonet to be precise. The inner section is intended for standard lenses. They therefore do not have a helical mount, which is located in the camera bayonet. The distance is adjusted either by turning the lens as usual or by using the small wheel that should be under the middle finger of the right hand.
In the 1930s, this was considered particularly suitable for snapshots: you set the distance with your right middle finger and release the shutter with your index finger.
Sometimes people on the web wonder why this wheel had a locking function in the infinity position (which is released as soon as you put your middle finger on the wheel and automatically press down the small lock next to it). However, this is necessary in order to be able to comfortably remove the standard lens after releasing the bayonet lock.
The external bayonet accepts all other lenses. A small lever automatically releases the locking mechanism of the distance wheel.
Before attaching one of these lenses, the inner bayonet should be set to infinity (this is another reason why the distance wheel on the housing is locked in this position). After attaching the lens, set the distance ring of the lens to infinity if you have not already done so. The coupling of the lens distance ring with the rangefinder mechanism then engages in the housing with a quiet but rich metallic ‘smack’.
The viewfinder system
Here we come to the decisive point in which the Contax cannot keep up with the Leica M. With the rangefinder, we are looking at a device that was state of the art in the mid-1930s and still quite usable in the early 1950s - but the Leica M ushered in a new era for professionals in 1954.
Like the screw-mount Leica, the Contax did not yet have variable light frames for different focal lengths. You have to learn to live with that - but there are good aids.
First and foremost, I'd recommend the so-called universal clip-on viewfinder. It is constructed according to a kind of turret principle and - this is the highlight - always offers a viewfinder image of the same size, similar to the SLR, regardless of whether you attach a wide-angle, normal or telephoto lens. In other words, a different principle to the mirrored illuminated frames of the Leica M.
Zeiss Ikon introduced the universal viewfinder back in the 1930s, and these old viewfinders are still very usable today. If you want to save money, you can also fall back on Soviet ‘KMZ’ replicas. In the hope that they are precisely centred.
Of course, this means that you have to allow for greater parallax and adjust the focal lengths manually. To measure and adjust the distance, you have to switch to the camera's own rangefinder, then back to the clip-on viewfinder. The parallax compensation for short distances has to be adjusted manually on the clip-on viewfinder. But all this was no better 75 years ago.
In addition, Zeiss Ikon offered other types of clip-on viewfinders; however, some of these seem to me to be less useful in practice. If you disregard the really special systems for special lenses: the 21 mm Biogon, which was a sensation in the 1950s, and the 180 mm Olympia Sonnar, which (as already mentioned) opened up new dimensions for sports photography around the 1936 Olympic Games.
Today, however, the Contax version of this Sonnar is more for collectors than for photographers: rare and expensive; the version most commonly produced at the time required a highly rudimentary mirror box. And in general, I ask myself whether you are not better off with an SLR at 180 mm than with a rangefinder camera. Especially as somewhat more recent M42 versions from Jena cost only a tiny fraction of an optically comparable old Contax Sonnar.
This viewfinder attachment for the rangefinder is also not very comfortable: it is definitely not suitable for spectacle wearers and also takes some getting used to for those without glasses, as the viewfinder image is relatively small. In practice, a small square mask is placed in front of the viewfinder window, which limits the image section for either 85 or 135 mm; the image is therefore even smaller than the image for the standard lens. In addition, the viewfinder contains a parallax compensation in the form of a very small viewing hole that can be adjusted manually. With a 1a-clean and bright Contax viewfinder, this attachment is perhaps halfway usable on a bright day - but even then I would always prefer the universal viewfinder.
I almost forgot the...
Flash synchronisation
Flashing with a 50s camera is not very comfortable. There is also the fact that the Contax only received the usual coaxial cable connection from around 1953.
Post-war bodies previously had a mechanical flash synchronisation, for which there were adapters to the electrical system, which can still be found on second hand markets today.
Pre-war bodies had no synchronisation at all ex works; however, today you often find such cameras with a coaxial cable connection: the synchronisation was retrofitted there. In the picture above you can see the connection on the front left of the body.
By the way, the shortest flash sync speed of the post-war shutter was 1/50 sec. Naturally, I did not find any information on the pre-war shutter in the old books.
