Why didn't the Contax G1/2 make it?

The specs read wonderfully -- everything that the Leica had, plus developments

since the M3 was designed in the 1950s. Lenses were at least as good as Leica

glass, and a lot less expensive.<P>"Faults/problems" of the G1 were mostly

corrected with the G2.<P>Why, then, did it fail commercially? And what could

have been done to prevent it?

Better marketing? More capital?

Too much wiring for everything..

I don't think Kyocera woke up one day and decided not to sell cameras anymore, I think they knew for some time they were getting out of 35mm let alone cameras altogether. Knowing that why keep bring out new stuff to the end, simply don't develop any further models and save the cash.

Hi,

 

"Why, then, did it fail commercially?"

 

Bill, would you like to put forward evidence that it did?

 

cheers Steve.

It was TOO LOUD.

Hi,

 

"Why, then, did it fail commercially?"<P><P>

 

Bill, would you like to put forward evidence that it did?<P><P>

 

cheers Steve.<P>

 

<P>Uh, no...not except that it disappeared from the marketplace, without additional development.

Robert,

 

The TOO LOUD excuse is lame. I have owned a G2 since it was released, as well as my M6 and M2, and while the Contax is much louder than the Leica, it is only loud to the person who's face is smashed up against the camera. I can tell you from experience that the subject can hardly hear a thing form the Contax. I know that from lots of experience being the subject. I can tell no difference between the level of sound from it and any of my Nikons (F4s, F100, FM2, D70), Hasselbald, Mamiya, etc.

 

I'd argue that the aside from being discontinued, the platform is still used heavily by a large cadre of dedicated users. There is even a Contax G users group event taking place next year in Berlin.

 

For all of it's problems, it is a fine system with great optics and excellent reliability.

The other responses concerning Kyocera's business plan and the question of whether it actually failed or not go directly to the point. Furthermore, it must be difficult for any new lens mount to survive and establish enough following to stick around for a very long time, especially if the camera is unusual.

 

However, I have a Contax G brochure from about 2000 comparing it to Leica M, point for point, and even though I was only just learning about Leica M at the time and didn't have one for lack of knowledge and not wanting to spend the money, my existing experience and affinity for manual focus "simple" SLRs was enough that I already found the comparison amusing because the Contax seemed enough different that the comparison was a stretch. It tried to make all the Ms strengths that appealed to me sound like out-of-date approaches. I was able to handle the Contax, and although it was clearly a very nice camera, I couldn't see it as a more compact, discrete, intuitive replacement for my Nikon F for street shooting applications because while it was smaller, it wasn't a mechancial camera in feel or fact.

 

Perhaps it appealed to people who were looking for evolution, and now they've readily moved on to the next evolution.

Hiya,

 

"Uh, no...not except that it disappeared from the marketplace, without additional development"

 

Bill, I was not having a go, but merely trying to make a point. Many people on the internet and especially on forums like PN make assumptions based on nothing but other peoples assumptions, or other internet 'chatter' or the fact a camera was not further developed in your case. This does not mean the camera was a commercial failure. Only Kyocera can answer that.

 

The market place is certainly full of many, many Contax G cameras, so they certainly sold a lot and bearing in mind the high prices they sold for, I would not be in the least bit surprised if it was actually quite a success in financial terms...but this is just supposition...

 

cheers Steve.

35mm rangefinders occupy a pretty small market niche at best. A relatively expensive 35mm RF camera that was completely incompatible with all the others (and wasn't even a rangefinder in the traditional sense) had rather limited appeal - people who wanted AF tended to go for SLRs or cheaper P&S cameras, and people who wanted the 'rangefinder experience' went for Leica, V/C etc. In the long term, of course, the system would have needed to go digital to survive, and you can hardly blame Kyocera for not making the effort after their experience with the ND, which must have been the final straw for the Contax division. But it's a real shame to lose their interesting designs and terrific lenses.

You know marketing success stories don't you? - Leica themselves, later Nikon... They convinced peers to get / use their stuff and the crowd followed.

 

Who proofed the reliability of Contax G? Where was the hope to get at least a inexpensive consumer body to keep shooting like EOS or Minolta users?

 

Has there been a obvious cutting edge advantage provided by the G's AF? - I remember trying out Minolta 5000 or Nikon F401 without becoming convinced to dump my manual cameras.

Leica's forte' is the viewfinder. Leica, Canon, and CV all have/had great viewfinders, far better than Contax. My Pentax IQ Zoom has a better viewfinder.

Hiya,

 

The Canon DSLR's have poor viewfinders, but they sell truckloads of them...quality has nothing to do with sales sucess.

A similar question could be asked about the Contax 645 - another well-executed product

cut short.

 

Kyocera was making significant impact on the industry. It may not have been so much a

case of the G1/G2 (or 645) not making it, so much as Kyocera just pulling out at the top of

their form.

 

I guess they ust didn't have the interest or stomach for the coming Canon/Nikon/Sony/etc

consumer digital wars.

