[Leica] Re: Contaxi or Contaces

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

At 11:11 AM 5/31/06 -0400, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:

>But while I agree that the Contax II and III cameras were workhorses, I 
>strongly disagree that the Contax IIa shutter was inferior. Indeed the 
>post WW2 redesign by Zeiss Ikon, Stuttgart, eliminated the cloth tape 
>weak link of the previous generation Contax II and III shutters.

> Better from a users standpoint, the 
>rangefinder baselength was reduced to 73 mm (still longer than that of 
>the Leica M3). This permitted faster focusing while still providing 
>more than adequate accuracy for fast lenses.
>
>If you can provide any evidence for your absurd statement that the 
>Contax IIa shutter was designed for only 10,000 exposures, I would like 
>to see it. In the hands of a normal working professional, a camera with 
>a lifetime that short would last only three months. 


>Even Steven Gandy (www.cameraquest.com) 
>concurs that the IIa shutter is an advance and probably more reliable 
>than the ones that came before. Now if you had said that the shutter of 
>the Contax I would only last 10,000 exposures, I might agree.
>
>As far as the patent chestnut goes, let me quote a 1945 article by  A. 
>Kraszna-Krausz, a well known photography writer and critic of the era:
>
>"The Leica came first, the Contax was second. The designers of the 
>Leica had done much valuable pioneering work that benefited the 
>designers of the Contax. At the same time, the makers of the Leica, 
>having priority, could acquire a number of strategic patents, thereby 
>forcing the makers of the Contax to find new solutions of problems 
>whether they wanted to or not. Consequently while some features of the 
>Contax may represent an advance on the corresponding ones of the Leica, 
>others are just virtues by necessity."


Larry

In order:

First, the IIa/IIIa shutter retained the use of cloth tapes, though these
were thinner than those used on the I/II/III.  As the premier Contax
historian, Hans-Jurgen Kuc, sets out in II ON THE TRAIL OF THE CONTAX 39,
"Like earlier models (Contax II), the Contax IIa's shutter curtains moved
on fabric belts".  I can scan and send you some engineering drawings
showing the curtain tapes if you wish.

The rangefinder in the IIa/IIIa was less clear than that in the earlier
cameras and was substantially less accurate than the earlier design, to the
point where it was only marginally suuitable for the 1.5/50 and 2/85
Sonnars wide-open, a reality acknowledged by Zeiss Ikon in their literature
and marketing.  

Second, please quote me correctly when responding.  I stated that the
Contax IIa shutter was designed to last 10,000 frames between services, not
that that was its total life.  (By comparison, the 36hp VW engine was
deisgned to last 150,000km between valve jobs, with a total life of
450,000km -- these are just design guidelines.)  And the Contax IIa/IIIa
were not intended for professional use and were not so marketed and saw
very little such employment.  The limiting factor was the aluminium used on
the shutter slats which were made out of aluminium and which were much
weaker structurally than the brass slats used on the I/II/III shtuters.  It
was the selection of aluminium which caused Zeiss Ikon to not market the
Postwar cameras professionally.

I have solid respect for Stephen Gandy but his site often has statements
without foundation and I question his expertise as a camera technician or
engineer.  I have been inside these cameras:  have you, or he, ever done
the same?  I am not an engineer but I have seen the difference in
construction quality at first hand.  I have done minor repairs on a IIa and
have completely overhauled a II, and, yes, the cameras worked when I got
them back together, and, no, there were no parts left over from either <he
grins>.

Bear in mind that Zeiss Ikon in 1937 was extremely wealthy and had ready
access to any material it needed, as it was seen as the symbol for German
engineering and was thus a pet of the Nazi government.  Zeiss Ikon in 1950
was essentially bankrupt and had no access to any regular source of prime
materials.  Germany's steel industry was barely functioning at this time,
brass was just not available, and only aluminium was in ready supply,
though there were huge quality problems in the aluminium supply.  (The
ratty condition of the German metals industry at this time was a major
concern for the US government, incidentally, and Dean Acheson spent a lot
of time trying to revive it.)  Zeiss Ikon did want to revive the Contax as
it was seen as its prestige model but the constraints of the Postwar fiscal
and economic realities forced them to make compromises in design and
materials which compromised the overall quality of the product.  It was not
that the IIa/IIIa were BAD cameras:  they just were not of the quality and
longevity of the Prewar cameras.

Third, a single dated source does not prove your point about patents.
Zeiss Ikon held multiple patents on horizontal cloth shutters, so I am not
certain that Leitz would have been able to patent their design without
running afoul of the Zeiss Ikon patents.  In any event, as Jason Schneider
pointed out twenty years back, Zeiss Ikon just decided to do things
properly, in their estimation, so they did almost everything differently
from the Leica design.  And the designer of the Contax, Heinz K?ppenbender
maintained throughout his life that he simply had never considered any
other design than a vertical metal shutter (see I Kuc 63).  Late in his
life, K?ppenbender was asked about the patent myth and his response was
that it had never come up and that he doubted that Leitz could have held a
valid patent.  He went on to point out that Leitz was struggling
financially at that time and that had Zeiss Ikon wanted to use a horizontal
cloth shutter and had Leitz tried to stop them, that Zeiss Ikon simply
would have bought the Leitz concern -- Leitz was something on the order of
5% of the size of the Zeiss Foundation, if that.

There is no question that Zeiss Ikon aimed the Contax to compete with the
Leica but that just meant that they went back to basics and decided upon
design features quite different from those adopted by Barnack.  The
original Contax was intended to be introduced in 1931, though construction
problems delayed this until the Leipzig Fair in 1932.  Had the Contax met
its original timeframe, it would have beat Leica in marketing a camera with
an inbuilt rangefinder and standardized interchangeable lenses;  as it was,
it lost out on the standardized lens mount by some months to the Model C
Leica I and tied the Model D Leica II in introducing the inbuilt RF.

One final comment:  neither the Zeiss Ikon nor Zeiss legal departments seem
to have been queried about a possible patent conflict when the Contax was
being designed in the late 1920's.  Even if there had been a conflict,
Zeiss Ikon does not seem to have worried about it as they had, from the
get-go, opted for what they regarded a design superior to that of the Leica.

Marc

msmall@aya.yale.edu 
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!