Re: Leica Alternatives

[Paul Schliesser <paulsc@eos.net>]

>Lipinski, author of the very famous book " Miniature and precision 
>cameras" has made a screw by screw analysis of the Contax and concluded 
>that its 'enormous mechanical complexity' makes it more susceptible to 
>wear and dust.

Erwin,

From what I've read, the reson for the Contax shutter's complex design 
was that Leitz patents limited the available options that the Zeiss Ikon 
designers had.

On the other hand, the Contax rangefinder not only had a longer baseline, 
but was considerably more elegant in design than the Leica rangefinder, 
had fewer parts, was less fussy to adjust and was better at staying 
adjusted. One thing that I always found impressive is that they used gold 
instead of silver on the reflective surfaces inside the 
rangefinder/viewfinder. Light that passes through a semi-reflective gold 
mirror is green in color, light that is reflected is gold in color. In 
the rangefinder spot, this gives you one greenish and one orangey image; 
when the images coincide, the two colors cancel each other out and the 
color casts vanish. If you are even slightly off in focusing, you can see 
green- and orange-colored fringes on opposite edges of your subject. The 
LTM cameras had optional, miniature colored filters for the little round 
rangefinder windows, which did something similar.

I've used a IIIc at length, and I have a Kiev rangefinder that is similar 
to a Contax III. If I had the choice between an LTM camera and a Contax, 
the Contax would win, no contest. However, I'd choose the M-series 
cameras over the Contaxes. It's unfortunate for Zeiss Ikon that they had 
to spend a lot of their post-war development efforts basically getting 
back to where they were before the war. I think that if Zeiss and Leitz 
had had more evenly matched camera systems in the 1950s, the evolution of 
the interchangeable-lens rangefinder camera would have been much more 
interesting.

When I first started hearing about the Contax G1 I was pretty excited, 
thinking that it would have an optical rangefinder.

- - Paul