First photos taken with my restored 1936 Contax II

[nicolas_douez]

<p>It's not a long time since I finally fully restored my first and

defective Contax II. <p>I had almost given up with this 1936 camera

which had so many problems that I was not too sure, if I could even

take some photographs with it. Finally after almost 6 months of

patience and daily small work I brought it back to life. It works. And

well. <p>So - no need of hope to begin, no need of success to

perseverate.<p>Ah, <a

href=http://nicolas.douez.free.fr/classic_cameras1.htm>the link to the

camera</a> <p>Click on the picture when you are on my page. That page

(not speaking of the homepage) is the first brick of what, I hope,

should become my website in the future. Still an amateur work for now.<div></div>

[john_wire]

What a beauty, could almost bring tears to your eyes. Any pics yet?

[michaelging]

Nicolas , You did a wonderful job restoring this beautiful (now) camera. Your presentation on how you did it was outstanding as well. I am bidding on a w-nikkor 35mm 3.5 lens on the aution site. It seems that it will fit on my IIIa .Have you heard anything, or ever used one before to know how sharp it is? The post war Biogons that fit my camera go for so much money, I am trying a endrun to same money without giving up quality.Anyway thanks for sharing your restoration.

[nicolas_douez]

John, follow the link, you'll see the pictures. <p>Michael, thanks. Yes the Nikkor RF 35mm can fit on the IIa/IIIa Contaxes and they're surely as good as the postwar Biogon which has become unreasonably expensive actually.<p><a href=http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7522346486>This one</a> must be the more interesting currently running on the auction site. It's said to be the best 35mm Nikkor RF lens. As far as I know they were three : 3.5/35, 2.5/35, 1.8/35 with color variants, the black barrel ones being more coveted by collectors although the chrome are just as good for using. <p>If you get one that takes 43mm filters just drop me an e-mail, I have a 43mm Nikon Skylight filter I would give to you with great pleasure.

[james_baker6]

Michael, I finally tired of looking at expensive Biogons for my IIa's and got the 2.5/35mm Nikkor. I like it a lot. the only thing I don't care for is that the aperture settings are on the inside of the front so I have to look into the lens and turn the hood to set it. It is a very nicely made,smooth operating, high quality lens.

[Sandeha Lynch]

Excellent. Bookmarked.

[michaelging]

Nicolas , I did see that 35mm 2.5, AFTER I bid on the 35mm 3.5 , It also ends before the one I am bidding on. Bummer.Thanks for the filter offer,I appreciate it and will let you know.

 

James ,The only reason I was considering this lens is because of a comment you left in a previous thread saying how much you liked it.

 

You find the very best of people on this forum.

[gene m]

Spectacular.

[tito sobrinho]

Nicolas, you've made it a labor of love! Beautiful camera as well as the pictures.

 

Yes, the 2.5/35 Nikkor is an excellent lens which I use on my Nikon S2 as well as my 1.4/50 Nikkor.

[krawczyk]

Hi Nicolas

 

Great service and great pictures.

 

I have a question, how you obtain this results using a Fontier?

 

I recieved my last pictures scanned in a Frontier but they are bad.

 

I was posted a question in <a hrefhttp://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CO4L">This post</a> and another guys have this problem.

[krawczyk]

Missing link...

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CO4L

[david_richert]

Outstanding ....the prices of Contax's on ebay just doubled.

[CosteaM]

fantastic, Nicolas. the pictures are fabulous, great reward for such a titanic job. the pavement picture just blows me away. congratulations

[patric_dahl_n]

Good job! Wasn't the Hans Windisch book publisched by Walter Heering Verlag, and not by one Albert Herring? :-)

[nicolas_douez]

Oops ! Yes it is - it's on my shelf. Heering. Was influenced by Charles Chaplin's <i>The Dictator</i> where a certain Herring represents Hermann Goering ;-)<p>

 

I correct that immediatly ! Thanks for the correction tip.<p>:)=

[paulh]

Great stuff Nicolas. A tribute to your patience with the patient and to your perseverence.

