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The Contax AX is another luxury camera from Kyocera's partnership with Zeiss. As I mentioned in my post about the RX, Kyocera wanted to enter the auto-focus market but Zeiss resisted because they didn't want to compromise their lens designs. So around 1996, Kyocera came up with an ingenious compromise and introduced the Contax AX.
The Contax AX used the same manual focus lenses but achieved AF by moving the film plane and mirror/viewfinder assembly inside the camera! It's ingenious, but the unfortunate result is that the Contax AX is massive. AF is accurate but not exactly swift, since the camera has to move the entire film plane, mirror box, and viewfinder assembly in very, very fine increments to achieve focus.
I have a love-hate relationship with this camera. Technologically, it's a sweet camera, as advanced as they come, the culmination of just about everything Kyocera knew about making high end cameras and other things, such as the ceramics and USM motors used in the AF assembly. It's built like a tank and feels as expensive as it once was. It allows you to use some of the finest glass in the world along with AF. But it's just so freakin' huge! It's heavy and uncomfortable to use for even brief periods of time.
I have a lot of other Contax cameras, but if the Contax AX were just a little bit smaller, it would easily be the camera of choice for shooting Zeiss glass. As it is, I rarely even pick it up.