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The Contax G System by Markus Ehrenfried
The camera I use for almost everything apart from macro photography is a Contax G1 with the three lenses 28mm, 45mm, 90mm and sometimes the flash unit TLA 140. My main reason for using this system is that it gives me access to the excellent Carl Zeiss lenses. I will concentrate in this review not so much on technical data (which you can look up on the Contax and Zeiss websites) but on my personal experience with this camera system.
The G1 body The Contax G1 is a so-called rangefinder camera. You don't look through the lens but through a separate viewfinder and the focusing is done externally. It measures the distance using triangulation and then the autofocus system sets the lens to the correct distance. The Contax G1 and its larger sister, the Contax G2, are the only autofocus rangefinders with exchangable lenses in small format I know of -- there is no similar camera system one really could compare to. In newsgroups and forums you will find lengthy and often heated discussions comparing the Contaxes to Leicas, Konica Hexars and Hasselblad X-Pans, but in their details all of these cameras are quite different. I will come back to that later. Each camera system has its limitations and you will only become happy with a certain type of camera if you know about them and accept them. There are some things you simply cannot do with an rangefinder. Rangefinder cameras (=RFs) are very convenient for wide angle lenses and normal lenses -- often much better than SLRs. Focussing with these 'short' lenses usually is much more accurate on a RF. But the longer the lenses get, the more the RFs are outperformed by SLRs. The longest lens for the Contax Gs is a 90mm lens, for Leicas you can buy 135mm lenses but that's about as long as it gets. There are no 200mm or 300mm lenses for RFs and if you need such long telephoto lenses a RF is not the right type of camera for you. Another thing which is totaly impossible with a RF (simply as you don't look through the lens but through a viewfinder which is several centimetres beside it) is macro photography. You also cannot see if your lens flares under adverse light conditions (which is usually not the problem of Zeiss lenses) and you cannot judge the effect of a polarization filter. The use of filters in general is no problem as the light metering is done through the lens (=TTL) and therefore takes automatically the intensity loss into account. The Contax G1 is a very well built camera and it feels quite solid. It's probably the most comfortable camera to hold in hands I ever touched. For the right hand, there are some perfectly shaped rubber parts which make it extremely easy to hold the camera with only one hand. If you lift it up for the first time you'll probably be surprised that it is heavier than it looks like. The surface is made of titanium and although I didn't handle it with exceptional care it didn't get any serious scratches yet. The ergonomics are perfect: for every function (apart from some custom settings which I usually don't change at all) there is a separate knob or wheel, and everything has only one function. If I compare this to my Canon EOS where I have to click with tiny plastic buttons through menues until I arrive again at the beginning I indeed prefer the straight-forward design of the Contax.
The Contax offers aperture priority or manual mode. I usually use it in aperture priority. Then you can select the f-stop at the lens and the camera will select the appropriate shutter speed (between 16s and 1/2000s) to achieve correct exposure. The exposure can easily be corrected in the range of +2 to -2 EV in 1/3 EV increments with the left one of the two wheels. Below the wheel, there is a small lever which allows to activate automatic bracketing of +/-0.5 EV or +/-1 EV: the camera will take three exposures, one with the determined light meter reading and in addition one under- and one overexposed (by 0.5 or 1 EV). Expecially if you shoot slide film this is convenient. Sometimes the light meter gets mislead (like every light meter, e.g. if you have a lot of snow in your picture and it tries to compensate it to 12.5% or 18% grey) -- then you have to intervene. The TTL-light metering system of the Contax Gs is extremely simple, much simpler than the matrix-/multizone-/whatever-systems modern SLRs use. I actually prefer this system as I always know exactly what it does or tries to do (once I understood it). With some experience you will get perfect results and even if you just blindly trust it, most of your pictures will be not so bad. The metal bayonet of the lens mount is a bit 'fiddly' and I never got entirely comfortable with it. Don't get me wrong, it is very solid and the lens locks with a positive click. But to attach the lens I still have to look at it, even after doing it several hundred times. With my Canon EOS I could do it blindfolded, but with the Contax I still have to check if the lens is well aligned before I turn the lens barrel to lock it into place. It's not such a big deal. Only with the wide angle lenses (like the 28mm Biogon lens) you have to be really careful as the rear lens element stands out by a few centimeters and can be easily damaged by banging it against the edge of the metal lens mount!