The lenses: Basics
This is where it gets interesting, because you can enjoy one of the advantages of analogue photography in the 21st century: Taking pictures with character. See the colour image above. The Sonnars and Biogons etc. for the Contax were world class 75 years ago; compared to the computerised lenses of the digital present, they obviously reveal their weaknesses - but these can be exploited as ‘characteristics’.
Basically, we have two types of lenses here: uncoated lenses from the pre-war period and coated lenses, which are almost exclusively from the post-war period. Incidentally, my impression is that pre-war lenses mostly have a heavy brass mount, while post-war lenses mostly have a mount made of light metal. Predominantly - but obviously not universally.
As a second distinction, there are lenses manufactured by Carl Zeiss Jena (beginning in 1932) and others by Zeiss Oberkochen, West Germany. Oberkochen lenses exclusively from the post-war years. They can be recognised by the engravings ‘Zeiss-Opton’ (abbreviation for ‘Optische Werke Oberkochen’) or (from the early 50s) just ‘Carl Zeiss’ without ‘Jena’.
To shed some light on the coating mess: Coated lenses from Jena and Zeiss-Opton are labelled with a red ‘T’ (for ‘transparency’). The more recent engraving ‘Carl Zeiss’ (Oberkochen) already omitted the ‘T’ because coated lenses were the standard.
So anything labelled ‘Carl Zeiss Jena’ without the ‘T’ is uncoated. Of course, you can also see this in the colourless reflective lens surfaces.
This is a matter of taste: by conventional standards, uncoated lenses clearly lose out because they deliver less crisp contrasts, less saturated colours and are more susceptible to stray light.
Conversely, however, the older lenses with their weaknesses can add remarkable effects to an image in certain lighting situations.
I noticed this when I was out and about in Nantes, France, in the evening with the uncoated normal lens (Fomapan R100 slide film):
Apart from the blur at 1/2 second, which was my fault, the Sonnar with its overexposure put the icing on the cake for me. There were strange contrast gradations around the church window in the background, which I can't really explain, but which we will come across again in a moment.
Why did I add the speed of 1:2 to the 50? Because this was a big issue in the Contax era...
The most common lenses in detail
Standard lenses
The Contax first became known for its standard lenses, and we'll start with those: In addition to two Tessars 1:3.5 and 1:2.8, there are two Sonnars - which are certainly the more interesting ones today, as Tessars from that time are now available for Exakta, M42 and many other mounts like sand on the sea. And while you could save a lot of money with a Tessar back then, Tessars for the Contax are not that much cheaper today than the 1:2 Sonnar.
This 1:2-Sonnar 50 mm seems to be something like the upscale standard equipment of many Contaxes on the market today. This is how I got hold of the uncoated 1937 version and the coated version, which is about ten years younger. Both are unproblematic and pleasant to use in practice - with the aforementioned specifics depending on whether they are coated or uncoated.
You can sometimes read that Oberkochen lenses are of better quality than the somewhat older coated lenses from Jena. In some cases there are different calculations, so this could be the case. However, I have not yet had the opportunity to compare them.
The 50 mm Sonnar 1:1.5, which was first developed in 1931 and made a huge impression with the introduction of the Contax (I) in 1932, has become a legend. It was already redesigned in the 1930s and possibly again later. And in this millennium, Zeiss has once again presented a redesign of this classic with a Leica M bayonet. In this test report and in that other one specifics are described very nicely - here you can find a direct comparison to the ‘more modern’ Planar 1:2/50 ZM.
Whereby the ‘original’ old optics naturally have a whole lot more character. At least for those who like it that way. You can read about the differences between them and the ‘new edition’ here, including the popular topic of ‘bokeh’.
You should note that with the 1:1.5 ‘original’ (as I learnt from a professional photographer with experience of old glass) there is a slight focus shift, at least at close range around 1 m, depending on the aperture setting. In this test report of the new C-Sonnar you can find sample photos. Here it is explained with technical details. Unfortunately, I don't know what practical relevance this has with the old originals and how you can deal with it in practice, as I never had the lens at my disposal.