 

Too bad. I think we all lost on that one.

I owned a G2 for about 2 years but could not deal with the autofocus. The camera would

refuse to fire the shutter until the autofocus had latched on to the subject. Lost several good

shots. Also Kyocera by then was no longer a camera company and was not obsessed with the

G2 as is the case with Cosina.

I had a G1 for a while. I was attracted by the exposure automation and the AF. My

experience, like so many others', was that the lenses were wonderful, the camera had

some quirks in operation (but nothing I couldn't live with) but, oh, the G1 viewfinder was

very poor - a nasty, dim, squinty thing. Unfortunately I never had the chance to try a G2.

In the end I couldn't live with the VF anymore and traded the outfit, mainly for a Leica M2.

After a few years I traded that as well, mainly because I couldn't hack it without the AF &

the exposure automation!

 

But those G lenses were really something....

"The specs read wonderfully"

 

I'd agree with that. On paper, I had decided I wanted a G2 plus a Mamiya M7. Could get both for the price of a Leica M6.

 

And then I handled them all, plus a Hassey. And decided for medium format, I really wanted a Hassey, instead. And there was no comparison between the G2 and the M6.

 

On paper, the G2 was great. Not sure why, but I just didn't like how it felt.

 

 

Eric

At one point I dumped all my M stuff and replaced it with two Black G2s and a full range of

Zeiss lenses from 21 to 90. I thought AF would speed things up like with a SLR. It did in a few

instances, but mostly not. I hated the claustrophobic viewfinder ... but kept trying to make it

work for me for a couple of years ... then returned to the M. Still, it was a nice camera, and it

wasn't that camera that killed Contax.

 

It was the N Digital, and poor marketing.

Erik, As you say, the Contax is much louder than the Leica, and it was too loud for me. I had the G2 with three lenses and after a month using it I went back to my M2.

Very poor viewfinder, hardly enough black models to respond to the market

need, fierce CV competition in lenses (who wants the Contax with a Hologon

when you can have the faster 12mm or 15mm CV lenses and a 2nd hand

Leica or new Bessa body at a fraction of the cost), Kyocera decision to quit

photography (as a huge ceramics company, it can only be assumed that

Contax was not active enough for their shareholders).

AFAIK, The G system was still in production right up to the time that Kyocera pulled the

plug on their whole photo division. So it seems more like the company failed the camera

than that the camera failed the company (but without detailed internal financial info, who

knows?)

 

My sense is that photo gear was always a bit of a sideline for KYOto CERAmics, which is

primarily an exotic materials company. They bought Yashica back in the go-go

conglomerate 60s, and then created the revived Contax line based on Yashica SLR

underpinnings, and as long as it made some money, that was fine.

 

Once it became clear that more and more investment would be needed to keep up in

digital, (among other things, dealing with the same issues regarding RF WA lenses and

sensors that Leica has had to work around in the M8) they bailed out. Just no longer worth

the money for the payback.

I used a G2 outfit for about a year-and-a-half until selling it. From a mechanical/

operational perspective I eventually found -- against expectation -- that I seemed to be

struggling *against* the auto-focus as much as I was benefiting from it; the viewfinder, as

others have said, was a key weakness too. It must also be remembered that the G1/G2

were pretty well designed to be used as auto-focus rather than manual focus cameras. The

manual focus provision was poor -- near unusable in fact -- and I also found the

completely unmarked lenses -- no DOF, no scale markings -- didn't provide me with the

information I needed in order to make scale focusing possible. Perhaps had I known more

about focusing and lens characteristics generally, this would have mattered less: I would

have been able to fill the shortcomings of the information offered by the camera with my

own knowledge, but that wasn't the case.

 

So my own view is that I swapped because I wanted a conventional mechanical camera that

would do what I expected and wanted, when i wanted it.

 

But as to market failure, well the market for G2s was I imagine tiny. It was a closed system

with literally no compatibilities. If you had a G system and you *thought* you might need

or want to dispose of it, then frankly you had to decide pretty fast: in 2004/05 you could

watch the resale prices of G2 gear dropping by the day...

 

--alun

"...in 2004/05 you could watch the resale prices of G2 gear dropping by the day..."

 

Interestingly, G2 cameras currently get good prices on eBay.

Hi,

 

"So it seems more like the company failed the camera than that the camera failed the company"

 

"Once it became clear that more and more investment would be needed to keep up in digital they bailed out. Just no longer worth the money for the payback"

 

...Andy..NAIL HIT ON HEAD...

 

IMO both Kyocera and Zeiss were crap when it came to truly effective marketing and advertising. The products were largely fantastic, especially the Contax SLR range with the C/Y mount Zeiss optics, but suffered from terminal crap marketing, poor dealers and awful back-up from the respective so-called service regimes. Then we have the slow death of Leica and what happens...we all end up with bloody Nikons and Canons...

 

cheers Steve.