 

The results look pretty good!

 

Paul

[nicolas_douez]

<p>Well Alberto, I have always got very good results with what the Frontier of my local

lab provides me from color print 35mm negatives, whatever they were. I've

experienced Fuji Superia 200, Fuji Reala II, and now Fuji Superia 400. All with

various and different cameras. Of course the best results came from the Fuji

Reala II scans - who would be surprised by that.</p>

<p>I have to precise that what I get is a digitized version of the <u>negative</u>, not

of the print, with a resolution of about 1800 dpi. The cost is very reasonable -

about $10.00 for a 36 exposures film (for that price I get the processed negative, the CD with

the JPEG files, but of course no prints). Then I can have my favorite prints

enlarged - or I can just look at them on a good screen, it's nice too.</p>

<p>A very good solution IMHO, which uses the best of both the film and the

digital photography techniques. BTW I don't consider that these two techniques

are enemies - they are rather good complementary ones.</p>

<p>I post below some examples never shown here on that forum, from a Reala II film shot during the

summer of 2004' holidays with my Nikon F2 and the Nikkor f:2/85mm AI-S lens (with no USM of any kind, just a downsizing job, of course).

These two pics come from the same roll, both of them were taken with the lens

mentioned above. I've set the size of the pictures as much wide as possible so

that you all can have a precise idea of what we're talking about.</p>

<center>

<img src=http://nicolas.douez.free.fr/Color_print_photos/tarn.jpg width="800" height="540">

<p>

<img src=http://nicolas.douez.free.fr/Color_print_photos/vache.jpg width="800" height="540">

 

</center><p>

So, maybe you should try to find another lab, with a well calibrated Frontier ? BTW what did you have scanned ? The negatives,

or the prints ?

[Troll]

I always think of my IIa as the most beautiful 35mm camera ever made, but this one is beyond words! Thank you for posting it.

[krawczyk]

The negatives was scanned in Frontier and gave to me in 1250 dpi.

 

The prints in Frontier are very good, but the scanns not.

 

I don't know the settings used by operator of Frontier

[krawczyk]

See this picture, it have a very bad result.<div></div>

[krawczyk]

For US$ 10 I get the negatives, prints, CD and index. EU is expensive...

[david chau]

that contax camera is so beautiful, they dont make'em like that anymore, i am so jealous, maybe one day i will find one at a garage sale

[dean_williams]

A beautiful camera and splendid restoration, Nicolas. You must be a very patient man to limit yourself to one hour per work session, especially knowing what you had to work on. I would have been very anxious to realize the fruits of my efforts. Your patience and attention to detail certainly paid off.

 

The pavement shot is great. All well done.

 

Dean

[nicolas_douez]

Alberto, your picture seems to have been largely underexposed (I would say easily down to -3IL) when shooting, hence the noisy and grainy results because the lab technican probably "pushed" the Frontier until an acceptable image was displayed on his control screen. How is the neg ? You can try to have it scanned separately on a domestic film scanner to see the difference.

 

Try once and again using a very good film like Fuji Reala II or Fuji Superia 100. They are almost the same film and give quite the same resolution results - but the Reala II needs a more accurate exposure time. So, if you don't have a precise handheld meter to bring with you when you are in the field using the Kiev, chose the Superia 100.

 

Also, you might benefit from having your Kiev shutter speeds tested by a Spectron machine - repairmen can do it for free in a few minutes - just because it seems to me that your Kiev tends to produce generally underexposed pics.

[krawczyk]

My shutter speeds was a error of 1,5% in last measurement (2 ys ago).

See this picture. The lightmeter of Kiev have same value of my Weston Master II.

This noise are distributed in all scanns it appears more grainly because this colors are more dark. In a blue sky or more light colors it exist but are clustered.<div></div>