Contax
The final products under the Contax name were a line of 35 mm, medium format, and digital cameras engineered and manufactured by Japanese multinational Kyocera, and featuring modern Zeiss optics.
By contrast, the competitive Leica followed the established design of using rubberized fabric shutter curtains wound around rollers, moving horizontally.
The fact that the shutter ran across the shorter dimension of the format area was a significant factor for achieving this technical feat.
Zeiss also invented the System Camera, with all sorts of near-photo, wide-angle, mirror-house, long-focal-length lenses for specific situations.
They became very popular among professional photographers, such as Robert Capa and Phil Stern, especially photojournalists who demanded high-performance, large-aperture lenses for available-light work and a workhorse.
After the Second World War, a few Contax cameras were produced at the original Dresden factory, and some were assembled at the Carl Zeiss optical works at Jena, before production was transferred to Kyiv in Ukraine.
During the war years, the chief designer, Hubert Nerwin, tried to convert the Contax into a single-lens reflex camera but was hindered by the presence of the upper roller of the vertical focal-plane shutter.
The postwar design chief Wilhelm Winzenberg started with a clean slate, which became the Contax S (Spiegelreflex, literally "Mirror reflex"), even though the "S" was not marked on the camera.
Not only did it introduce the M42 lens mount which became an industry standard, but it was also equipped with a horizontal focal-plane shutter, and also removed a major objection against the reflex camera by offering an unreversed, eye-level viewing image by employing a pentaprism.
With Hubert Nerwin in charge as design chief, Zeiss Ikon produced heavily revised Contax IIa and IIIa cameras at a new plant at Stuttgart until 1962.
An alliance was then formed with Yashica, and a new line of CONTAX single-lens reflex cameras was born, starting with the RTS of 1975.
For instance, the removable back was for faster loading and reloading, the bayonet lens mount was designed for rapid lens interchangeability, the long-base rangefinder was for more accurate focusing with large aperture lenses, and the vertical metal shutter not only gave a faster maximum speed but also banished the problem of shutter blinds burning.
Not only was the combined shutter speed dial and film advance knob placed at the more conventional position, but it became much easier and quicker to operate.
Since the Contax was produced at the Dresden works before the war, the new Zeiss Ikon firm in West Germany (Stuttgart) did not have the tools to recommence production.
The resultant Contax IIa and IIIa models, while sharing many similarities with the prewar forebears, also showed significant simplification and cost-cutting by using cheaper materials, due to the lack of resources.
On the color dial cameras the ability to use the flash bulbs was eliminated; a P/C connector was added, and strobe synchronization was the only option.
As user cameras, they are highly versatile, compact, easy to handle, and give many years of trouble-free service.
As the traditional vertical-run Contax shutter required considerable space both above and below the film gate for the drum rollers, the upper roller takes up the critical space required for the reflex housing mechanism, making it dimensionally impossible to use it for a satisfactory SLR camera.
Winzenberg solved the problem by the use of a completely new horizontal-run focal-plane shutter, thus allowing space for the reflex housing.
While the first 35 mm SLR camera, the Kine Exakta, had already appeared in 1936, before the war, its waist-level finder which gave a laterally reversed image, taking away the immediacy between the photographer and their subject.
This major technical advantage was critical in establishing the 35 mm SLR as the definitive camera type for the decades that followed.
Subsequent models were also made wearing both Contax and Pentacon nameplates; the former were meant for markets where Zeiss Ikon Dresden still held the rights to its name.
A limited edition run of black G2 bodies and lenses were produced, differing from the standard titanium finish found on the original G1 and G2.
The G series also boasted the only true zoom available for a rangefinder system, made possible by the mechanical coupling of the camera's viewfinder and the lens.
The N-series bodies used new N-mount lenses made by Kyocera, with electronically controlled aperture and autofocus.
The original series of lenses for Contax were mainly new designs by Ludwig Bertele, under the Sonnar name which was previously used by Contessa-Nettel.
These included the following: One of the most important lenses for the Contax II and Contax III was the 180/2.8 Sonnar, designed for sports photographers covering the 1936 Berlin Olympics allowing fast speed, and the longest lenses also reached a focal length of 30 cm and 50 cm, delivered with their own mirror housing.
Some of the special and prototype lenses include: G-series Contax models used a unique bayonet mount offering auto-focus coupling mechanism.
The following lenses were made for the Contax 645 systems which offered auto-focus function (apart from A-M-P 120/4 which was a manual-focus lens).
If uses both NAM-1 and MAM-1 adaptors simultaneously, Hasselblad V-series lenses including C, CF, CFE, CFI, F and FE (manual-focus) can be mounted on N-series cameras as well.