The Contax Gs have automatic film advance. The G1 advances film with up to 2 fps (frames per second), the bigger G2 with up to 4 fps. At the end it will automatically rewind the film. When approaching the end of a film you actually have to pay a bit attention or you risk that the last picture will be just on the end of the film roll (and therefore incomplete). The camera allows you to take pictures until the film transport mechanism feels some resistance and starts rewinding the film. It doesn't stop you after e.g. the 36th frame, you can perhaps take a 37th but at the latest the 38th picture will be incomplete. That's not a big deal: look from time to time at the little LCD counter and if you reach the 37th picture just force the camera to rewind the film. And be warned: rewinding the film is a noisy process! This is one of the main reservations Leica users have against the Contax Gs. Better make sure that the rewind doesn't happen if you take the camera to a theatre or concert! At least not, if you sit next to someone with a Leica. On the other hand it's pretty fast and you can quickly remove the film canister, drop in a new one and will be ready again in about 30 seconds. I doubt the Leica fan next to you can beat this.
No camera is without design flaws and there are two things the Contax/Kyocera engineers screwed up when they designed the G1:
The autofocus system On the web you can find lots of comments about the Contax G's autofocus system. Many users seem to have serious problems to determine correct focus, especially with the 90mm lens. Reading these comments almost made me not buy this camera. I'm happy I tried it anyway: I never had any problem with focusing these cameras and rarely get a mis-focused picture at all! And if, then it usually was my fault. But to be fair: the autofocus is very different from the autofocus of a SLR, there is no optical confirmation on correct focus and if you're not familiar with its quirks it can indeed be a bit tricky. But once you get the knack, it is a joy to use. The camera has only one single and rather primitive AF sensor in the middle of the frame. That is the area the camera will focus on. If you take a photo of two people standing next to each other with some space between them, and the AF field points to this gap between the two persons, the camera will cold as ice focus on the background. The background will be in focus and the two people will be blurred. As simple as that. So you have to get used to this simple method: point the AF sensor to the area you want to have in focus, half-press the shutter button, reframe, then press the shutter all the way down. I suspect that many users, who are used to SLRs, only look if the picture in the viewfinder looks sharp -- but this obviously doesn't make sense, as it is just a viewfinder which always looks sharp. Another problem might be, that the autofocus system sometimes gets tricked. It has problems with plain or low-contrast surfaces (as every AF system!) and sometimes will just determine a vastly wrong distance. If you point it at a white wall or the blue sky, it most of the time will indicate that it cannot determine the distance, but once in a while it will somehow determine a distance which makes no sense at all and which is usually much to close (like e.g. you point it at a wall 10 meters away and it will focus on something 70 cm away). If you then release the shutter you will naturally get a piece of modern art. (But your SLR will usually have the very same problem, you only see instantly that the AF procedure was no success!) So the point is not that the Contax AF system is that inferior (which it admittedly is, compared to the very sophisticated systems on top-class Nikon and Canon SLRs). The point is that you have to realize when the AF procedure failed. And that is not so difficult, as it either works very precisely or fails very obviously. I never saw it missing the focus by 0.5 meters or so; if it fails, then it mixes up e.g. infinity with 0.6 meters, and that you can see easily: There is a scale in the viewfinder where a small arrow marks the approximate distance the AF system determined. It indicates roughly the steps [infinity--5m--2m--1m--0.5m]. If you are not sure, look there. As I said: I never saw the AF miss the correct focus point by e.g. measuring 2 meters when the correct distance was 5 meters. I don't know why, but this just doesn't happen. Usually it will focus to very close distances if it fails. So, if it indicates 0.5m but you know that you want to focus on something 5m away, just try again. After a few hours experience, you will not have to look at this scale any