However, it seems to be characteristic of the uncoated version in particular that it intensifies the peculiarities mentioned above for the 1:2 version. Especially as far as overexposure is concerned.
The most common telephoto lens
For many people, the second bread-and-butter lens after the 50mm was a 135mm. Here we are dealing with the well-known Sonnar 1:4. Like the 50mm 1:2 before and the 35mm Biogon afterwards, it has a 40.5 mm filter thread.
Last summer I was lucky enough to get hold of an uncoated Jena lens from 1938 in addition to my coated Zeiss Opton (ca. 1952). I have not yet been able to develop analogue photographs with it; the differences in stray light and contrast are probably similar to those of the standard lens above.
On film, the coated 135 Sonnar already gave me the unusual effect of the above colour photo of the industrial yard. I wonder whether this effect might be a Sonnar characteristic. Because in an article about the recalculated 50 mm ZM Sonnar, it also appears on a digital image, albeit in a much weaker form: especially on the window frames and panes slightly to the left of the centre of the image.
In addition to the standard lenses, the 135 Sonnar seems to have been sold the most during the Contax heyday. In any case, it can be found relatively frequently and consequently at good prices on the second-hand market today.
The portrait telephoto par excellence
Let's go down a step in the focal length scale and end up with one of the Zeiss classics for the Contax: When this lens came onto the market in the 1930s, it hit the market like a bomb with its image quality due to its speed. The Sonnar 1:2 / 85 mm.
As is well known, there was no coating at the time of the first calculation of this lens. Zeiss might have been able to produce a planar lens, but because of the many glass/air surfaces (to exaggerate) not much more would have been seen apart from stray light. Ludwig Berteles Sonnar with its only three elements and correspondingly fewer glass/air surfaces was the solution.
My specimen is a Jena piece from around 1946/47, with a distance scale in feet. Perhaps Jena was thinking of buyers in the western hemisphere with a strong currency (according to Henry Scherer, many Contaxes went to wealthy buyers in the US).
The 85 mm Sonnar is easy to use. In practice, I set the distance in the rangefinder (as I did with the 135) and then switch to the attached universal viewfinder. However, unlike the 50, 135 and the 35, which is still to come, the 85 has a 49 mm filter thread.
As an example image, let's start with a parallel shot of the aforementioned Krefeld industrial estate on Fomapan R100, aperture 2. Here, too, there seems to me to be the peculiar gradation on the struts of the window frames:
Another domain of the old Sonnar is portraits - or pictures of church interiors (aperture 2, 1/15 sec, Fomapan R100, freehand shot, Contax IIIa):
I recently came across this unconventional and unusual result of this Sonnar with its typical imperfections on a digital sensor in a neighbouring forum. As the photographer assured me on enquiry, it is the coated version - similar year of manufacture to mine.
A prime example (in my opinion) of the fact that these old optics can show their considerable strengths in very specific lighting conditions and subjects. This is a different discipline than that of sharpness and brilliance, in which they could shine decades ago - it is rather the discipline of ‘painterly effect’.
I'll leave out a few other telephoto lenses for now, as I don't have them: the Triotar 1:4 / 85 mm, once a lens for those on a budget, is no longer so much cheaper than the Sonnar. For the 180 mm ‘Olympia’ Sonnar, which I have in two SLR versions from Jena and Oberkochen, see above; and the telephoto Tessar 1:6.3 / 180 mm didn't really interest me with the viewfinder Contax either. Exotics like the 300 mm Sonnar certainly did not.
Wide-angle lenses
Since I don't have the legendary 21 mm Biogon, the pre-war Tessar 1:8 / 28 mm, the Biometar 1:2.8 / 35 mm or the Planar 1:3.5 / 35 mm, I'll limit myself to a tried and tested lens from the early 50s: the Biogon 1:2.8 / 35 mm.
As a user of a post-war Contax, you have to be careful here. There are two versions of the 35 mm: the pre-war model from Jena is somewhat bulkier and therefore only fits into the somewhat larger ‘interior’ of the pre-war Contax. This certainly also applies to the Soviet ‘Jupiter’ replicas of the Biogon, as they are probably all based on the pre-war version.
