
Add to.The Contax G2 is like no other rangefinder on Earth. Waterproof and durable decal with strong adhesive makewithfilm. Contax G2 Camera vinyl sticker, Vintage analog film camera stickers for photographers. Some say it was a rich man's point and shoot, with a few more bells and whistles.Add to. It's rare, it has the pedigree of Contax and the devoted love of street photographers everywhere. Ever since I immersed myself in the world of film cameras, the Contax G2 35mm rangefinder in black was a grail camera.
Contax G2 Users' Guide 06 November 2009. Contax G2 Full Review 06 November 2009. Contax G2 top panel (the G2 is also at the top of the page). But in spite of these radical departures from the classic formula (or rather, because of them) the Contax G2 is one of the most impressive rangefinders in the world, and one of the best 35mm film cameras ever made.Contax G2 (1996-) bodies top.
Rather suddenly, I was shooting a G2.We discuss our experience with Contax G cameras. But when my pal at the local camera shop dangled one from behind the counter and offered a potent discount, I couldn’t resist. The cost of entry, coupled with a misplaced belief in the internet myth that they’re prone to breaking and utterly unfixable in such an event had me regarding them with a cocked eyebrow and a shrug.
I can’t seem to part with it, and I use it whenever I want guaranteed results. As other masterful machines come and go, the G2 stays. Since then, it’s become the camera I’ve owned for the longest span of time. Techart’s Firmware Upgrade App: Techart’s Firmware Upgrade App for Android and iOS allows. Techart has released firmware update v2.0.1 that adds Sony a7RII PDAF support for their Techart GA-3 Contax G to Sony E-mount AF Smart Adapter (available at eBay Amazon). Delivering wee.Great news for anyone using Contax G glass on their Sony a7RII cameras.
My basic interests are portraits,But the G2 isn’t just a good camera that’s capable of making good photos. After keeping my finger away from the shutter for years, I wish to shoot pictures again. Point it, shoot it, and as long as you understand and employ a basic knowledge of the things that make a photograph decent, you’ve made an excellent shot.
Plenty of cameras can make good photos. But when talking about what elevates a camera from a good camera to a truly special camera, the ability to make a good photograph is almost beside the point. Like the Contax, as long as the shooter knows how to make good photos, the Canon 5D will make good photos. The G2 is much more than that.A Canon EOS 5D Mark IV is a good camera.
The body eschews superfluous flair, adhering to a more business-like identity. Like all of the best designs, things are kept simple and details are well-managed. The titanium body was produced in three finishes (champagne, black paint, and black chrome), and in any of the three it cuts a figure. And the Contax G2 is very near to the essence of what makes a camera a fantastic machine.To start, it’s gorgeous. It’s to experience a fantastic machine while making good photos.
But hidden under this dial is the camera’s automatic bracketing switch, a useful but far less-often-used control. This burying of secondary controls results in a design that’s deceptively simple, yet immediately accessible for shooters doing more acrobatic photography.For example, the large exposure compensation dial (which thankfully foregoes any annoying locking system) is found right where it needs to be, and will see heavy use when we’re shooting in the camera’s aperture-priority auto-exposure mode. More notably, these controls are arranged in a most intelligent way, with secondary adjusters positioned near or within other adjusters. The top plate, at first appearing simple, is loaded with controls. What’s here is, essentially, a streamlined brick.Its ergonomics are deliberate and intuitive. But given the camera’s 1995 release date, we should all be happy it’s not sporting a couple of plastic hood scoops and ground effects.
And even when a buyer deliberately chose C amera X because it had the best viewfinder for, say, 50mm lenses, that shooter would be compromising anytime a non-50mm lens was fitted to the machine.Be honest frame-lines are dumb. Even as technology progressed, the rangefinder viewfinder lagged behind, creating an environment in which a rangefinder fan needed to choose which camera he wanted to use based on the lenses he was likely to shoot. In the past, rangefinder viewfinders were extremely limited. Still, compared to other rangefinders, the G2 is among the most modern in control implementation, making it as fast and easy-to-use as the best DSLRs.This modernization of the rangefinder formula extends to the camera’s decidedly non-rangefinder-ish viewfinder. The manual focusing wheel lands under the middle finger of the holding hand, allowing one-handed focus and shutter release.This one-handed methodology isn’t complete aperture controls are strictly handled via a classic manual ring around the barrel of G mount lenses. Focusing controls are relegated to a perfectly positioned button on the back of the camera, a button which naturally rests under the shooter’s thumb and which not only allows focusing, but also toggles focusing method between single, continuous, and manual focus modes.
The only thing missing is a readout of the selected aperture, the inclusion of which would have made this viewfinder effectively perfect.In use there’s very little to complain about. There’s a backlit LCD display in the bottom of the frame that shows the manually- or automatically-selected shutter speed, a light reading in manual mode with suggested adjustment arrows, exposure compensation status, a digital focus indicator when using auto-focus and an analog-style focusing scale when using manual focus, and the whole LCD display flashes to show when a photo’s been shot (useful in noisy situations). The viewfinder also automatically compensates for parallax error for close focusing, and features a diopter adjustment.In addition to this optical wizardry, we’re treated to nearly all the information we could ever ask for. Fit the Vario-Sonnar zoom and we’re able to immediately see the changes in framing as we zoom from 35mm to 70mm, and at every increment between. Fit a 28mm lens and the viewfinder immediately changes to show the world as seen through the viewing angle of a 28mm lens. Shoot a 90mm lens on a Minolta CLE and tell me the rangefinder viewfinder isn’t fundamentally flawed.The G2 essentially reinvents the rangefinder viewfinder and brings it into the modern age, or more accurately, it updates the rangefinder viewfinder to a level of capability that SLR shooters have enjoyed for more than half a century.
It might miss one or two frames out of 36, sure autofocus technology is imperfect, even in 2018. There’s virtually no hunting or waffling, even in low light (though shooters should expect longer lenses, like the 90mm Sonnar, to take a bit longer than the 45mm or 28mm). Half press the shutter release and it focuses. It knows what you want to do, and it does it.
Even in a beachside photo shoot with heavy backlighting, the G2 picked her out with the same frequency of missteps as experienced with my Sony a7. But now that she’s three years old and running faster than Sonic the Hedgehog, the G2 still nails the shot. Not bad.For the first year of G2 ownership, my daughter was pretty slow.
Contax G2 Portraits Manual Focus Is
Manual focus is controlled via a wheel on the front of the camera. Especially impressive when considering the camera’s birth-year.When we switch to manual focus, things aren’t as pleasant, and this is the only measure by which the G2 is bested by classic rangefinders. These two focusing systems work in conjunction to provide a really capable auto-focusing system. The G2 uses this same system, but also incorporates a second, active infrared triangulation system.

In fact, the standard 45mm Planar was for a time the world’s highest-rated standard focal length lens in certain publications, and Zeiss fans won’t let anyone forget it. And shooters who understand how to meter with a half-press and recompose, or those who understand how exposure compensation works, should get 36 perfect frames per 36-exposure roll of film.These exposures happen though a suite of Carl Zeiss T* lenses that are among the best ever made. Even mindless shooting in aperture-priority auto-exposure will yield an impressive hit rate.
