As an amateur for more years than I care to remember, I've owned/tried a great many cameras in 35mm and medium format, but find myself "between equipment" at the moment. I plan to stay with 35mm and am trying to decide whether to expand my Nikon equipment or move to Contax. I used to have a Nikon F4 but sold it (sometimes wish I hadn't) and bought an F60 body a couple of years ago, just to make use of my remaining 28-70 zoom (which I want to keep for sentimental reasons) and my excellent 85mm/1.8AF. The F60's OK as a film transport unit, but no great shakes as cameras go, IMO. Trouble is, there's nothing much that appeals to me in the Nikon range right now, which is why I didn't buy back in to Nikon above the F60 last time (maybe the F5 does appeal a little, but don't really need an 8fps/zillion-buttons-and-wheels-automatron or want to carry around a small sub-station to keep my back-up batteries charging), although AF has some appeal on account of my eye-sight not being what it was. I'm coming around to thinking that the Contax RX holds the most appeal for me, for apparent build quality and some choice prime lenses and wondered how any users out there find the electronic range-finder gizmo in practice? I mainly shoot portrait/people pics, some travel (my Ricoh GR1s suits me just fine for that, being too lazy to carry a sack of kit around a city!), plus places, buildings, landscapes - that sort of thing. I don't shoot sports or fast-moving natural history subjects much, so am looking at probably 3 prime lenses - the 28/2.8, 50/1.4 and 85/1.4 (and maybe the 1.4 extender for this later to give me a near 130/f2 option if I need it, without carrying undue extra luggage). Any info from users on the quality/handling/reliability of the RX would be appreciated! Thanks.

-- Nick Cooper (nickpcooper@btinternet.com), August 07, 2001

Answers

Hmmm. It's been three days now since you asked your question, Nick. I couldn't think of any of the regular inhabitants of this forum who is a Contax buff, and it looks as though we may not have any.

The Contax SLR mailing list has been having all manner of technical woes recently, and the folk there have just (in the last few hours) regrouped to a new forum:

http://www.beststuff.com/forum/list.php?f=5

You might do best to cross-post your question there.

Later,

Dr Owl

-- John Owlett (owl@postmaster.co.uk), August 10, 2001.

Hi John

Many thanks for the link....I'll head off in that direction now!

Nick

-- Nick Cooper (nickpcooper@btinternet.com), August 10, 2001.