The post-war camera has modified shutter blades. Therefore, only the somewhat smaller post-war Biogon, which was calculated at the beginning of the 1950s, fits on it. These lenses can be recognised by the engraving ‘Zeiss Opton’ or ‘Carl Zeiss’ - without ‘Jena’.
Use: unproblematic. For me, a typical 35 mm wide-angle lens. Its imaging qualities must have been very good by the standards of the early 1950s.
(Dresden, Germany, Zwinger, Biogon with open aperture, yellow-green filter, Fomapan R100.)
70 years after its last professional use: the Contax in practice today
It has already been mentioned: In terms of handling, the Contax 1954 and 2024 are no competition for the Leica M, especially due to their viewfinder. However, the old Zeiss-Ikon system scores today with its favourable second-hand price. Ultimately, I'd say, a Leica photographer can only dream of so much rangefinder system for so little money.
Of course, the Barnack Leica is smaller than the Contax, even if the Contax IIa with its retractable Sonnar is only one and a half times as wide, just as high and only slightly less flat than the Rollei 35 pocket camera. The IIIa with its light meter is easily as wide and high as the small Pentax MX, only flatter. And I personally always liked the elegantly rounded Leica body better than the typical Zeiss-Ikon "brick".
But we're talking about a photographic tool here, and as such the Contax should ultimately have outperformed the screw-mount Leica (not the Leica M, of course).
Especially as Zeiss Ikon apparently discovered in studies at the beginning of the 1930s that the ‘brick’ shape facilitated freehand shots at long exposure times. I have not yet been able to compare the Contax with the Barnack Leica, but in the 1/10 or 1/5 second range, the 85 Sonnar also worked relatively well.
Film loading is more modern than with the Barnack Leica, but you have to be a bit more careful than with a typical SLR: the original plastic film take-up spool may be worn out at its nose for engaging the film perforation after 70 years. In my experience, it works well if you guide the film, as shown here, with tension over the toothed drum (whose teeth should of course engage correctly in the perforation) to the take-up reel and then attach the back plate. If you work sloppily, the end of the film may slip off the take-up reel. You will notice this the first time you transport the film - then you have to do it all over again.
Ihagee solved this problem much better with the Exakta with its clamping system under a metal tab (and a full metal spool) than Zeiss Ikon did with the Contax.
In typical zeiss-ikon fashion, the rear panel itself is fitted from the ‘bottom back’, pushed up a little and then locked in place with the two twist locks on the underside.
In connection with this locking mechanism, there was also a contax system with special film cartridges that you can still get used today and with which you can wind from one cartridge to the other. However, I never explored this further.
The actual operation is then self-explanatory: anyone who has ever held any camera from the 1950s will find their way around immediately.
Some people have criticised the fact that you always have to be careful not to cover the right-hand rangefinder window with your hand. Heinrich Freytag described the so-called ‘Contax-Haltung’ for the right hand in his 1938 book Contax-Praxis: Grip the camera normally, then place the index finger on the shutter release, the middle finger on the range wheel, ring finger slightly downwards if necessary so that the window has a clear view. Sounds more complicated than it is. ‘Practise hard!’ Freytag recommended though.
Changing lenses reminds me a little of the Canon FD bayonet, especially as the release mechanism is in a similar position on the lenses with an external bayonet. So changing lenses is just as tricky as with the FD, and it's not as quick and easy with one hand as with the Exakta, the Leicaflex or the Contax/Yashica bayonet. The 85 mm Sonnar can be easily removed with one hand (in order to attach a normal lens with the other hand, for example). This is somewhat more difficult with the 135 mm - depending on how tightly it sits in the bayonet; with the 35 mm Biogon it is almost impossible. So you need two hands. Even when removing the normal lens, you need at least one finger of the second hand to push down the spring-loaded latch of the bayonet.
The only consolation is that everything here is made of solid metal - no plastic release buttons like on the Leicaflex SL.
When storing the camera in a photo bag, for example, the lenses that are not needed should be covered: The rear lens of the Biogon in particular is highly scratch-prone; and on the whole, the coatings (and sometimes also the glass types) are not as hard as their modern counterparts.
