The Contax 645 is clad in an attractive polycarbonate that’s grippy and built upon a rugged, durable hybrid chassis that’s mostly metal. On the back of the grip is the clever focus-mode control with a button that lets you focus manually even if you’re in single or continuous AF mode. The pale-green-illuminated LCD readouts below the viewing area provide large and legible vital information: battery status, frame number, meter-pattern icon, flash-OK and focus-OK signals, aperture and shutter speed numerals, and a manual-exposure scale that automatically appears whenever manual-exposure mode, pre-flash, or exposure compensation is used. The viewfinder on the Contax 645 is a joy to look out of and seems brighter and more contrasty than the Pentax and Mamiya equivalents I’ve played around with. The pioneering modular autofocus design is based on a slim main body section with built-in grip, where all major components, including AF lenses with built-in motors, 120/220 film and digital backs, and prism and waist-level finders attach, and interface electronically by means of gold-plated contacts. All the controls are well laid out and intuitive, to me it’s one of those cameras you could just pick up and use without a manual. When it debuted back in ’99, the Contax 645 was hailed as the first modular, medium-format, autofocus SLR, a masterpiece of mechanical and electronic integration, and praised for its handsome design, excellent balance, superb full-information viewfinder, and ergonomic controls.
#CONTAX 645 ZEISS 80MM F2 MANUAL#
Film-speed Range: ISO 25 – 5000 on automatic and ISO 6 – 6400 on manual.Metering: TTL spot metering (standard equipped.) Center-weighted average light metering (when prism finder is equipped).Autofocus System: single autofocus (S) and continuous autofocus (C).Exposure-Control Modes: Aperture-priority auto exposure, shutter-speed-priority auto exposure, manual.Type: 6 x 4.5cm format focal-plane shutter AF SLR.When the camera system was unceremoniously discontinued in 2005, legendary status was cemented. Let’s take a closer peek.
#CONTAX 645 ZEISS 80MM F2 PROFESSIONAL#
It was an ambitious foray in the professional portrait and wedding world where medium format was king (at the time) and competed against the likes of the Pentax 645N and Mamiya 645 AF. If you need a quick refresher, the Contax 645 is a 6×4.5cm medium format, autofocus film camera introduced by Kyocera under the Contax brand on February 20th, 1999 in Japan. So when the opportunity arose to take one out for a spin for the weekend, I felt like a fat kid in a cake store. Thanks to several high profile photographers using the Contax 645 as their main camera even to this day, it has garnered a high amount of praise among the film shooter community. It is a medium format legend that many a photographer have gotten aroused at the thought of owning one.
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