On the other hand, it has Rolleiflex written on it. Which means it’s heavy and big. It’s clunky and clumsy. It’s limited to all manual mode. And we could buy a better Japanese camera for less.

All of that is true. Don’t argue. Rollei fan or not, accept it. Rollei’s are great, but by nearly every metric, the Japanese cameras are better.

But that’s not to say that shooting the Rolleiflex SL35M is an unpleasant experience, or that buying one is foolish, or that owning one isn’t a joy. The Rollei SL35M is a lovely camera with plenty of upside, and I just ended a week of shooting one happy to have had the experience.

Origin of the Rollei SL35M

Despite a gentleman’s agreement between the founders of Hasselblad and Rollei that precluded each brand from manufacturing the core product of the other (Hasselblad focused on SLRs while Rollei concentrated on TLRs), Rollei did eventually branch out to create more camera types.

They made medium format SLRs to compete (somewhat ineffectually) with Hasselblad, 16mm compact cameras (for spies?), and a well-loved compact for 35mm film (easily the most successful of their non-TLR designs). Beginning in the 1970s and continuing into the ‘90s, they even made a range of 35mm SLRs.

Rolleiflex SL66 Camera Review

The first medium format SLR camera that Rollei produced, the Rolleiflex SL66, is one of the more interesting cameras I've ever shot.

Rollei 35 SE - Camera Review

The compact 35mm Rollei camera, probably the most successful of the brand's attempts to branch out from the niche they'd carved with their world-leading TLRs.

While none of the cameras outside of their TLR lineup ever really caught fire, in the commercial sense, they weren’t bad cameras. Rollei simply struggled to keep up with the extremely successful, efficient, and well-funded Japanese camera companies. And it was no different with the SL35 series.

Beginning with Nikon’s F in 1959, amateur and professional photographers alike had spent a decade flocking to the SLR camera by the time Rollei got involved. Their first 35mm SLR, the Rolleiflex SL35, was introduced in 1970, quite late in the competition. With this camera Rollei intended to offer high end Rollei-engineering to the fastest-growing group of customers in photography.

The SL35 was an all-mechanical, full manual camera with a new Rollei bayonet lens mount and a cloth focal plane shutter. The shutter was capable of speeds up to 1/1000^th of a second, and it featured a through-the-lens light meter with a match-needle display in the fixed viewfinder.

Real camera nerds would read that last paragraph and say, “Alright. Decent specs.” Unfortunately, I left out a key detail.

The SL35’s TTL light meter was outdated the moment the camera launched, because the light meter only registered a reading when the lens aperture was closed. Even in 1970, this was old tech. Japanese SLRs had long before established wide-open aperture light metering as the baseline methodology of any decent SLR.

Four years later Rollei updated the camera to include wide-open aperture metering. The new model also added a built-in accessory shoe. This new camera was called the Rollei SL350. Today, the SL350 is far less common than other models in the SL line, and is therefore more expensive.

Rollei finally had a 35mm SLR with the features that people expected. And then Rollei’s SLR lineup went through some big changes.

The domination of the camera industry by the Japanese companies didn’t only impact Rollei. Other German camera makers were feeling similar pressure.

In 1972, the German company Zeiss Ikon AG Stuttgart succumbed, and the brand decided to end camera production to focus on lens manufacturing (for which they were world-renowned). As a part of this liquidation, Zeiss’ brand names (of which Voigtlander was one), their designs, factories, and research were sold or transferred to other entities.

The Voigtlander brand name and some of Zeiss designs were acquired at this time by Rollei. This acquisition included the latest of Zeiss’ 35mm SLR designs, a camera called the SL706. Rollei planned to take this camera and introduce it as a new model using the Voigtlander name. Rollei also intended to continue production of their own 35mm SLRs, the SL35 and the SL350.

But there was a problem. The camera inherited from Zeiss used the Universal Screw Mount, or M42, lens system. Rollei’s SL35 and SL350, on the other hand, used Rollei’s own bayonet mount lens system (known as the QBM). Maintaining production of both lines of cameras meant that Rollei would need to produce their lenses under two mount systems. As a small player in a big market, this made little sense, so Rollei made the decision to end their own camera in favor of Zeiss’ design, but to preserve their bayonet lens mount.

In 1976, production of Rollei’s SL35 and SL350 was ended, and the former Zeiss camera was adopted and developed to use the Rollei QBM bayonet lenses. This new camera would be released under the Voigtlander name as the VSL1, and under Rollei’s own name as the Rolleiflex SL35M.

In that same year, Rollei also released the Voigtlander VSL2 Automatic and the SL35ME, which added automatic exposure through the aperture-priority methodology.

In 1978, A final SL camera called the Voigtlander VSL 3-E and the Rolleiflex SL35 would add a new electronic shutter and LED indicators in the viewfinder, to replace the earlier cameras’ match-needle display. This camera could also use an external winder and motor drive.

In 1981, Rollei went bankrupt, and their SL line ended while they focused on other products.

Specifications of the Rollei SL35M

• Camera Type : 35mm Film, 24x36mm image area (full frame)
  
• Exposure Modes : Manual Only
• Metering : Through the lens metering with CdS cells, Center-weighted full-field measurement
• Viewfinder : Penta-prism, instant return mirror. Focusing screen with diagonal focus indicator, micro-prism ring, and ground glass Fresnel lens
• Viewfinder Information : Aperture indicator, metering range limit indicator, light meter needle
• Lens Mount : Rollei QBM (Quick Bayonet Mount)
• Shutter : Horizontally moving cloth focal plane
• Shutter speeds : Bulb, 1 – 1/1000 seconds
• Flash Mount : X and FP switch-over flash sync at 1/40 of a second for center contact and cable contact
• Weight : 895 grams (with 50mm F/1.8 lens)

Using the Rollei SL35M Today

The Rollei SL35M is nothing more than a basic camera from the 1970s. It has the same specs as dozens of other models from Minolta, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Mamiya, Ricoh, Olympus, and others. There’s nothing here that can’t be found elsewhere, except maybe that QBM lens mount. And that’s nothing too special.

The controls are quintessential “classic camera” fare. Shutter speed is controlled via a dial on the top. It’s positioned next to the shutter release and thumb lever for film advance. There’s a rewind knob opposite and an ISO selector beneath that. On the front we find a self-timer lever, lens release button, and a depth-of-field preview plunger for manually closing the lens aperture. The back has a film frame counter, a hinged film compartment door, and a viewfinder to look through. The bottom is where the battery goes, there’s a tripod socket, and there’s a button to press when rewinding the film.

If you’re the kind of photo geek who’s used a classic 1970s 35mm SLR, you’ll acclimate to the Rollei within literal seconds. If you’re new to film, this is an easy camera with which to learn.

Though basic, things at least feel excellent. The dials and knobs and levers all function beautifully. True to Rollei standards, everything actuates with mechanical surety. There’s significant resistance in the film transport as we cock the advance lever, and the mirror and shutter fire definitively when we press the shutter release.

The viewfinder is nice and bright. It’s contained within a fixed penta-prism and shows a focusing screen with a focusing micro-prism band in the center surrounding a diagonally oriented split image rangefinder patch, which interestingly splits into three sections and not the usual two. The light meter needle is positioned on the right-hand side, and swings well when the exposure parameters are within its field of register. The top of the VF shows the currently selected lens aperture, while the selected shutter speed is not displayed.

Throughout my time with the Rollei there were no surprises. Film loading was fine, and normal. The viewfinder worked beautifully. There’s nothing tricky about the lens mount. Film advance and firing were standard, though it does vibrate with mirror slap, making longer exposures a bit shakier than I’ve found with other cameras. The light meter works well enough.

I never used the self-timer because, frankly, the less time I spend in front of a camera the better. And I never used the depth-of-field preview because I don’t need to preview depth-of-field. I tested these functions, and they worked as one would expect, but they didn’t factor in my picture-making.

The Lenses

With any interchangeable lens camera system, like this Rollei, it’s arguable that the lenses are more important than the camera. I believe that to be true, anyway.

Despite this importance, when writing about an interchangeable lens camera it’s almost irrelevant to talk about specific lenses, since I’ve not used every lens for the system, and since every lens performs differently. That said, when reviewing interchangeable lens cameras, I always touch upon the range of available lenses and upon any obvious strengths or weaknesses in the line. So, briefly, let’s do that.

