#Flickr contax g2 manual
The manual adapters work well enough, practice makes perfect, and the AF adapter will miss as many shots on its own as we’ll miss shooting manually. Is the trade worth it? In my experience, no. These are loud, slow, expensive, and imprecise. There also exists adapters that allow autofocus. In the world of manual focus G lens adapters, the Metabones is the one to own. Its large diameter focusing ring works better than its less expensive counterparts from Fotasy and Fotodiox at transferring our manual input to the lens’ autofocus screw. The Metabones adapter does the best job at creating a seamless setup. It’s a real bummer.īut while G mount lenses aren’t as seamlessly integrable with today’s mirror-less machines as some other legacy lenses, they’re still entirely usable if we’re willing to make it work. These incorporate focusing mechanisms into the adapters themselves, which raises the price of the adapter and typically results in a less-than-ideal focus methodology.
#Flickr contax g2 series
Due to the physical design of the G lens, a design which makes no allowance for on-lens manual focusing (this is done via a focus-by-wire system on the G series cameras), shooting a G lens on a digital camera requires the use of special adapters.
Where it begins to stumble is when we adapt the lens to today’s crop of modern mirror-less cameras (a practice that factors into most legacy lens shooters calculations). Most second-hand G series cameras come with the 45 firmly mounted, and on these film rangefinders its functionality is as masterful as ever. Practical use is a mix of effortless, and somewhat frustrating. The accessory filters and lens hood are similarly dripping with class. Engravings for aperture and other markings are of the highest quality in a legacy lens. Knurling throughout the lens is precise, oozes with quality, and provides excellent grip-ability on all surfaces and moving parts. The barrel, mount, filter threads, and aperture ring are all metal (painted in Titanium finish or black), and at 190 grams, it’s a dense, weighty piece. It harkens back to the days of full-metal construction and concise design just what we’d expect from a lens with the Zeiss name on the nameplate. Production of the lens continued unaltered when Contax released the G2 in 1996, and up until 2005 (when Kyocera stopped production of the G series) the 45mm Planar would remain that camera’s standard kit lens.īut if you’re conflating this kit lens with the kit lenses of today, stop it this thing is nothing like the plastic zooms commonly packaged with many of today’s digital cameras. The lens was unanimously heralded as a marvel by the photographic press a miraculously sharp lens comfortably in the conversation for best resolving power of any standard lens ever brought to market.
Super quick history lesson – the 45mm F/2 G Planar debuted alongside the original Kyocera-made Contax G1 autofocus rangefinder camera back in 1994, and though we were all fairly distracted by Orenthal James’ speeding Bronco and figure skaters being clubbed with crowbars, people noticed. Yet this split isn’t so much a reflection on the lens itself, rather a product of the times we live in, and if we can overcome or sidestep the one failing of the G 45/2 we’ll be shooting one of the best legacy lenses ever made. Never before have I used such a dichotomous lens. It’s helped me make some of my favorite images in years. The Carl Zeiss Contax G Mount Planar 45mm F/2 prime lens is, without bluster, amazing.
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