longer, you will hear if it focuses wrongly! The AF motor in the lens makes a whirring noise, which many people dislike, especially if they come from manual focus cameras or from SLR lenses with ultrasonic motors. If an SLR lens focuses, it starts from the position it was left at from the last focusing action. Not so the Contax G1. It always 'parks' the lens at infinity which apparently is necessary to calibrate or 'initialize' the AF mechanics each time. Each time you half-press the shutter button, the lens will move from the infinity-position to the position which relates to the distance measured by the AF system. If you let the shutter button go, it instantly parks the lens again at the infinity position. Moving the lens only a tiny bit (so it is focused on an object far away) makes a different noise than extend it much further (so it focuses on an object closeby). Each AF sensor type looks for some sort of structure. The AF sensor of the Contax G1 looks for vertical lines. That means: it will have problems with structures which consist only of horizontal lines as it is 'blind' for this type of structures. (Modern SLRs often have cross-sensors which are sensitive to both, horizontal and vertical lines.) Knowing that makes live much easier: with some experience you will exactely know which type of structure the AF sensor likes and directly point the (tiny!!) AF mark in the viewfinder towards a feature of your motive which enables good focusing. All this sounds much more complicated as it is in practice. Play around with the camera for half an hour and you will have the knack, I promise! Actually, learning the quirks of the Contax AF system helped me to handle my Canon EOS SLR in a much more efficient way. I know now what the AF sensors look for! If I want the EOS to focus on something, I now can force it to do so by just pointing the sensors at the appropriate type of structures. Especially in macro photography (where focusing is critical due to the very shallow depth-of-field) this is extremely helpful! Trust me: the Contax AF system is simple and primitive (like also the light metering system is!) but exactly that's why it behaves in a consistent and understandable way. You will soon get the knack and then it is very precise. Nobody will buy the Contax G1 because of its AF or light metering system. The real reason why people use this camera are: The Carl Zeiss lenses for the Contax G Look around on the web and read some reviews to get an impression what people think about these lenses. You will read lots of complaints about the Contax autofocus, the whirring noises the camera makes, the dim viewfinder and its appetite for expensive batteries. But almost everyone will agree that the Zeiss lenses for this camera system are outstanding. People will discuss which lenses are better: Carl Zeiss, Leica or the top lenses of Canon and Nikon. Nobody will ever seriously try to compare these lenses to Tokina or Tamron lenses. Most photographers will agree that, although there is much room for improvements on the Contax G1 and G2 bodies, the Zeiss lenses are as good as small format photography can get. People who use both Leica and Zeiss will talk about tiny differences but I never read that somebody seriously doubted the optical performance of the Zeiss lenses. The handling of the lenses is of course very different, the Zeiss lenses being autofocus lenses while the Leica lenses are manually focused. Even experienced photographers say that they usually cannot objectively distinguish photos they took with Zeiss glass from those taken with their Leica lenses. So, when I bought my first Zeiss lens (which was the Planar 2/45) my expectations were high. They were surpassed by far, when I saw the first results. I thought I knew what a sharp picture looks like. Well, I have to admit: I didn't. I took for example a picture of a village viewed from a hill nearby. Hell, I could even count individual tiles on the roofs of the houses! I realized that I had never used a really good lens before. Up to now I have three Zeiss prime lenses: the Biogon 2.8/28, the Planar 2/45 and the Sonnar 2.8/90. Using them helped me to develop a certain dislike for zoom lenses, which I explain on another webpage. Unlike (most) SLR AF lenses, the AF motor is not located in the lens itself but in the camera body. On the bayonet mount of the body is sort of a 'screwdriver', which fits into a 'screw' on the lens. When you focus, this screwdriver will transmit the force to the lens and move it into position. After changing lenses you'll hear a 'click' the first time you focus. Don't worry, it's just the screwdriver catching the screw.
