View allAll Photos Tagged Contax_AX,
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Shot on Fujicolor C200 at EI 200
Color negative film in 35mm format
Contax AX + Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm f/2.8
View the full-size version at: emulsive.org/photography/35mm-format/sheaves-shot-on-fuji...
Filed under: #35mmformat, #Photography, #2018October, #35MmFormatFilm, #CarlZeissSonnarT135MmF28, #Contax, #ContaxAX, #EI200, #EMULSIVEDailyPhoto, #Fuji, #FujifilmFujicolorC200, #ISO200
#shootfilmbenice #filmphotography #believeinfilm
Abandoned wreck near Vila Nova de Milfontes.
Taken with Contax AX and Zeiss Distagon 15mm. Film Fuji Velvia 50, self developed.
Scanned with EOS 5D and Contax Bellow Zeiss S-Planar 74mm.
The Astoria Column in..... you guessed it, Astoria. We were out here on a blustery winter day and though the column itself was closed for repair the view is always worth the drive.
I was experimenting and testing a new camera that had just come into the shop this day, the Contax AX. I am not really a techno-junkie, but I appreciate innovative ideas when they are well, or at least interestingly, executed. The AX is one of them. Not only does this camera have a cool name, come on The AX? Now if I could just find me a Hasselblad Buzzsaw 500... This camera was Contax's answer in the late 80's to the auto-focus revolution. Contax 35mm slr's are probably best known for the line of lenses that Zeiss made for them. Arguably some of the finest lenses you can put on a 35mm camera, sort of like having Hasselblad lenses on your 35mm SLR. There is a great deal of speculation as to why Zeiss refused to make any of these lenses in auto-focus form, but the most commonly cited reason is they claimed they could not make the auto-focus lenses as good as the manual focus predecessors and they were not willing to compromise the quality of their product. Way to go Zeiss if this is true.
So Contax came up with an auto-focus body... the whole innards of the camera shift back and forward 10mm to bring the film plane automatically into focus with the lens. That is pretty ingenious thinking and I had to try it out. It worked, a bit slow compared to modern auto-focus but it worked. I am not an auto-focus fan though, I think the act of focusing a lens is one of the great pleasures of photography, and thankfully I have the eyesight to allow me to indulge in that pleasure. But the cool feature that the shifting camera innards allowed was a built in macro mode. Since the whole inside of the camera moves 10mm, it is like having a built in 10mm extension tube for every lens. Now that is pretty nifty, and has a ton of various potential applications.
In fact I think I may have used it for this shot, which was taken with the Zeiss Distagon 18mm. The lens would normally focus this close anyway, but the wide depth of field was making the column too sharp. I put the AX ( I just like saying that, makes me chuckle every time, why AX?) into its macro mode and refocused the lens. It achieved largely the same effect but with a shallower depth of field. Interesting...
Anyway, it's all good fun. Which is why I love my job.
CONTAX AX
Vario-Sonnar T* 28-85mm F3.3-4 MMJ
Kodak T-MAX 400
HC-110 (H)
Pentax K-3II
DFA 100mm F2.8 Macro
Pentax Film Duplicator
RRS