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Author Topic: Contax made everything right with the 645...  (Read 1392 times)

ErikKaffehr

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Contax made everything right with the 645...
« on: December 01, 2009, 12:17:20 am »

Hi,

I got the impression that everything was fine the Contax 645 system, except that they are no longer around.

Some reflections?

Best regards
Erik
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Erik Kaffehr
 

vgogolak

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Contax made everything right with the 645...
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2009, 07:40:54 pm »

Although I use and like the Contax 645 I was curious about your post. Are you considering it? It may be a 'dead' system, but there are three important facts: there is a lot of "New " stock around as well as many used, secondly there is repair by Kyocera for 10 years (and many repair shops can do simple CLA, I understand) and lastly, they rarely break.
As you can read here, pros that use it are staying with it, some are buing it now, The latest Phase One cP65+ comes in this mount, as does many new items like the leaf and Hartblei.
The lenses are great, REALLY great, and the system's one small weakness is in slower AF than some of the latest Hassrey, Mamyia and now Leica-but not by much.

In the end, it is built and behaves like the Mercedes of cameras, and has Zeiss designed and QA/QC lenses.

Prices are fair. If I were evaluating a new MF system, I would actually consider it again.

But I don't have to-I have it and use it as my main camera system (Oh and the Hasselblad V lenses work well, even with focus confirm.!)

regards
Victor
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bradleygibson

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Contax made everything right with the 645...
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2009, 03:50:42 am »

Contax was a great system which is still viable for many applications, IMHO.

Biggest complaints about it are that it's not still in production, and never got revved to the 645AF II and thus retained a somewhat failure-prone shutter (in high volume workflows) and slow AF.

Ergonomics are excellent, size is great, accessories are vast and varied.  Works with rechargeable batteries, has a vertical grip, bellows, waist-level finder, and the list goes on.

Good lens lineup, particularly the 35mm, the 120 APO macro and 350mm.  The 210 and to a lesser degree the 140 are softer lenses.  One issue is that shutter vibration is fairly high, such that telephoto shots can be impacted without fairly signficant reinforcment/tripod stabilization.

All in all, I feel it's a real shame this system went out of production.
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-Brad
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