The Carl Zeiss Biogon 2.8/28 lens This is a moderate wide angle lens with 28mm focal length. The optical system is almost symmetrical which helps (according to Zeiss) to reduce the distortions to extremely low values. The rear lens element stands far out and almost touches the shutter curtain of the camera. Such a lens design is not possible on a SLR: there the rear lens has to stay several centimetres away from the focal plane to give space to the mirror, which compromises the optical performance of such a lens. According to Zeiss the 'retrofocal' construction of the Distagone lenses for SLRs is the reason why their performace is (slightly) lower than the performace of the Biogon lenses. If you attach this lens to your Contax G be very careful!! The rear lens sticks out so far that it is not well protected anymore and can get easily scratched on the metal bayonet mount of the Contax body!! With a maximum aperture of f2.8 this lens is not really fast but even at full aperture the sharpness is very good, stopped down to f4 or f5.6 it becomes excellent. I never could see any vignetting, even at f2.8.
The Carl Zeiss Planar 2/45 lens The 45mm Planar is the 'normal' lens in the Zeiss line-up for the Contax Gs. Some reviews on the web claim that this is also the best lens -- I cannot confirm that as I'm not able to see a clear superiority over the other two lenses I own, they are all very good. To my own surprise that is the lens I grab usually if I take only one lens with me. I discovered that one can do a lot with only this one single normal lens. It is (together with the Planar 2/35 which I don't own) the fastest lens available for the Contax G system, which is (compared e.g. to the Leica M system with its f/1.4 and even f/1.0 (!) lenses) not that fast. I would be happy if Contax would offer at least one really fast lens, e.g. a Planar 1.4/45, but they don't -- therefore, if you need fast lenses, the Contax G system is probably not the right choice for you. But it's of course much better than e.g. the Hasselblad X-Pan with its f4/45mm lens, although I'm now comparing apples with oranges as the X-Pan lenses are in fact medium format lenses. If you accept the limitation of f/2 the Zeiss Planar 2/45 is an outstanding piece of glass which delivers absolutely staggering sharpness and vibrant colours.
The Carl Zeiss Sonnar 2.8/90 lens I hesitated and wavered for quite a long time before I bought this lens. The reason was, that I read so many comments on the web which reported about focusing problems with this 90mm lens, especially in connection with the G1 body. Finally I decided to try it out myself as I liked the other two lenses so much and couldn't imagine that Contax/Zeiss would place a product with such a serious problem. Anyway, there were also all these comments about focusing problems with the G1 in general which I never experienced. I shot a roll of film the day I got the lens, developed it and there was not a single misfocused picture on it. I absolutely cannot confirm that there is a focusing problem with the Sonnar 2.8/90 at all. I can only think of two explanations for this persistent internet rumor: a) Perhaps there are indeed faulty G1s (perhaps with misaligned AF sensors or wrong lookup tables?) out there and my own G1 is just not one of those. But I think a second explanation is much more likely: b) Some users don't know how to use the AF correctly and it shows up especially on pictures taken with the 90mm lens due to the extremely restricted depth of field. Those users probably also misfocus with the 28mm lens but due to the much larger depth of field they 'get away' with that in this case. Feel free to send me angry emails if you like! Jim Williams wrote on his Contax G User Pages that he also cannot confirm the '90mm focusing problem'. He conceded that there might be a change of slightly missing the focus only under the following conditions: if you focus at the closest distance (1.0m) and at full aperture (f/2.8). Perhaps it's just because I don't take many photos under conditions like that, but I indeed never had a problem with this lens and I like it very much. It's strange, somehow I feel like I have the obligation to defend this excellent lens. Are the Carl Zeiss lenses indeed better than other lenses? Yes and no. It depends. (This is always a diplomatic answer, isn't it?) You will find in