Whether a Contax or an H2 is a better choice for someone is completely and subjectively up to that individual. There are differences in lenses, sync speeds, ultimate shutter speeds, etc.
I personally find the H2 simple to use. The notion of "things buried in menus" doesn't hold with me. If I want to change auto focus, shutter speed, aperture, etc., all of those controls are at my finger tips with no menus. Indeed, many younger photographers, and for sure, future photographers may find "knobs" totally counter-intuitive. Who's to definitively say a "knob" is better than a dial or a button?
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Steve,
You and I have had this discussion a lot and your right, some of this is just personal likes or dislikes.
A lot of people use an H- series and are happy. Me, well I think it's an ugly camera and I guess that shouldn't matter but just like a Pontiac Grand Am will get your there just as well as a BMW, I'm also not going to drive a Grand Am.
Personally I think what irks people about the H-1 is not the menus, or the lcd's or even the occasional lock up. What seems to bother most people about the H-1 is is doesn't feel, look, or work like a Hasselblad and I'm not talking old guys, I find this across the board, actually the younger assistants I work with dislike it more than a lot of photogrpahers.
Still, Canon and the 1ds did not take the medium format market from Hasselblad, Contax, Phase, Leaf or Sinar. Those makers gave the medium format market to Canon by not producing a portable, stable, higher iso back at a medium price point at the time Canon introduced the 1ds, even the 1ds2.
I started with digital early and would have bought a (then) Imacon, Leaf, or Phase if any of them had an lcd, shot a fairly sustained frame rate, had an iso that was useable above 100 (real iso by the way, if anyone know what real iso is) and didn't cost 3 to 4 times what the Canon 1ds cost.
Sadly the P-30 wasn't available then and I believe had it been, definately Contax would still be around, RZ's and Mamiya's would be selling and maybe the H system wouldn't have started to morph into a single proprietary digital camera.
It doesn't matter because Contax is gone, mamiya seems to be holding on by a thread and we have all this talk of a new Rollei, err, excuse me, Franke and Heinke, err, excuse me, Sinar/Leaf camera that as of today does not have announced prices, lens ranges, or exact dates of availability.
I do know this. If the medium format companies keep going down this same road it will be an all Canon world.
JR