As far as the lenses themselves are concerned and the question ‘coated or uncoated’, after the latest test films I tend to take uncoated lenses for situations with bright sun or strong contrasts in the dark, see the picture from Nantes above. Whenever things get a little more poetic.
Coated lenses would then also be recommended for the poet for light with weak contrasts, diffuse light, outdoor shots in cloudy skies, etc. But of course also for critical side or back light falling into the lens. For shots that are not particularly ‘poetic’ anyway.
Curiously, the shutter noise also changes at short shutter speeds: While at 1/1250 sec. it typically clicks quietly with a certain ‘sharpness’, this changes more and more towards 1/25 sec. to a gentle click, so it tends to become even quieter. With the escapement, which works from 1/10 sec, the designers have really gone the extra mile: whisper quiet.
Mind you, we are talking here about the post-war Contax. The shutters of the pre-war cameras bang like the titanium shutters of the Contax RTS II, and their escapements make a similar noise to the movement of the Exakta Varex VX.
The Contax IIIa's light meter uses a selenium cell, which is typical of the time. It still works on my camera and even shows mostly plausible values; but I only want to rely on it if I really don't have anyone else to hand.
Basically, it has its intended peculiarities: The protective cap always very strongly shields the light ‘from above’, i.e. from the sky. As a result, the measured values are already high. Difficult for slide photographers (like me), no problem for negative photographers.
The measuring mechanism itself - as you can read in Otto Croy's ‘Contax book’ - is set up for ‘fine-grain film’. This means that the time is also measured very richly in this respect, on average specifically one f-stop too rich.
However, you have to bear in mind that the DIN system was changed around 1960: previous 18-DIN film was now reclassified as 21-DIN. This makes up for the previous effect described by Croy, and the Beli of the Contax IIIa can be set quite normally - as is well known, to the second number of the ISO value. In the case of an Ektachrome E100, this is 21 DIN (an ASA scale is only engraved on export models).
The light meter is operated by turning the outer chrome ring to set the pointer in the metering window to the diamond visible there. The time/aperture combination can then be read off the scales on the left.
The light meter is not coupled. The design basis from the 1930s - when the built-in light meter was still revolutionary - no longer allowed for this.
As an exclusive SLR user for decades, I initially had difficulties getting used to the basic handling of the viewfinder and lenses. In Contax-specific terms, you may have to set the appropriate telephoto or wide-angle focal length on the universal viewfinder. After a few films, however, I had the necessary practice and it soon became routine. I often set a telephoto focal length on the universal viewfinder and then switch to the built-in rangefinder when quickly switching to the normal lens, without readjusting the universal viewfinder.
The usual TTL metering is of course also missing, but as a result I have started to discover light metering with the Gossen Lunasix F and am taking my first steps with the zone system.
On the subject of robustness, I can contribute the experience that my freshly overhauled Contax IIa once fell unchecked from chest height onto a meadow during a photo shoot with a standard lens attached. It still worked afterwards and still works today. Even with known critical shutter speeds (see below).
One more tip: As you can read in well-informed texts, you should not leave a Contax in a cocked state in the cupboard for ages. If it is to be stored for a long time, then with the shutter released.
According to Henry Scherer, if you want to be really careful, you should pick up unused bodies every fortnight and release all shutter speeds. This will keep the shutter lubricated and running smoothly. With my cameras loaded with colour film, however, it usually takes much longer than two weeks before I release them again. So far without any particular problems.
Manufacture camera: experiences when buying
Firstly, a word about the ‘Kiev’, the Soviet pre-war Contax copy. Curiously, compared to the Dresden original, it is traded at comparatively high prices, just like its ‘Jupiter’ lenses. One of the reasons for this may be that Kiev and Jupiter lenses are probably better known internationally than the German original due to their sheer number. This seems to stimulate demand.
This is probably helped by the fact that the Soviet Jupiter lenses are said to have characteristics which, when viewed in the light of day, can be traced back to the Sonnars and Biogons, of which they are copies. Of course, the optical shortcomings of the Jupiters can also be categorised as ‘characteristics’, as I did above with the Zeiss lenses. Recently, however, Ukrainian offers of film-tested Kiev-2s with Jupiter counterparts for 1:2/50 mm Sonnars appeared, which were priced even higher than comparable Contax IIs - I would rather keep my hands off them.
