Battle of the Contax’s by Ashley Brown Williams
No, this is not a battle between the Contax 1F and Contax ii, more a battle between me, the weather and a pair of rangefinders. Oh how I dread using rangefinders! In truth, the Contax ii should always win out between the pair, it having massively improved reliability and a big update on the rangefinder system.
The Contax was Ziess Ikon’s rushed and underdeveloped answer to the Leica. The lack of development hurt it, with the vast majority suffering terrible shutter failures amongst other things. The vertical metal roller blind was dogged with issues and almost all surviving models have a second factory date stamp to record its recall. They say finding one without is a rarity. That said, by the time they introduced the F model, those with a brass shutter were much more reliable, but the damage was done and confidence from buyers was lost. To restore the good name of the brand a complete redesign and build from the ground up became the Contax ii, which was a great success.
The two cameras I had were only a year apart, the Contax 1F built in 1934/5 with a brass shutter and no recall stamp with Tessar f2.8 pull out lens. The Contax ii built in 1936 with the same lens type.
I stress, this is in no way a comparison, and both had different film stocks, different meters, different conditions and different developers. This is more my ramblings on my own short comings.
I took the Contax ii out first. I had a half roll of Agfa Silvermax, I took a little hand meter and headed for Saltash Passage. I arrived in the middle of a hailstorm, thunder and lighting, big winds and no light. Bugger! 3 frames later I abandoned efforts, later that afternoon I managed to finish the roll in the local park, still windy with constant drizzle, but I got it done. I developed in Rodinal and viewed the results. It was obvious the Silvermax was slower than 100 asa, general hand metering had not been helpful given my usual methods and condition had punished me. I found the big bright finder and focus square easy to use, it was hitting it’s focus points well. Given the awful light I hadn’t really gotten beyond f4 -5.6 and reminiscent of my old Ikoflex the DoF is punishing, seemingly regardless of distance. Also there is a softening to the image edges, the more you shut down the aperture the better it gets. I had tried dialling down to 1/30th of a second but that proved too slow for the wind and my aged shaky hands. Still, I was comforted to see consistency across the shutter speed and was hitting focus points. I still cannot get parallax error in my head though.
For the Contax 1F I split a roll of Kodak Tmax out of my Canon, chose my preferred spot meter for better metering and set off on a walk around the Barbican. Conditions were a bit better, a bit of drizzle, windy and dark. With some haze in the lens I was interested to see if it was usable. Dialling my meter in for El 250 should have brought a little more speed but now metering for shadows I was pretty much in the same boat, f4 to maybe f8 on a couple. Clearly a lens characteristic, hits focus, punishes DoF and the wider you are the softer the edges get. I predict f11 is probably in the sweet spot. The smaller round dot focus spot was a little harder to use but still pretty good. The shutter speeds look consistent again. The front mounted double ring shutter knob needs a little study but I preferred it just because I welcome something a little different. The lens rendered well with the haze, a hood in the sun might be prudent.
Conclusion – I still don’t like rangefinders, if pushed I would pick the Contax 1F just because it is a little different, looks better and has a chequered history. I am drawn to underdogs! Results were as I should have expected, they did well given conditions and the user.
I made wet prints from each roll and scanned them, they have the white border.
The photos above were taken with the Contax 1F
The photos below were taken with the Contax ii
These cameras are available to view or purchase in the shop or online
