Hartblei Lens on Contax 645

[gstitt.docz]

Recently I purchased a Contax 645 and am presently enjoying the process doing my first shooting with it.  Whenever I buy a new camera, I always immediately look around to see what kinds of lenses and other accessories are available for it.  While doing that, I ran across the Hartblei 45mm Super-Rotator lens, which of course is available with a Contax mount.

Michael Reichmann's description of the lens on the Luminous Landscape website piqued my interest, but also raises a question.  You can of course always meter by hand, but he mentions that with some cameras you can use "match-needle" metering, by which I assume that he means stop-down metering.  Unfortunately, he doesn't mention whether it is possible to do this with the Contax 645.  Does anyone know?  All of the lenses I own for it right now are Zeiss Contax, so they just couple to the body.  I looked through the manual, but there is no mention of it one way or the other; I think they just assume that you are using Contax lenses.  I know that I can always hand meter, but I find through-the-lens metering so much more convenient (especially when using filters) that I'd be much more inclined to buy the lens if it is possible to do stop-down metering.

Of course, there are various adapter rings available for the Contax 645 to enable the use of Hasselblad and Pentacon 6 lenses, so this question really applies to those lenses as well.

Any help with this question would be appreciated.

[mikeseb]

I have both the Contax 645 and the Hartblei Super-Rotator. You'll have to meter in manual mode by choosing your shutter speed and then turning the lens' aperture ring until the camera's meter display indicates proper exposure. Since there's no auto-diaphragm function with this lens, the lens aperture actually gets smaller while you meter, so your field of view thru the viewfinder will get darker and darker....Kinda demonstrates why the auto-diaphragm feature is so handy--tough to see anything at f/32!

I'm not wild about the lens, notwithstanding Michael's more favorable review here some time ago. I find it very soft in the corners, adequate but not stellar in the center, regardless of aperture. Some have suggested this is because Michael's images were taken with his digital back, which only "uses" the center sweet spot of the lens, while mine were on (full-field) film. Maybe so. But the lens is a definite step down from the Zeiss optics you're used to.

I have no experience with the other lenses you mentioned, but I imagine the metering procedure would be the same.

[gstitt.docz]

Michael:

Thank you for your reply.  Since you have some experience with this lens, perhaps you can answer another question for me.

I've done a bit of shooting with a 4 X 5 view camera, so I have a little experience with the use of shifts and tilts.  In this situation, you can of course focus by plunking the magnifier right down on the ground glass and making sure that everything is exactly as you want it at all points in the frame.  In the case of the Contax 645, or a 35mm camera for that matter, you obviously can't do that.  So how do you know when you've really got the tilts set the way you want?  How do you know when everything is in focus that you want to be in focus?  Those questions have always left me a little sceptical about Perspective-Control lenses for non-sheet film cameras, which is why I've never bought such a lens for my Nikon bodies, even though Nikon makes them.  What's your experience with this?  Is it possible that some of the softness in the corners that you mention might be a result of the difficulty in setting the tilts correctly?

Just wondering, since I'm still trying to decide whether or not to give this lens a try.

[mikeseb]

So how do you know when you've really got the tilts set the way you want?  How do you know when everything is in focus that you want to be in focus?  Those questions have always left me a little sceptical about Perspective-Control lenses for non-sheet film cameras, which is why I've never bought such a lens for my Nikon bodies, even though Nikon makes them.  What's your experience with this?  Is it possible that some of the softness in the corners that you mention might be a result of the difficulty in setting the tilts correctly?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=69863\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You may well be right. I have wondered the same thing myself. I also have view-camera experience so I thought I understood the principles at work, but translating those principles to a tilt-shift lens I found difficult. I wonder if I was not dramatically over-correcting when dialing in lens movements. Given that others have had acceptable, even good, results with this lens makes me thing the problems I'm having may lie on my side of the film plane!

It is possible to watch through the viewfinder (at least with the aperture wide open) as you dial in your corrections, but this is somewhat more awkward than doing the same thing with a view camera. Maybe I need more time to acclimate to the lens!

Let me know about your experiences should you decide to go forward with this experiment.