Rollei’s SL35M uses, as mentioned, Rollei’s QBM lens mount. This means that any QBM mount lens will naturally mount to the camera. However, it should be noted that lenses made for the earlier SL35 and SL350 will only meter in stop-down metering mode, which means that photographers using older lenses on the newer SL35M will have to use the camera’s depth-of-field preview lever to achieve an accurate meter reading.

That detail noted, the range of available lenses for the QBM system is full. Most of the lenses were made by Carl Zeiss, but there are also a range of Schneider lenses, as well as Rollei lenses.

The range of available Carl Zeiss prime lenses begins with a 15mm Distagon and climbs right up to a 1000mm Tele-Tessar. Spattered throughout are specialty lenses with fast apertures (the 35mm F/1.4 Distagon, the 50mm F/1.4 Planar, and the 85mm F/1.4 Planar), fisheye lenses (a 16mm F/2.8 F-Distagon), and mirror lenses (both a 500mm and 1000mm Mirotar).

Outside of Zeiss primes we fine Schneider primes in 35mm, 50mm, 135mm focal lengths, and two perspective control shift lenses in the 35mm PC Curtagon and 28mm PC Super Angulon.

Rollei offered their own prime lens range as well, starting with a 14mm fisheye and reaching up to a 500mm mirror lens. In addition, Rollei produced two macro lenses for their QBM, as well as a full range of zoom lenses, starting with a 28-80mm zoom and progressing up to a maximum zoom embodied in their 50-250mm lens.

All told, there are approximately fifty QBM lenses available from these three manufacturers, more than enough to satisfy the needs of film shooters today.

I repeat, I’ve not used every lens in this system. I doubt anyone has. However I wouldn’t hesitate to measure these lenses up against their era-correct equivalent competitors. I have faith in Zeiss and Schneider and Rollei to make glass equal to Nikon, Canon, Leica, etc.

[Sample images from some expired film (why do I keep doing this to myself?). Your results will be better and varied, depending on which lens you use.]

What I Learned Shooting My Vacation on (Expired) Film

Some lessons are learned the easy way and some are a bit more painful. Here's everything that I learned shooting my vacation on film.

A Few Words on Singapore

I’ve noticed over the years (and specifically noticed again while researching the SL series of cameras) that many other camera likers who like cameras enough to make their job writing or talking about them have at times poo-pooed the Rollei SL35M and other Rollei models for the sin of having not been manufactured in Rollei’s glorious motherland of Germany. Which is correct. The SL35M and the cameras that came after it weren’t made in Germany. They were made in Singapore.

Does this bother me?

I’ve never been to Germany. I’ve never been to Singapore. I wasn’t even born when Rollei went bankrupt in 1981. I have no idea what the conditions in those countries are today, nor what they were when the camera was made, nor how the factories were run, nor how dedicated the staff of each factory was to the creation of a good product.

In a lifetime of labor, however, I’ve noticed that most people employed at a good job tend, in order to keep that job, to do the best job that they can. I assume that the jobs within Rollei factories regardless of their geographical location, Germany or Singapore, were considered good jobs by those who held them. Consequently I suspect that the people making Rollei cameras did a good job making them, regardless of where they were on the planet and regardless of whether they were named Franz or Wei.

I’d caution against listening to anyone’s opinion on the topic of products of the same design by the same manufacturer made in Country A versus Country B, unless they can tell you the name of the man or woman in both country’s factories who swept the floors on Wednesdays and what the lunch canteen served on Fridays.

The unfortunate habit of hobbyists in many hobbies to fawn over one country’s workforce while maligning another country’s workforce is simply soft-core jingoism.

My Made in Singapore Rollei works great.

Closing Thoughts and Should You Buy?

If you’ve reached this point in the article, you’re one of two types of camera nerd; the Thinkers, and the Lovers.

The Thinkers will be people who like cameras, but only buy the best, or only buy the cameras that help them achieve their goals in photography. Thinkers will have read the piece, appreciated the history, enjoyed the photos of a camera that they’ll never own, left a nice comment about my excellent writing (right?) and moved on with their lives.

The Lovers are different. And there’s an easy way to tell if you’re one of them.

Did you feel a flutter in your chest when you saw the picture of the Rollei at the head of this article? Did you feel an unyielding urge to hold one? Have you already opened additional browser tabs? Is one of them eBay? Did you already search for an SL35M, just to see the price? Did you already check your account balance? Did you, in fact, already buy one?

If you answered any of those questions in the affirmative, you’re a Lover. You love cameras and you want them all, even if the one you want isn’t necessarily better than the ones you’ve got.

So, should you buy a Rollei SL35M?

If you’re a Thinker, if you care about taking pictures more than you care about owning beautiful cameras, then you should not buy one. There are much better cameras than the Rollei. More important, there are much better cameras that cost much less than the Rollei. Any Japanese SLR, for example, from almost any decade. Any $40 Canon EOS. Any Nikon N series, or Nikon F series. Any Minolta SLR. The list could go on for decades (and in fact, it did, long after Rollei stopped making SLs).

But if you’re a Lover, well, you’ve already checked eBay and homed in on the one that’s meant to be. So, go for it. Buy it. The Rollei SL35M is a beautiful camera and a wonderful creation. It’s well made, makes all the right noises, is fun to use, and makes great pictures. You’ll love it as much as you love every other camera in your collection. Which is, a lot.

Buy your own Rollei SL35M on eBay

Buy a camera from our shop F Stop Cameras

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

The post Rollei Rolleiflex SL35M Film Camera Review appeared first on Casual Photophile.

Robert Capa’s star-studded, swashbuckling life sometimes overshadows his contributions to photojournalism. For ease of transportation, the brilliant (and, like this author, chronically asthmatic) Oskar Barnack developed the compact 35mm camera as an antithesis to the tripod-borne large format beasts of the time. Capa was among the first to take Barnack’s invention into the field and press it into professional service. “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” A clichéd axiom today? Maybe. But we shouldn’t fail to recognize Capa as a pioneer of run-and-gun shooting, a necessary skill when the photographer is quite literally working in front of a hostile muzzle.

Romantic adventurism aside, Robert Capa’s approach to the technicalities of photography are less often discussed, by himself or otherwise. Perhaps he was a mirror image of Spanish playboy Alfonso de Portago, Ferrari’s dashing racing prodigy who, by his own admission, knew little about the cars he drove and cared even less. It could indeed be argued that the rakish Capa treated his cameras as he did his lovers; a new model seemingly came and went with every conflict that he covered.

But there might be more behind that fly-by-night facade. One only has to study his kit to understand that Capa, like (or unlike) many of us, was a pragmatist when it came to his gear.

Spain and the Screw Mount Leica

1931. A young Jew named Endre Friedmann fled his native Hungary, a nation increasingly choked by creeping fascism, and landed in another country on the cusp of similar disaster. It was within the darkroom of the Berlin photo agency Dephot that Friedmann found his purpose.

His eye for composition became evident even as a lowly assistant, and eventually Dephot boss Simon Guttmann rolled the dice that would set a great career into motion. He dispatched Friedmann to Copenhagen, where the exiled Leon Trotsky was due to speak. Guttmann sent the 19 year-old on his way with one thing: a Leica II screw-mount rangefinder.

The camera that Endre Friedmann brought to Copenhagen was only the first major update of Barnack’s original fixed-lens Leica A, but its basic design would remain largely unchanged for decades to come. The Leica II was a black-enameled gem and a true pocket camera. Hold one in your hand today, and it becomes apparent why it proved a game-changer for potentially dangerous situations unfriendly to the journalist. Friedmann came away from Copenhagen with a set of photos that affirmed his talent despite his inexperience. The most iconic one is a surreptitious low-angle shot of Trotsky orating at the podium, his hands locked like talons in front of his face to make a point.

Friedmann soon made some major changes to his life. He fell in love with Gerda Taro, a fiery German-born Jew who shared both Friedmann’s talent for photography as well as his need to flee the nascent Third Reich for Paris. With Taro’s encouragement — some might say tutelage, for her own skills were already formidable — he studied photography more seriously and fashioned a new identity to improve his marketability. Endre Friedmann became Robert Capa, and Robert Capa was intent on photographing war-torn Spain.

One thing remained unchanged: the kit. Both Capa and Taro brought screw-mount Leicas with them to cover the Spanish Civil War. Based on an extant photo of Taro shooting with a chrome-plated Leica, the couple likely carried either the Leica III or the improved IIIa, released in 1935 with the addition of a 1/1000th top shutter speed. Taro’s photos from this period, which were also made on a Rolleiflex, easily rival Capa’s in their artistry and intensity. (Needless to say, her trailblazing career merits its own writeup.)