newsgroups heated discussions which lenses are better or equally good: Leica, Zeiss, Canon, Nikon? Some people defend their camera equipment with a fierceness which makes you wonder if you somehow stumbled into a religous war. Hey, come on guys (it's always guys!), this is just a camera!?! I have no experience with Leica lenses but they are certainly very good. Even the leicaphiles never seriously doubted the optical performace of the Zeiss lenses but they love it to quash the characteristics of the Contax G bodies. This I can easily understand as the cameras are indeed very different and in fact you compare apples to oranges. On the other hand: well exposed and focused pictures of the Zeiss lenses seem in no way to be inferior to pictures taken with Leica lenses. Some people apparently just need to convince everybody and most of all themself, that their lens is the absolutely best one and everything else is crap (and this indeed is a disorder many Leica fans have!), so they start to talk about a special 'look' of their photos which no other lens can ever create, a certain 'glow' -- but they are totaly unable to define these properties in a way that someone else is able to understand what they are actually talking about. Again: if you feel like it, don't hesitate and send me angry e-mails! Here now comes my personal opinion about the quality of these lenses: The Zeiss prime lenses are without any doubt first-rate optics. They will certainly deliver better image quality than any zoom lens you can find (including the few Zeiss zoom lenses). But I don't think they are better than the top class primes of e.g. Canon or Nikon. I used extensively the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens, which in some aspects is certainly quite different from the Zeiss lenses (it is a SLR lens and it is a macro lens), but in other aspects not so different at all (comparable focal length, also a prime lens, autofocus, even almost the same price!). If I compare pictures taken with the 100mm Canon lens (used as a telephoto lens of course, not as a macro lens) and pictures taken with the Zeiss 90mm lens I have no chance to distinguish them. Both lenses perform outstanding and deliver excellent sharpness and contrast. For me it is impossible to clearly point out e.g. the Zeiss pictures and claim that they are 'better'. You will find some reviews on the web where people claim they are able to do something like that (and always finding the Zeiss lens superior), but I assume they cannot have used a really good Canon lens in this case. Of course also I can perfectly see the difference between a picture taken with a Zeiss prime lens and one taken with a Canon 28-90mm 'standard-zoom' which is another word for 'cheap crap sold together with a camera body'. But in my opinion you will have a hard time identifying the difference between the Zeiss lens and a decent Canon lens. The optical performance will be quite comparable. Concerning the built quality I would even prefer the Canon lens due to it's fast and silent (USM) autofocus and the fact that it focuses internally. All Zeiss lenses mentioned here focus by extending the barrel and therefore inevitably will suck in dust together with the air over the years. I once bought secondhand a Zeiss lens and then discovered that there was some dust inside. I called Zeiss in Germany and they said that this is not a problem as long as it is 'dark' dust. But in my lens there was a dust particle which was very bright and close to the center. They recommended to me to send the lens to their service department for cleaning, as the reflections might reduce the contrast under adverse light conditions. I instead decided to hand the lens back to the shop and bought a new one. But there is a reason why I anyway love the Contax system: it is so handy! The 90mm Contax lens weights 240g whereas the 100mm Canon lens weights 650g. The Canon lens is more than twice the size of the Contax lens. If I travel I usually have the G1 body (460g) and the three lenses 28mm (150g), 45mm (190g) and 90mm (240g) with me. Together with the small flash unit TLA 140 (80g) this adds up to roughly 1,120g. Add some spare batteries (important!), some film rolls and pack everything neatly into a small bag and you will be surprised how light you can travel! Try this with a SLR camera and three first-class prime lenses!
