Contax, from Dream to Reality

I has been nearly a year since I fell into the Contax world. It has been a 'nerve-twisting' experience with the camera and its lenses, which made me believe that some thing belong to dream and something works in reality. So what are they:

Planar 85mm F1.4


I bought this lens first, before every thing else branded 'Contax' while I still had a canon 5D. Yes, I bought it for the full frame digital SLR. When I was purchasing this lens, I had 2 options, a Leica R summilux 80/1.4 and this planar. I did so many test shoots with both of them. You know what, I can see the difference in the image quality between these two. Even today, surfing though my image library, I still find it difficult to tell which are the ones shoot with the Leica and the ones with Zeiss. So the decision was tough, but realistic, price! It was a lot cheaper than the Leica. Well, that pretty much tells how good it is, and we all know it.

I still want to mention this, the Bokeh is Beautiful, I don't understand why the 35mm 7element was crowned the Bokeh-king (Which I also have). In my opinion, the Planar should be the King-of-Bokeh, and the little 7-element can be the Queen.

However, every hero has its dark sides, so does the Planar. Wide open, it is 'horrible', especially on film when you have now control over the image characteristics, I still can live with that. What was really the filler to this lens is the focusing, it was so difficult! which make all the ferry tale of this lens meaningless. Yeap, it is a lens belong in dreams to me, not in reality.

Distagon 35mm F1.4


The second Contax lens I bought. It is in the class of its own, the world's first incorporated aspherical elements and flouting element designs, the result is simply a Legend! Many say "You either crazy about it, or you are crazy not to like it". In my opinion, this is as good as you can get in 135 world. Don't need any more words for it.

Well, something feels too good to be true, it is most the time too good to be true. This is the lens just like that, yes, I'm crazy, and I don't like it, it's personal.

RTS II

After I got those two beasts, I decided that a Contax body would be a nice backup body to the 5D. I guess my unfaithfulness to the DSLR was beginning much earlier than I thought, or may be it is because of the RTS' "sexy" body, that lead to the oblivion the poor Canon.

RTS II Quartz, what a beautiful camera! A second iteration in 1982 of the 'Real Time System' which was introduced in the 70s. Crafted by famed Porsche Industrial Design Group, the first RTS was already excellent, but its successor is even better. This camera is truly a masterpiece combining Japanese efficiency and German skills.

Planar 50mm F1.4


I have very mixed feelings about this lens. Planar was certainly a milestone in the lens design. It is capable of rendering sharp images that out resolved my film scanner! However, at wide open, it is a bit soft, poor color. Still, looking though the viewfinder on the RTSII hooked up with this lens was such a joy. Focusing was fast. It reminds me someone's comment on this lens: the water is too deep, be careful. Meaning there is a lot about this lens need exploring, I'm just getting started.

Distagon 25mm F2.8


I bought this lens to accompany the Planar 50/1.4 on the trip to Europe. It turns out that this lens alone make the trip worth remembering. There is so much more to this piece of glass than I previously expected. The color was so rich, the field of view was more than excellent to capture street scene, people, buildings... you name it! Some time, you have to learn to get use to 'what'd f**k!'.

This is how my Contax dream ends, back to reality, the journey is just getting started with the RTSII and the little 25/2.8 and the 50/1.4.

The ‘perfect’ portrait lens (Leica vs Zeiss)

Focus lengths between 75mm to 100mm are the sweet spots for most portrait use. It is a combination of facts that 135 format and the DOF produced by the apertures available at these focus lengths gives the right image style for the portrait photography.

So what will be the 'perfect' portrait lens? Yes, 'perfect', we all know there is not a thing which is perfect. What I mean here is what we can think of the best possible.

Leica M 75mm F/1.4, a legendary lens that famous of its amazing bokeh and sharp focus, it render color beautifully. The pictures taken by this lens has a painting look. The problem is the size. It is not big at all compare to the SLR lenses at this range, in fact rather compact. But when it is attached on to a M body, it looked very unbalanced. That may be why Leica introduced a new 75mm, but a F/2 version with APO correction and ASPH element, 75 APO-SUMMICRON-M. A great lens for Leica M, balanced really well on M bodies. It gives the classic M cameras a younger and much more elegant look. Of course the image quality is out of question, it offers anything you could imagine from a modern Leica optics. This lens together with a 35 summicron makes a great travel kit on M bodies.

Compare to the range finders, in my opinion SLR are much more suitable for the portrait use. The APO-SUMMICRON-R 90 mm f/2 ASPH, is a perfect example of what leica is offering in this era. The R80/1.4 is a re-design M75/1.4 in the SLR form, it transformed the range finder legend to a SLR classic portrait lens.

Zeiss Planar 85/1.4 is a legandary opponent to the Leica R80/1.4, many regard it to be the best portrait lens. Well, certainly one of the best from Zeiss. It is a lens with character. The ability of creating smooth and creamy rendering at large apertures and supper sharp images stoped down makes it a difficult creature to master. Never the less, it is one of my favourate Zeiss optics.

However, the new Makro-Planar T* 2/100 is a very different animal. It is very much like the R90AA, at F2, the resolution power is fully obtained. Both have F/2, and both offers crisp sharp images wide open with great color. Some may believe that the R90AA may have slight edge on the image quality. but the close up performance of the Makro-Planar is certainly a killer. I find it very useful to have the freedom to work as close as you want to the subject. Having said that, R90 is not bad at all in this respect, it focus down to 0.7m offering 1:6 reproduction, very impressive as a non-macro lens. Comparing to 1m minimum focus distance of Planar 85/1.4, it is a big advantage. The ability to go even further with the Zeiss Makro-Planar, 1:2 reproduction enables a complete different usage of a portrait lens, as it allows you to dig into ppl's eyes!

What about the F1.2 ones? Surely, they are tempting. But the size and weight of those beasts really put me off. It is another trend of portrait from what we have been discussing here. Here, I am after a lens with balanced features including: image quality, functionality, mobility, and handling.

Finally, how do they look? Not the images created by these lenses, but their physical appearance. It may not be that important to many, but certainly it is one of my priorities. The down side of the Zeiss Makro-Planar is that the lens does extend to quite a length when it focuses down.

The conclusion is: if some one make a lens 85-100mm, F2, Macro to 1:2, AF with internal focus, surely that is too good to be true, there is always too much to ask for.