The Leica’s light weight and small form factor resulted in combat photography as it had never been seen before. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro used them to full effect, producing photos of shell-shocked casualties, civilians scrambling through towns reduced to rubble, and portraits of men and women fighting for various militias — the CNT, the POUM, the PSUC, et. al. — that formed a muddled alphabet soup of ideologies and motives.

The most famous photo, of course, is Capa’s “Falling Soldier.” A picture which shows a Loyalist militiaman seemingly captured on celluloid at the moment of death. There are probably as many conflicting accounts and theories surrounding the photo’s authenticity as there were acronyms for Spain’s combatants. While the controversy surrounding “The Falling Soldier” is beyond the scope of this article, one thing is undeniable: the image ushered forth a new era of combat photography and made Capa famous.

SPAIN. Cerro Muriano, Cordoba front. September 5th, 1936. Republican militiaman (Federico BORRELL GARCIA) at the moment of death. (“The Falling Soldier”).

But by the time Robert Capa finally left Spain, only one death was on his mind: Gerda Taro’s. While covering the end of a failed Loyalist offensive in 1937, she was killed in a freak accident after a tank collided with her amidst the chaotic withdrawal.

Capa had intended to marry Gerda. Her death would leave a permanent scar. On his next assignment, the Leicas they used together were replaced.

The Contax in Combat

The next time Capa ventured into the battlefield, it was in the Far East with a Zeiss-made Contax II. While a romantic might ascribe his abandonment of the Leica to its painful association with Gerda, from a purely technical standpoint it represents a logical upgrade to keep up with the progress of technology. Leica screw-mount cameras remained perfectly viable tools, and the line would continue until the IIIf and short-lived IIIg were finally supplanted entirely by the fabled M series in the 1950’s. But even as early as 1936, other companies were already moving in on Leica’s blind spots.

The III series from A to G invariably featured separate windows for the viewfinder and coupled rangefinder: to compose a picture, the photographer had to first look through the narrow rangefinder window to focus, then move the eye over to the viewfinder window to compose. Though successive iterations of the III would bring the two windows closer together, the combined rangefinder-viewfinder window introduced by the Contax II was more ideal. Further boasting a removable back and bayonet lens mount, the Contax’s improvements made it hard for a working photographer to resist.

Sure enough, during Capa’s coverage of the Chinese war of resistance against Japan, he can be seen debuting his new Contax kit while perched atop a knocked-out Japanese tank. It was with this camera that he made some of his most poignant photos, including a portrait of a Chinese boy soldier that would grace the cover of Life Magazine in 1938, a shot of tense citizens watching a dogfight play out above their city, and a touching winter scene of carefree children playing in the snow amid a surreal lull in the violence. And while color film was still dismissed by most professionals at the time, Capa enthusiastically experimented with Kodachrome in China.

CHINA. Hankou. March, 1938. Children playing in the snow.

Several Zeiss bodies would accompany Capa for the rest of his career. Their most famous moment would be on June 6th, 1944. As he plunged into the surf behind Allied troops assaulting the “Easy Red” sector of Omaha Beach, Capa brought two Contax IIs fitted with 50mm glass. As he describes in his autobiography Slightly Out of Focus, “The slant of the beach gave us some protection, so long as we lay flat… I took out my second Contax camera and began to shoot without raising my head.” He later recalls frantically attempting to reload his Contax soaking wet on “the ugliest beach in the world”, eventually retreating to a landing craft out of panic. (It should be noted that as he did elsewhere in life, Capa presented alternate or fictionalized retellings of events for dramatic effect in Slightly Out of Focus.)

By now the disaster that befell Capa’s D-Day negatives in Life Magazine’s darkroom has taken on mythical status, a horror story for lab technicians to tell around the campfire. As with “The Falling Soldier”, the contradictory accounts and urban legends surrounding what really happened are myriad (the accusatory finger has even been pointed toward a young Larry Burrows, then working in the darkroom as an assistant.) Until recently, various versions of the accepted narrative had been that between two and four rolls of film from the pair of Contaxes arrived at the Life offices in London. So sensational were they that the lab technicians were ordered to process them as quickly as possible; in their haste, they left the film in the dryers for too long or at too high a temperature, destroying all but the “Magnificent Eleven.”

Yet as he neared his 100th birthday, Life editor John G. Morris himself admitted the possibility that no other frames from Omaha Beach had existed in the first place. “I now believe that it’s quite possible that Bob just bundled all his 35 together and just shipped it off back to London, knowing that on one of those rolls there would be the [Omaha Beach] pictures he actually shot that morning.”

Debate continues to rage online over the veracity of Capa’s accounts and the official line taken by his publishers. Some fans and mainstream outlets still parrot the dramatic traditional narratives despite their often significant embellishments and inaccuracies, while zealous internet sleuths on the other side seem curiously invested in their attempts to discredit Capa’s work and cast doubt on his personal character.

As is often the case with events that occurred decades ago in a chaotic time, the truth probably lies hidden somewhere in between. Whatever it may be, the number of civilians in the immediate vicinity of Omaha Beach during the first waves could likely be counted on one hand — and Robert Capa took the closest pictures.

Capa retained his Contax IIs for the entirety of World War II. He also appears to have variously carried a borrowed Graflex Speed Graphic, a Rolleiflex Automat Model RF, and an earlier Rolleiflex Old Standard. Based on his body of work, Capa employed the Rollei TLRs in calmer situations that allowed for precise composition and portraiture. Some of his most impressive photos involve no action whatsoever, like his stark portraits of German prisoners-of-war.

But perhaps his most arresting photos of all — ones with authentic immediacy no one can dispute — are a sequence taken on a Leipzig balcony showing the moments leading up to Private Raymond J. Bowman’s death at the hands of a German sniper. The symbolism of Bowman’s demise just weeks before the end of the war in Europe became his namesake: “The Last Man to Die.”

The End: A Nikon in Indochina

Though Capa’s interwar years are often overlooked, they produced breathtaking color work, intimate portraits of artists from Matisse to Picasso, a misadventure in the Soviet Union with John Steinbeck, and behind-the-scenes candids on Hollywood sets.

The latter period was marked by Capa’s brief but doomed affair with the actress Ingrid Bergman. They fell deeply in love, but Capa eventually found himself reluctant to pursue the relationship further and commit to Bergman’s suggestions of marriage. The prospect of following her around from soundstage to soundstage chafed against his urge to remain untethered. It was inevitable that he would find himself on the battlefield once again. After his coverage of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, fate presented another opportunity. It would prove to be his last.

By 1954, France was clinging to its last colonial possessions in Indochina and rapidly losing ground to the Viet Minh. At the eleventh hour, Life asked Capa to fill in for another photographer who had been on the ground covering the fighting.

Gone were the Rolleis, but one final addition was made to Capa’s loadout: a Nikon S to complement his ever-loyal Contax. It may seem an odd choice at first glance. The S arguably didn’t offer a radically different or improved shooting experience over the Contax, as both cameras were aesthetically and functionally quite similar. It’s reasonable to wonder why Capa eschewed the Leica M3, which debuted that same year with such improvements as a rapid advance lever and larger viewfinder.

Simple experimentation may be the answer. The 1950s brought with them a strong Japanese challenge to the long-dominant German and American camera industries. Old hands like David Douglas Duncan were already mounting Nikkor glass to their Leica screw-mount bodies. It’s also probably no coincidence that when Capa received the cable to divert to Indochina, he was touring in Japan. (Incidentally, the colleague he replaced had initially been tasked with undoing the “diplomatic damage” caused earlier by Duncan’s frank assessment of French performance.)

On May 25th, 1954, Robert Capa accompanied French troops into the countryside of Thai Binh province with two other correspondents. His Contax was loaded with black-and-white film, the Nikon with color. Around 2:50 PM, a restless Capa left his companions behind to scout up the road in search of action. He joined another group of French soldiers patrolling a large field, tagging along behind them and taking the last photos of his life.

Then he stepped on a Viet Minh land mine buried in the dirt. The Nikon was thrown clear in the ensuing blast, while the Contax remained clutched in his left hand. The rolls of film inside had survived. Their creator had not.

Robert Capa’s legacy has inspired countless debates and dilemmas — on the role of the photographer as a passive observer or active participant in the often tragic events being documented; on the nature of the adrenaline rush that comes from combat and the void left behind in peacetime; on the blurred lines that exist between art, photojournalism, and propaganda.