I rarely use flash at all with the Contax G1. Actually I bought this flash unit only because I got it for a very reasonable price secondhand, but in mint condition. Once I had it, I found it quite useful. This cute little thing is so tiny!! It is very flat, only about 2cm, and very light (80g without battery, it requires one 3V CR123A), so you can easily drop it into your shirt or jacket pocket and have a flash with you -- just in case you might need it! With a guidenumber of 14 (ISO100/m) it is relatively weak, but I found it more useful than expected, especially when used as fill-in flash. The Contax Gs together with the TLA flashs are capable of TTL flash metering, but they cannot keep up with the sophisticated and comfortable flash systems modern SLRs use (like e.g. the up-to-date EOS models). The Contax G1/G2 being an aperture priority camera you first have to select a reasonable f-stop (there is a small table on the back of the flash unit). If you stop down too much your picture will be underexposed despite of the flash as the flash unit simply is not strong enough. The second thing to keep in mind is that this flash is not capable of high-speed synchronization, the highest X-sync shutterspeed with the G1 is 1/100s, the G2 is able to synchronize up to 1/200s. This can be problematic if you try to use the flash for fill-in outside in bright daylight. In this case you have to use the Auto Exposure Lock (AEL) the camera offers and stop down enough to stay below 1/100s resp. 1/200s. But if you take into account these limitations, the TTL flash metering works quite satisfactory. With the TLA 140 in the hotshoe the flash bulb is about 11cm away from the centre of the lens. I assume this is the reason why I absolutely never saw any red-eye effect on my pictures. The Contax Gs will confirm after the exposure if the amount of light was sufficient for correct exposure with a blinking lightning bolt symbol in the viewfinder (the same one which also indicates that the flash is ready).
Contax Service In September 2003 I went to the Contax Service (Yashica Kyocera GmbH, Eiffestr. 76, D-20537 Hamburg, phone +49-40-2515070) and got a software update for my G1 body to prepare it for the 21mm Biogon lens. This is necessary as the Biogon 2.8/21mm was introduced after the Contax G1 was already on the market. Early G1s therefore don't have the necessary lookup tables in the memory. If your G1 has a silver/black sticker in the film compartment, it needs the update for the 21mm and 35mm lenses, if the sticker in the film compartment is green it already is prepared. The software update was a matter of five minutes, they just connect the camera body to their computer and copy the files to your camera. They also checked the autofocus and light metering system and cleaned the contacts, everything free of charge. The technician was very friendly and told me that he also uses a G1 and prefers it over the larger and heavier G2. When I mentioned that in my opinion the focusing wheel (which spins almost without resistance) is the only serious design flaw of the G1 body, he offered to fix this problem for me. He told me that below the focussing wheel there is a disk (Unterlegscheibe) and he simply added another one which increases the friction. As simple as that. Now it needs much more torque to change the distance setting with this wheel and it is possible to preset a focusing distance without risking to change it by the slightest movement.
Wish list There is one lens left in the Contax lineup which I would like to have: The Carl Zeiss Biogon 2.8/21mm. This lens requires a separate viewfinder which will be attached to the hotshoe as the built-in viewfinder is not able to cover the 90° angle of the 21mm lens. (You cannot use a flash anyway with a 21mm lens, as it will not cover an angle of 90°.) I guess this can sometimes be a bit inconvenient: first one has to look through the normal viewfinder to focus the lens and check the shutter speed, than one has to lock focus and change to the external viewfinder for framing. But this seems to be the same with all rangefinder systems: even for the Leica Ms you have to use external viewfinders for ultra-wideangle lenses. As this lens was introduced after the G1 was already on the market, early G1 bodies need a software update to enable them to use this lens. This will be done free of charge by the Contax service. If you own a later production G1 body, its ROM might already contain the lookup tables for this lens. They are easily to distinguish. If you open the back, you will find a sticker in the film compartment. If this sticker is silver, your G1 will need the reprogramming. If it is green, it already is prepared for the 21mm lens. :-) October 2003: I finally bought the 21mm Biogon and it instantly became my favourite lens! :-) Perhaps I will buy one day a G2 body. It has faster film advance, improved autofocus capabilities and a significantly higher maximum shutter speed of 1/6000s. On the other hand, I never really missed one of these features on my G1 body. I hope Contax will introduce one day a G3 and if this camera should have a high-resolution CCD instead of a film compartment I would probably buy it right away!
References [0] The Contax G User Pages by Jim Williams
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