According to Henry Scherer, the main problem with this camera and its Jupiter lenses is the variance in quality right from the factory. According to Mr Scherer, you can be lucky and get very good specimens, but you can also get something lousy. Example shutters: ‘Kiev shutters range in quality from a “10” (equivalent to German quality), to a (1) (real trash).’ Whether you want to do something like this today for a comparatively high price is certainly an individual decision.
All in all, the price/performance ratio should be better even with a pre-war Contax than with a Kiev. For post-war models anyway. Even coated Zeiss-Jena lenses, which were among the best ones in the world until the late 1940s, were probably better on average than their Soviet copies from the 1950s.
After all, neither the pre-war nor the post-war Contax lenses could seriously be said to have had any variation in quality ex works. And certainly even less so with Zeiss Jena or Oberkochen lenses.
Obviously, the Contax production in Dresden in the 1930s and Stuttgart in the 1950s should not be thought of as mass production, but rather as a manufactory in which specialists with a great deal of experience (which probably did not exist in this mass in Kiev either) assembled each individual camera.
With a used Contax today, you are therefore mainly confronted with typical age-related problems (which are likely to be added on top with Kievs).
Like any high-quality camera from the mechanical era, I would have a Contax professionally CLA'd and any defects repaired as soon as possible after purchase.
As usual with 50s cameras, the body should be thoroughly tested before purchase. There is no need to worry about light seals: the camera has none because it doesn't need them.
As is well known, the Contax shutter is a notoriously complex affair: Zeiss Ikon had to design the shutter without infringing Leitz patent rights - the result was an independent technology with its own pitfalls; no wonder that Nikon preferred to orientate itself on the Leica shutter in the 50s. So test all speeds with the back and lens removed - even the short ones. Often the shutter does not open correctly at 1/1250 sec. with every shutter release. This has to do - I refer again to Henry Scherer - with the spring control of the fast speeds.
If there are any problems here, a repairman with knowledge of the subject will have to be called in - according to Mr Scherer, hair-trigger manipulation of the spring won't help much. For amateur mechanicians, a viewfinder-Contax as a whole is probably an unsuitable test object: it seems to be incomparably more complicated than a Leica or Nikon.
Since the shutter is extremely difficult to maintain, I would only buy a body from the outset in which the shutter works. With the others you can directly add three-digit repair costs. Well, you can do without the 1/1250 sec. But the other speeds should work.
Defects can be repaired, but workshops that can do this are much rarer than, for example, Leica workshops. Fortunately, there are still a few. However, you should ask them beforehand - and never confuse them with workshops that specialise in Contax/Yashica SLRs or even just the Dresden mirror Contax. They use completely different technology.
I had the necessary luck with my three bodies, although I bought them without prior inspection only on the basis of the item description and via mail order: a Contax IIa and a II exposed their test films perfectly, but were nevertheless given a CLA to be on the safe side, which cost €200 each (although the II showed the aforementioned errors after a year with the short times from 1/250 sec. - it is currently still in the workshop). A IIIa, which I've had for almost two years, is still waiting for its CLA (because I'm still waiting for the II in question to be finished), but it also worked straight away - only recently did I notice individual errors at 1/1250 and at B. But for now I can live with that. On a whole series of films from various, even strenuous journeys with some shaking, the camera has so far shown no failures.
There's not much to say about the Zeiss lenses: you should pay attention to the same things as with any other older lens.
Plus:
* small, light
* post-war shutters very quiet
* flexible
* character of the classic coated Zeiss post-war Sonnars
* additional attractive special effects in certain light thanks to uncoated pre-war Sonnars
* Very good price/performance ratio today, especially with post-war cameras
Minus:
* rangefinder was still the same as in 1936
* pre-war shutters loud
* You usually need two hands to remove the lenses (exception: 85 mm Sonnar).
* Care is advised when loading film.
* Clarify repair and maintenance options for future situations - find a competent workshop if possible.