But for the readers of this site, Capa’s career offers an interesting look at how one professional used his equipment and responded to the considerable technical advancements that occurred throughout his lifetime — innovations that we now take for granted. When a teenage Endre Friedmann was cutting his teeth in the darkroom, Barnack’s seminal 35mm masterpiece was still taking form. When Robert Capa met his untimely end in Vietnam, the age of the Leica Ms and SLRs that we continue to passionately discuss to this day had just begun.

We’ve all probably gone through similar mental exercises before: If Robert Capa had sidestepped that land mine and continued his work, how would he have photographed the watershed moments of the 60s and 70s? What would have been in his camera bag?

Perhaps these hypotheticals are a moot point. Like his kindred spirit Alfonso de Portago, whose own life would be cut short three years later in a hairpin turn at the Mille Miglia, Robert Capa died as he lived: fast. But he carried with him a breadth of experience and achievement that most men would take two lifetimes to dream up.

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

The post Close Focus: The Life, Work, and Cameras of Robert Capa appeared first on Casual Photophile.

Enter the Zeiss Ikon Nettar. This long-running series of medium format folding cameras encompasses twelve models, and all of them seem to end up in the outlet. I think a combination of poor care, irregular shutter speeds, and dirty lenses are the reason, but low sale prices also can’t be ignored. If it takes hours of work to salvage a camera that only sells for $50, it’s better to hand the technician a Leica rather than a Nettar. Even if the Nettar is a beautiful piece of camera history, which it is.

Starting with the lowercase “nettar” script on the front to the simple, utilitarian top plate, the Nettar is a beautiful camera. The spring-loaded folding mechanism shoots open with authority to display a Novar-Anastigmat 75mm f4.5 nestled inside a Vario shutter that has three (three!) shutter speeds. It’s made of the kind of shiny metal that Zeiss Ikon was famous for, and it’s the kind of camera that gets plenty of people to look a bit closer when you’re shooting it.

After putting maybe fifteen Nettars into boxes, I stumbled upon one in particularly good condition. The bellows, viewfinder, lens, everything seemed at least acceptable. The shutter fired, and the aperture stopped down normally as well. I’m sure I’d be horrified by the results if I used the fancy testing machines we have, but this Nettar received the prestigious “good enough” visual test.

I had been told that I was welcome to take any camera home to test, but I wasn’t going to start with a Leica or Hasselblad. A nice, cheap, simple folder was exactly what I needed. After double checking that the lens was clean, I slipped the Nettar into my bag.

Of course, this Zeiss Ikon Nettar is a viewfinder camera with no focus aid, so there’s absolutely no way to know if your shots are in focus unless you carry a tape measure around with you or measure by eye. Despite having lived in Europe for two whole weeks at that point, I was still not 100% comfortable measuring things by eye in meters. So I needed to find a solution.

My first solution was a truly dismal German-made extinction meter. No, I don’t know how the meter part of it works. I don’t think anyone does. If you do, don’t tell me. I’d rather leave it a mystery. The reason I reached for this meter was that it had a rangefinder built in. And boy, it was terrible. Dark, small, and nearly-impossible to use even on bright days.

But I persevered, and found the experience of shooting this camera absolutely cathartic. It’s a truly manual experience. You have to wind the camera while looking through a red window on the back, making sure not to wind too far or risk losing a shot. I cover my window with black tape because it doesn’t close on its own. (Maybe that’s why it was in the outlet.) Then you have to cock the shutter manually, focus through the rangefinder, set the focus on the distance scale, frame through the viewfinder, and fire. It’s a process, plain and simple, and I didn’t even mention metering. That’s a whole other step.

The photos, though, justify the entire experience. I didn’t expect much from a bargain bin camera, but that Novar-Anastigmat is incredible, even “wide open” at f/4.5. Bit of an oxymoron if you’re used to the “f/1.4 or nothing” crowd, but sometimes it’s nice to have more than one inch in focus. You can still get some nice depth-of-field at f/4.5, and the bokeh here is nice, even a bit swirly.

Overall, I was floored by the results from the Nettar. What started as a fun, quirky camera to play with gave me professional-looking results. The colors are great, contrast is punchy, and there’s basically no distortion in the 41mm equivalent lens.

Yes, it is a limiting camera, especially compared to some of the plasticky, automatic cameras I’ve reviewed for Casual Photophile. No, I wouldn’t shoot sports with it. The shutter doesn’t even go up to 1/250th, which I would say is the bare minimum for capturing motion. These limitations, though have given me a chance to breathe, appreciate the scenery, and really be sure about what I want to photograph. After all those steps, firing the shutter and hearing that click is more satisfying than the whirs of some plastic point and shoot that does it all for you.

“Ah, yes,” it says, “I’ve finished taking your photo for you, sir.” Looking at you, Samsung ECX-1 and Yashica Samurai.

A real upgrade came when my Russian coworker presented me a plastic box and said “this is for your Nettar.” I opened it to reveal… what looked like another plastic box. After a bit of fiddling, it became clear that this plastic box was a rangefinder. Not just any rangefinder, though, but one originally designed for the equally-plastic Smena 8 cameras.  My Russian coworker told me he had realigned it just for me. How sweet – a Soviet gift for my German folder.

It had a much longer base length than my previous rangefinder, so I could trust it to be more accurate, and oh BOY was it contrasty. Like Petri’s bright green reverse-contrast rangefinders, Soviet engineers thought it would be fun and cool to use purple outside the rangefinder patch. And you know what? It is cool. And it just works.

Yellow and purple are complementary colors, so viewing the yellow ghost image over the purple background is really, really easy, even in low light. Knowing that this rangefinder was adjusted by my friend and coworker, though, is the icing on the cake. My bargain bin Nettar had just received quite an upgrade indeed.

So the Nettar became an everyday carry for me. I’m used to my big, beefy Fujica GM670 for medium format. It’s a truly wonderful camera, but being able to fit a 120 camera into my pocket is a revelation. I can even carry around a little camera like my Konica Auto S3 as a light meter and it’s still smaller and lighter than my GM670. Sorry baby, there’s a second medium format camera in my life now.

With the new rangefinder, I’m able to focus more quickly and more precisely in all kinds of situations. The Zeiss Ikon Nettar accompanied me on multiple trips to Helsinki, and allowed me to carry far more stuff with me than my other medium format options. That’s nice when you’re out all day walking around with a camera bag around your back.

I also shot it at night and had a blast doing it. The simple leaf shutter makes camera shake a virtual non-factor, and the already-arduous nature of the camera pairs naturally with the similarly-slow process of long exposures.

The only real issue I’ve had with the Nettar has been how it handles Fujifilm film. Shooting Kodak film through it, I’ve had no issues. But with Fuji, particularly Pro 400H, the Nettar doesn’t seem to wind the film tight enough. I’ve had light leaks that make half of the roll unusable, which is annoying. Maybe that’s why it was in the outlet.

Regardless of little issues, the Nettar will remain in my camera collection. I’ve grown quite fond of it and its photographic process over my two months using it, and I feel responsible for its continued use after plucking it from the spare parts bin. The camera reminds me of those early days at my new job, and of the brighter days of summer. The rangefinder reminds me of my friends and coworkers, and how lucky I am. The exceptional photos are almost a bonus.

If you’re looking for a great entry into medium format, the Zeiss Ikon Nettar, or a similar folding camera, is a great place to start. It’ll force you to learn the basics of photography and camera history as well.

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The Long Road to the Rolleiflex SL66

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Rollei enjoyed remarkable success with their immensely popular line of TLR (twin lens reflex) medium format cameras, the high-end Rolleiflexes and the consumer-level Rolleicords. These twin lens reflex cameras were incredibly well-made, featured excellent lenses, and were easily capable of making beautiful images. However, the inherent limitations of the TLR camera meant that Rollei TLR cameras weren’t ideal for a variety of photographic situations or for photographers who needed a more versatile camera. Most TLRs, including Rollei’s cameras, couldn’t offer interchangeable lenses or zoom lenses, most couldn’t achieve very close focusing distances, and they could be slow and cumbersome to use. The answers to many of the troubles of the TLR camera would be found in the SLR camera (single lens reflex). 

At the same time in which Rollei’s cameras were at their peak in popularity, Swedish camera makers at Hasselblad had made great progress in creating a high quality SLR medium format camera. In 1948 they released the Hasselblad 1600 F. While this camera was made in limited numbers and proved to be quite fragile and expensive to produce, it laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most successful cameras in medium format photography. 

In 1953 Hasselblad released a much-improved version of its SLR camera. This was known as the Hasselblad 1000 F. This camera was elegant and refined, could mount numerous exceptional lenses and accessories, and had essentially solved or circumvented nearly all of the limitations of the TLR camera. In 1954, the influential American photography magazine Modern Photography reviewed Hasselblad’s new camera. They shot over 500 rolls of film through the 1000 F and intentionally dropped the camera twice, after which it continued to function perfectly. This did much to improve the reputation of the Hasselblad camera around the world, and excited many photo nerds about the prospect of owning a new SLR medium format camera. 

Seeing that the SLR was certainly a worthy rival, and possibly even a replacement to the TLR camera, Rollei began development of their own medium format SLR camera in 1955. This new Rollei SLR camera was informed by many of the design choices of Hasselblad’s undeniably excellent SLR camera. But Rollei intended to improve on the concept of the Hasselblad SLR in a number of technical ways while continuing their own legacy of extreme robustness in mechanical design. In 1957, however, Victor Hasselblad and Dr. Reinhold Heidecke (heads of Hasselblad and Rollei, respectively) reached an agreement with one another that each man’s company would not compete in the other’s market. This gentlemen’s agreement meant that Hasselblad would not create a TLR camera and Rollei would not create an SLR. 

This is an interesting moment in photographic history, for a few reasons. First, I’ve never found any evidence that Hasselblad was interested in creating a TLR, so it seems that Hasselblad stood to lose nothing by striking this deal. Conversely, Rollei had spent quite a lot of money in the development of their nascent SLR, which in accordance with the new agreement they’d be forced to abandon (or more accurately, “mothball,” as we’ll see). Rollei’s cameras in 1957 were selling extremely well, it’s true, so in the short term at least Rollei may not have perceived this agreement as one which would hobble their business. But most observers would have predicted even in 1957 (two years before Nikon released their first SLR) that SLRs were destined to be the camera of the future. It’s also intriguing that mere months later Hasselblad would release their most successful camera ever – another medium format SLR.

The 1957 release of the Hasselblad 500c would effectively cement Hasselblad as the premier medium format camera-maker for the next sixty years. Indeed, the Hasselblad 500c was in production in various forms until 2013. And this astonishingly long-lived tree of success had its seed planted in 1957, possibly during a handshake between two titans of the photographic industry.

in 1960, Heidecke died, effectively ending the gentlemen’s agreement. By 1962, development of a Rollei medium format SLR was gradually resumed, and in 1964 Rollei’s new general manager, Dr. Heinrich Peesel, urged the company’s designers to have a new SLR camera ready to be unveiled at 1966’s Photokina fair in Cologne.

Lead designers Richard Weiss and Claus Prochnow spent the next two years working to create Rollei’s first ever single lens reflex medium format camera. Importantly (at least for those of us who wonder if the products we’re using were designed and built to the absolute highest standards) the development of the camera cost 3.5 million German Marks, an amount approximate to 9 million US dollars today. The resulting 6×6 camera was unveiled as planned in 1966, and logically named the Rolleiflex SL66.

What is the Rolleiflex SL66

The first sentence in the Rolleiflex SL66 user’s manual succinctly states the intention of Rollei’s designers in making the SL66. It begins, “A camera for experts…” And the Rollei SL66 is indeed that, in ways both good and bad. It’s a camera built for pros, but it’s fully manual nature means that it’s not for the inexperienced or those who aren’t willing to learn.

While the camera’s spec sheet is impressive in that it hints at ultimate capability, what’s most interesting about the SL66 is a select few features and functions which other similar cameras simply don’t have. So, let’s start with these few stand-out features. 

The Rollei SL66 is differentiated from the Hasselblad in a number of ways, the first and most easily recognizable being the focusing mechanism. Where the Hasselblad uses a focusing helicoid in its lenses, the Rollei SL66 uses a bellows system whereby the entire lens is moved closer to or further from the focusing plane. This allows for focusing as close as 5 centimeters. Already we’re seeing the SL66’s improved versatility compared to its closest competitor at the time of its release.

Another thing that sets the Rollei apart is its ability to reverse-mount its lenses without the need of any adapters or special equipment. By simply removing the lens, flipping it around, and mounting it backwards to the lens mount, the camera is able to focus to extreme close distances for macro photography. Increased versatility, again. 

One other unique feature of the SL66 is the camera’s ability to tilt its lens up or down by 8 degrees. This interesting trick is usually only available on large format cameras or through the use of specialized tilt lenses. This tilting lens board mechanism, used in conjunction with the included Scheimpflug indicator (named after the Austrian surveyor T. Scheimpflug who formulated the mathematical rule to calculate depth of field on a tilted focal plane), allows the photographer to actively adjust the plane of focus to increase or decrease depth of field or to selectively focus in ways which other camera systems can’t. In fact, as I type these words I fing it difficult to think of a similarly-sized camera that’s capable of this action.  

Full Specifications of the Rollei SL66

• • Camera Type – Single Lens Reflex
  • Format – 6x6cm (6×4.5cm accessory back); 120/220 Roll Film (220 no longer available)
  • Models – SL66 (1966-1982); SL66E (1982-1986); SL66X (1982-1992); SL66SE (1986-1992)
  • Shutter – Mechanical focal plane shutter; 1/1000th of a second to 1 second; Bulb mode
  • Focusing – Manual focus
  • Viewfinder – Interchangeable focusing screens; Standard waist-level finder with magnification loupe; Optional metering prism (uncoupled)
  • Lenses – from 30mm to 1000mm; Made by Carl Zeiss, Carl Zeiss Jena, Rollei HFT, Novoflex, and Rodenstock; Including two leaf-shutter lenses for flash sync at all speeds (80mm and 150mm)
  • Flash – 2X PC Sockets X anf FP; Flash sync below 1/30th of a second, or at all speeds with leaf shutter-equipped lenses
  • Weight – 1.9kg with 80mm lens; 4lbs 3oz.
  • Dimensions – 156 (width) x 172 (length) x 111 (height) 

These special features, Rollei’s excellent build quality, and the robust general spec sheet all came at a high price – the SL66 cost $1,300 when it debuted. Compared to the Hasselblad’s price point of $750, this made the camera a hard sell. But hey, the thing was made in various types for almost twenty years, after which it was produced until 1992 with additional electronic improvements. Obviously someone liked it. And after using one for the better part of the year I understand why it sold, even at that higher price. 

I should also mention that even today, the Rollei tends to be priced higher than a Hasselblad with the same lens. 

Shooting the Rolleiflex SL66 Today

The Rolleiflex SL66 is heavy. Let’s get that out of the way. To be precise, it weighs 500g more than a Hasselblad 500, but 350 grams less than a Pentax 67. So, in the realm of medium format SLRs it strikes a good balance. And remember that those two cameras can’t do what the SL66 can do, for what it’s worth. And also remember that this weight is the product of Rollei’s fanatical focus on mechanical precision and quality.

It’s genuinely true that there is no camera that feels more solid or confident in the hands. Others may match it, but none are better. The Rolleiflex SL66 is a mechanical work of art made of over 1,000 different components. Its clockwork mechanisms and thickly sturdy construction dichotomously evoke both the compact 35mm Leica camera and Linhof’s large format machines. Or, if we’re reaching for non-photographic comparators, it feels like an enormous mechanical wristwatch without the delicacy; like wearing the clock of Big Ben on the wrist, if such a thing were possible. It feels like a tool, clicking and thunking and ratcheting and clacking. And all the while it looks simply beautiful. 

In practical use, there’s a strange tension between ease and methodology. For those photographers who have used an SLR medium format camera such as this, it will at once feel familiar. However even for these photographers there will be moments of pause.

The common stumble will come from the bellows-style focusing system – but not for every photographer. Rollei’s design has the focusing knob positioned on the left-hand side of the camera, just as in their TLRs. For Hasselblad shooters accustomed to quick focusing with their lens-mounted focusing rings, the Rollei will feel slow. And it is slow, comparatively. But the trade off for this lack of speed is that we’re afforded finer focusing precision, as well as a greater range of focusing distances. As mentioned, some of the Rollei’s lenses allow focusing as close as five centimeters. Just remember not to poke a finger through the exposed bellows material. That would be tragic. In the end, just as with similarly-designed Japanese medium format SLRs, the focusing methodology works fine. Whether it works better than the Hasselblad is, I suppose, a matter of taste. I personally find focusing a Hasselblad easier than the Rollei, but I value the Rollei’s focusing range. It’s a tough call. 

The camera’s focal plane shutter has its pros and cons as well. Versatile speeds, all-mechanical, durable. However, flash sync is only capable at speeds from 1/30th of a second and below. For those photographers who need flash sync at higher speeds, only two lenses are available with leaf shutters. These come in the studio-centric focal lengths of 80mm and 150mm (denoted as having a leaf shutter by the “LS” in their model names). 

The tilt mechanism is intriguing, but getting the desired results from using it can be elusive. The Scheimpflug principal is, after all, a confusing idea for those who haven’t shot large format cameras. The way that I use it is pretty simple (and admittedly a bit naive) – if I’m shooting a subject which is not parallel to the focal plane and if I want the entire subject to be in focus, I use the tilt mechanism and hope for the best. It works some of the time. And in the cases where it doesn’t work entirely, I’ve found the images made in this way are still gorgeous. Unpredictability is one of the delights of shooting film in the modern era. If I wanted clinically perfect photos I’d be shooting whatever Sony mirrorless just released last month. 

Shooting wide open and nailing focus can be a challenge, as with any manual focus camera, I suppose. But with a waist-level finder this is made even more challenging, as precise focus often means raising the camera to the eye and focusing through the magnification loupe. After that, we usually recompose the shot and in doing so it’s possible (likely) that our pin-point critical focus has been lost. This is really more of a note on using any medium format SLR handheld. It’s just tricky without an eye-prism, eye-prisms for the SL66 are expensive, and most SL66s won’t come with one. That said, spend the money and you’ll have effectively eliminated one of the trickiest aspects of using an SL66 in the field.

The mirror mechanism is one of the more advanced ever made. Like in some smaller 35mm cameras, it uses a pneumatic system to minimize mirror shake. When we fire the shutter, the mirror begins its swing slowly, accelerates, and then decelerates at the conclusion of its swing. This makes for a much finer feeling at shutter release than we have in something like the Pentax 67. And yes, it is noticeably smooth. In addition to this, the mirror features a mirror lockup mode for tripod shooting or long exposures when we want to totally eliminate as much movement as possible. There’s also multiple exposure capability, which is always fun, even if I’m terrible at multiple exposures. 

There’s no built-in metering system, unless we buy the very rare and very expensive metering prism, but even this prism mounted on the original SL66 is not coupled to shutter speed or aperture. So we might as well buy an accessory light meter to mount to the Rollei’s left-mounted accessory shoe and save some cash. If we want to get the creature comforts of built-in metering we’ll need to spring for a later model of the SL66 – the SL66E and SL66SE offer through-the-lens metering and TTL flash metering, while the latter offers spot-metering as well.

The shutter release button terrifies me. It protrudes from the front-right of the camera at an odd angle, something like 45º. I can’t help but fear that one good, accidental bump against a hard surface would sheer it right off. To its benefit, there’s a built-in cable release socket, and the release itself is lockable with a simple twist. 

The film advance and shutter speed selector are positioned on the right-hand side of the camera body, and they work as we’d expect. Actuation of each is incredibly precise and fine. The shutter speed dial slams into its detents with impressive responsiveness, and the film advance action is smooth and fluid. The controls fall where they should, and the camera is a joy to use. 

The lenses are comparable to the Hasselblad system. The short of that is – they’re world-class. With lenses from a 30mm wide-angle to a 1000mm tele and most everything in between, it’s a complete system. 

Final Thoughts

In my time shooting the Rollei SL66, I’ve had nothing but fun. It is such a charming camera. From its beautiful styling and its luxurious haptic feedback to, of course, the lovely images that it makes possible. It’s just a timeless device of real quality, and I love it. 

The list of superlatives which the Rolleiflex SL66 can claim over the other cameras in my collection is extensive. It’s the prettiest camera I own. It’s also the heaviest camera I own. It’s the most interesting camera I own and of all the cameras I own, it has the most bizarre combination of unique features. Of all the cameras I own, it’s the most challenging camera to use, possibly because it’s just so different to all the rest. Most important of all, it’s the most fun camera I own. It may even be my favorite camera! Just don’t take away the rest.  

Get your own Rolleiflex SL66 on eBay here

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

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Kyocera Corporation (President: Yasuo Nishiguchi, hereafter called “Kyocera”) has decided to terminate Contax – branded camera business. Although Carl Zeiss and Kyocera have entered into a long-term cooperation regarding the development, production and sale of Contax-branded cameras, Kyocera has decided to terminate such business due to difficulties in catching up with the recent rapid market changes.”

– Excerpt from the press release announcing the end of the Contax brand, which has remained dormant ever since.

I’ve long admired the Contax cameras of the Yashica/Kyocera era. These cameras are statements of refined, modern elegance. Their utilitarian and tasteful Porsche-designed bodies married with Japanese engineering and Carl Zeiss’ tradition of optical perfection was an impressive combination. In the years prior to Contax’s demise, they manufactured arguably some of the finest film cameras ever produced, including the T series, the G series and the Contax 645, one of the most gorgeous cameras ever made. While these cameras have remained modern and respected photographic tools even today, Contax’s last cameras, the N series, has faded into comparative obscurity. 

The first and flagship model in the N series was the Contax N1, introduced in 2000. This was a 35mm SLR camera aimed at professionals and the first in the series to use the newly designed N mount for Carl Zeiss’ auto-focusing lenses. It was followed by the Contax NX film camera aimed at advanced amateurs [reviewed here], and finally the Contax N Digital in 2002. Incidentally, the N Digital was the first professional digital SLR camera to have a full frame sensor. Unfortunately, the N series had dismal sales and by April of 2005 Kyocera would cease camera production and abandon its relationship with Carl Zeiss.

Two years ago, I was totally ignorant of the existence of the N series. Until a leisurely stroll past a Tokyo camera shop. I noticed an N1 perched on a display stand and instantly I was intrigued. Fearful that I might again succumb to dreaded GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), I scurried away. 

Shortly after my brief encounter, I found myself searching the internet on a quest to learn more about this mysterious machine. Surely, some YouTuber, photography blog, or maybe a camera historian who scribed nostalgically about Contax and its last film camera would give some insight. But there was nothing, only scattered information. This obsession inevitably led me to purchase a mint N1 with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 24-85mm for about $400 USD. The Contax N1 was finally in my possession. 

[Explore all of our Contax articles here]

Specifications of the Contax N1

• • Lens mount: N mount
  • Shutter: Vertical-travel focal-plane shutter Av and P: 32s-1/8000; Tv and M: 4s-1/8000; B: Bulb; X: 1/125; Direct X shoe contact: 1/250 second or less.
  • Shutter release: Electromagnetic release with release socket
  • Exposure control: Aperture priority; Shutter priority; Program auto; Manual exposure; TTL auto flash
  • Metering system: TTL Matrix and Center-Weighted Average at EV 0-21; Spot at EV 3-21.
  • Exposure compensation: +/-2EV (1/2 or 1/3 increments)
  • Film speed: Auto DX ISO 25 to 5000; Manual ISO 6 to 6400.
  • Auto focus: 5-point TTL, three steps auto focus compensation.
  • Viewfinder: Field of vision 95%
  • Drive modes: Single frame; continuous
  • Film advance speed: 3.5 FPS in C-mode
  • Self-timer: delay at 2 or 10 seconds.
  • Power: 1x 6v lithium 2CR5 battery
  • Dimensions: 152 x 116.5 x 69 mm
  • Weight: 795g (without battery)

Style, Build, and Use of the Contax N1

The camera is stoically handsome with its matte black finish and simple rounded lines. Despite being two decades old, it has aged well. It still looks very current. In fact, if you look at the top plate of Fujifilm’s XH-1 you can notice design cues similar to those of the Contax N1. It’s a well-proportioned camera that fits comfortably in the hands. And the camera grip is deep enough to support some of the heavier lenses for the system.

The buttons and knobs are laid out functionally and logically, with everything in its proper place. The left-mounted shutter speed dial goes from 4 seconds to 8000^th of a second. Underneath this dial is the switch for changing modes through aperture priority, shutter priority, program, manual, flash and bulb – all from the same dial. There’s a right-mounted dial as well, which controls the exposure compensation and is located next to the display panel. While this placement of shutter speed and exposure compensations dials is certainly the inverse of most common SLRs, in use this placement is functionally intuitive.

The viewfinder displays 95% of your field of view. Within the viewfinder there are 5 focusing points. Which is given priority can be controlled from a convenient joystick. When an object is within one of the focusing frames and is in focus, its frame lights red and a beep is heard. There is a built-in diopter with an adjustment range from -3D to +1D.

The N1 has three exposure metering modes, TTL matrix, center weighted average and spot that all meter the scene very effectively. Continuing the theme of threes, the Contax N1 offer three focusing modes; these are single, continuous, and manual. 

Single focusing works competently under well-lit conditions. Continuous focus functions admirably but don’t expect it to effectively track fast moving objects. I mainly use the camera in manual, where the N1 has a helpful function, one shot quick auto focusing. With a push of a button the N1 will autofocus. I use it to fine tune my manual focusing.

The Carl Zeiss Contax N Series Lenses

• • Vario-Sonnar T* 17-35mm F/2.8 *
  • Vario-Sonnar T* 24-85mm F/3.5-4.5 *
  • Vario-Sonnar T* 28-80mm F/3.5-5.6
  • Planar T* 50mm F/1.4 *
  • Vario-Sonnar T* 70-200mm F/3.5-4.5 *
  • Vario-Sonnar T* 70-300mm F/4.0-5.6 *
  • Planar T* 85mm F/1.4 *
  • Makro-Sonnar T* 100mm F/2.8 *
  • Tele-Apotessar T* 400mm F/4

* lenses which I own for the system (and have therefore influenced the opinions in this review)

I’m a snob about using primes or zoom lenses with constant apertures. So I was not expecting much from the 20-year-old, slow and variable zoom. However, when I saw the images that the lens produced, I was impressed. It had great color rendition, clarity and contrast. It’s often mentioned that Carl Zeiss’s lenses produce an almost 3D rendering because of the lenses’ so-called micro contrast. The same is true in the brand’s N mount lenses. The colors are punchy, the bokeh smooth, layered and creamy. Zeiss lenses are truly the soul of all Contax cameras.

After my experience with the zoom lens I was determined to get my hands one of the primes, as well as the only fast constant aperture zoom in the system, the Vario-Sonnar T* 17- 35mm F/2.8. My excitement was soon tempered when I saw their prices online. The Planar 50mm F/1.4 in mint condition was selling for as much as $1,000 and some of the prices being asked for the Planar 85mm F/1.4 were over $2,000. There were only nine lenses created for the N mount and the prices of the prime lenses reflect not only their quality, but their scarcity as well.

And then something miraculous happened, proving that the camera gods can be magnanimous when they want to be. Within a few short months I possessed seven of the system’s nine lenses, all in mint condition and acquired through trades, haggling and just plain luck. I did not give up a kidney to acquire them, but I know the gods can be capricious. They will demand their sacrifice eventually.

All of the lenses are remarkable. They all share the same color rendering and micro contrast pop, and they all control flare and fringing well. I especially love how Zeiss lenses render on black and white film, adding a touch more contrast. They are all excellent but the 50mm and 85mm Planar primes are standouts. They may not be the sharpest wide-open, but their bokeh evokes a dreamy vintage quality, especially when shooting portraits. They definitely have their own distinctive character. 

Contax produced an adaptor (NAM-1), that allows lenses from the Contax 645 medium format system to be mounted on N series cameras with auto-focus functionality. If you really have the taste for the extreme, when you use both the NAM-1 and the MAM-1 adaptors simultaneously you can use Hasselblad V-series lenses including C, CF, CFE, CFI, F and FE manually on N series cameras.

Closing Thoughts

The more I use the Contax N1 the more I appreciate the camera for what it is; an instrument that gets the job done. A tool that allows me to focus on taking pictures. I admit, I have fallen under the N1’s spell. Its understated and elegant good looks, modern ergonomics and simple functionality have made me a convert. It is a solid camera. Did I mention the outstanding Carl Zeiss lenses and the fact that the N1 is typically priced lower than pro-level Canon and Nikon cameras?

The Contax brand seemed to have everything in its favor – a rich legacy with top engineers from Germany and Japan who produced timeless cameras. But in the end, the joint venture between Kyocera and Zeiss just couldn’t navigate the changing photographic landscape. If the N series are fated to be the last cameras to bare the Contax name, then the flagship N1 deserves to have its moment to shine. My journey with the Contax N1 has just begun.

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

The post Contax’s Last Hurrah – My Journey with the Contax N1 appeared first on Casual Photophile.

Just ahead of one year’s conference, as I was building on a newfound love for analog photography, I purchased the famed Carl Zeiss 50/1.7 Planar for the Contax/Yashica Mount. James wrote about the 1.4 version previously, but it’s said that the 1.7 is sharper and cheaper to boot. At the time, I was working as a public high school English teacher. My salary was modest relative to the cost of living in Boston and my wife was in school full time studying to become a veterinarian. Money was stretched. Up to then, I’d never purchased a single lens costing more than $75 U.S. Having heard the Zeiss mythology, I figured that a 50mm C/Y-mount lens was a surefire way to drink the Zeiss elixir for a good benefit-cost ratio. I think I ended up buying the Planar for around $150. 

I could only buy the lens at the time and, frankly, didn’t even know where to start when it came to C/Y bodies. I planned to adapt the lens to my Fuji mirrorless, which I was still using regularly to save on film costs, get images back immediately, and continue learning how to better control my settings (live view is a tremendous help). 

My early shots with the lens were massively satisfying. The images I produced were sharp, saturated, and featured the renowned 3D pop that people speak of when they speak about Zeiss glass. All was well in mid-January, but next steps still had to be taken. The lens needed a camera.

A Ghost Story of Cameras

The next step was to find a way to use my new Planar with film. So, I ended up buying a gnarly looking Yashica FX-3. This is not a Yashica FX series review, but for reference, the FX series Yashicas use the C/Y mount and are tiny, manual SLRs. Apart from a meter, the FX-3 has virtually no special features. Mine was ratty in looks and I never got batteries for the meter, but it did what I wanted it to, which was allow me to use my Planar on film. Best of all, I purchased it bundled with a Yashica 50mm f/2 lens for just $25 total. 

The Yashica netted me some nice photos, thanks to the lens, but ultimately it did not fit the bill for an altogether great camera. With Oxford on the horizon—a prime chance to memorialize my time meandering down cobblestone streets between English Gothic buildings with my close friends—I felt the urge to buy a genuine Contax camera. 

I began my trek into the annals of Contax camera history to find which one would fit the bill. I was looking for a camera that was affordable but powerful. The previous fall, I had purchased a Nikon F2, but it turned out to be far from my ideal. I was learning (and I’m now trying to embrace the fact) that I prefer having some modern features in my analog photography. The F2 is a beautiful beast. I know its heritage and acclaim. But for me, the Nikon and its DP-12 prism are too heavy and too manual to be totally enjoyable. 

In this moment, I realize that my review of the Contax 167MT is turning into a tale of cameras past, and might fittingly be called A Camera Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Cameras. But these cameras were all for the benefit of my edification and now their ghosts are for yours. Through the misty vestiges of the F2 and the FX-3, there came into view the camera I needed: the Contax 167MT. 

Getting the Camera in Hand 

The 167MT and its incomprehensibly sub-100-dollar-pricetag called to me from eBay. I thought it’d be the best match for my waiting Carl Zeiss lens, and I now know that decision was the right one, because after shooting with the 167MT no other Contax body seems too enticing, despite the hours I’ve spent thinking about buying an RX, or the ST, or the RTSs. (And I know someone will tell me in the comments section that I haven’t really experienced the cream of the Contax crop until I’ve tried one of those, or maybe it will be the AX or the Aria, but trust me – the 167MT is no meager camera). 

Days before I left for England, the 167MT showed up at my doorstep and away we went. 

Looking back on the photos now, I’m instantly transported to those days. Revisiting these photos for this article stirs my longing even more strongly than it otherwise would, on account of the fact that COVID-19 has forced organizers to call off this year’s conference. Even now, at my desk, I imagine I’m there in the crisp March air with my Contax camera swinging around my neck as I try to keep up with my friends on our walks, pausing here and there to take a photo. 

I am there walking through the cloisters of Magdalen College with Mark, Doug, and Yoshi, us in our blazers with tobacco pipes gently smoldering. The best argument in favor of the 167MT is its ease of use relative to its capability. On our walks, I could quickly move between spot and center-weighted metering, and just as quickly flick between aperture-priority (Av), shutter-priority (Tv), and manual (M) exposure modes. There’s also three different full program modes – normal, low shutter speed, and high shutter speed. I also prefer an electronic film advance so I can shoot quickly, and the 167MT has that, too. 

Exposure Milestones 

The Contax 167MT is wicked fast, with a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000^th of a second. This means that shooting at wide apertures is possible even in bright light. Worth noting is that the 167MT was one of the first cameras ever to implement auto-exposure bracketing control, or ABC. ABC essentially takes one frame overexposed by 0.5, 1, or 1.5-stops depending on your settings, followed by a frame correctly exposed, followed by a frame underexposed by the same stop(s). In the single drive mode, you have to depress the shutter three times to cycle through one bracket, but in continuous drive the camera will take the three-shot bracket with one shutter click. For those unfamiliar with auto bracketing, the camera does not take multiple exposures on one frame but rather three different frames with different exposure values (EV) each. This helps ensure you’ll get the shot in tricky lighting. 

Importantly, the ABC feature is switched on with a rotating lever and switched off with the same lever. So, if you switch the lever to 0.5, the camera will continue taking three-shot brackets until you switch the lever back to 0. In most cases, this is probably a minor point, but it could make for unintentionally exposed shots if you forget to stop bracketing. 

The ABC lever is conveniently stacked under the exposure compensation dial which offers exposure compensations of +2 EV to -2 EV in 1/3^rd stops. Also quite convenient, the ABC feature works in tandem with the exposure compensation. So theoretically, if you knew you wanted to overexpose a composition but weren’t sure by exactly how much, you could set the compensation dial to +2 and the ABC lever to 1 and as a result you’d get a frame with EV +1, EV +2, and EV +3! Now you know you’ll have your ideal overexposure. 

This is a rather long digression on some exposure features which are now, in the digital age, rather commonplace. But in truth the 167MT’s ABC feature was groundbreaking in its day, and even now it’s not a common line item on the spec sheet of the most popular classic film cameras. As a photographer, I use exposure compensation fairly often and occasionally like the safety that bracketing provides—if I have a shot I know I want perfect, ABC gives me the peace of mind that I’ve got three chances to get it right with some systematicity. To my knowledge, only the RX, ST, Aria, and RTSIII Contax SLRs have ABC.

An additional exposure feature, the Contax 167MT offers auto-exposure lock (AEL). To my dismay, the AEL only works as a switch rather than a half-shutter freeze or separate button. This means that to lock in your exposure, you start with the spot meter, center your spot on your exposure reference, and then switch the exposure to AEL thereby preserving the spot meter reading until switched back. That this whole operation is connected to the off/on switch in a diagram of off makes the switching between settings a bit messier still. 

Exploring Oxford with the Contax 167MT 

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his 1882 book The Gay Science, “It is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful. Our first question concerning the value of a [person] is: Can it walk?” And Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the 20^th century’s greatest philosophers, famously suggested that philosophy is therapeutic. 

At Oxford, my friends and I combine the two in walking while philosophizing. Oxford is home to winding streets, austere courtyards, expansive meadows, and countless small places to feel cloistered from the world. The walk I prefer the most is one that’s a little over a mile and a half. 

You move off of High Street into the Porter’s Lodge of Magdalen College before exiting into St. John’s Quad, where there stands an ornate gate and a courtyard cobbled and tiled. At this point, you move into the College’s cloister from where you can see the Great Tower rising above through the corniced, stone windows. You make your away to Addison’s Walk which winds around the River Cherwell and Holywell Mill Stream. The Walk circumferences an expanse called the Water Meadow, and toward the far northeastern section of the walk you can move onto a new path that will take you to the Magdalen Fellows’ Garden. 

That path then finds its terminus in a clearing, holding a small pool and a bench of one halved log on two stone half-circles. We’ve spent hours sitting here, talking, pacing, and standing. And all the while, on this one particular trip, I had my 167MT in my hands or hanging at my chest. 

Handling is superb. Right away, my hands find the grips on the back and front of the camera. My thumb rests naturally in the back grip and my fingers curl around the cradle of the front grip. The back of the film door has aggressive striations to keep the camera locked in place, even with a casual grip.

This may seem insignificant to some, but the way a camera handles is extremely important to me. I don’t want something that hurts to hold or feels awkward. I also don’t want something over-engineered. And please spare me the sticky rubber which inevitably deteriorates in time; I’m thinking of my new Minolta a7, which I just had to thoroughly scrub with rubbing alcohol to remove the rubber entirely since it had become a gross, sticky mess. The 167MT’s ergonomics are ideal. The rubber is solid, clean, and just the right amount of grippy. The grips themselves provide rests for my fingers so that I hardly notice holding the camera while shooting. 

On my Oxford romps, the camera felt electrifying to use. Maybe it was the perfect spring day getting to me on the day I arrived in Oxford, but walking and shooting with the 167MT felt as natural in my hands as my boots did on my feet. 

Focusing is also a breeze. I’m notoriously less-than-flawless at nailing focus with SLRs. For some reason, I just can’t seem to tell when I’ve hit perfect focus. While I still miss here and there with the 167MT, that is purely due to my own failings. The stock focusing screen is bright and the viewfinder magnification is a respectable .82x with 95% image coverage. The screen also features a split-image circle surrounded by a microprism ring. Altogether, there are multiple aids for manual focusing. Thanks to these aids, I felt like I produced photo after photo on my visit that captured excellent focus. 

Sadly, for many, there are a great deal of pubs in Oxford that serve only English beers. As an American, I am inundated at every restaurant and bar—which seem like a distant memory by this point—with craft beers. Like anyone subject to peer pressure and capitalist propaganda, I myself have developed a preference for craft beers. Luckily, in the north of Oxford on St. Giles’ street, there exist a few pubs that offer a more international selection. The Lamb and Flag is one such pub. Aside from pretty well supplied taps, they also have fridges around the corner from the entryway bar that are stocked with innumerable Belgian beers. 

So, in the Lamb and Flag, around pints of Deliriums and Orvals, I need to shoot wide open at f/1.7 to compensate for the quintessential pubbish darkness. Even when shooting wide open, though, I still managed to nail focus where a friend’s eye closest to me is sharp while a half inch to the eye’s left and right begin to soften. It may have been luck, or it may have been the magnification, microprism, and split-image. 

The Contax 167MT is functionally high-class. I feel that it allows me to think for myself while shooting but provides me all the implements I need to do that. Even the thoughtfully designed viewfinder exposure readout is helpful. On the pentaprism hump, just above the iconic Contax logo, the camera has an elongated oval window which uses ambient light to illuminate the exposure settings and frame count in the viewfinder. However, when you half-depress the shutter button, the readout glows with a soft orange light, easy-to-read even in the dark. 

The camera is just dang cool. It’s tough, features the classic Contax edge and corner smoothing, and looks sexy in its black lustre. Even the blue LCD screen on the top is somehow better looking than any other top-plate LCD I’ve seen. While walking around with it, even I, an academic wearing a wool blazer and talking about some obscure philosophy terms with friends who look equally esoteric, can look cool. 

All Good Things

The camera is amazing, and I genuinely love it. But it’s imperfectly perfect. My main gripe with the camera is not that it doesn’t have a multiple-exposure capability (eye-roll emoji) or that it relies on an electronic shutter, but rather its control system. For a camera that is otherwise beautifully and effectively designed, the controls are far from ideal. 

Aperture, of course, is controlled on the C/Y lenses themselves and, as I mentioned, the exposure compensation gets its own dial. But unfortunately, the shutter, ISO, and exposure mode are controlled using some combination of a slide triggers and buttons. For the exposure mode and the ISO, you have to hold down either the ISO or MODE button and then flick through your options using a little slider on the other side of the camera. When in Av, Tv, or M modes, you’ll need to use that same slider to flip through shutter speeds, which can be confirmed on the LCD screen on the other side of the camera. 

This fiddling with a slider is not ideal and some simple changes could have been made to the camera controls that would have made it essentially perfect. It’s as simple as adding a dial designated for the shutter, with the drive mode stacked underneath it (identical to the exposure compensation and ABC control stack). After this, just make the exposure mode button work without the slider since there are only six exposure modes to flip through, and it wouldn’t be cumbersome to rotate through the whole list if need be.   

Is the Contax 167MT perfectly functional without a dedicated shutter dial? Sure, but it’s these small design shortcomings that keep the 167MT from being totally supreme. All in, the camera helped me preserve a single perfect week in a place where my spirit feels at home. For that week at least, it really was the camera I was looking for all along. 

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