Contax T2 Review

[ANDREW!]

Ah, the Contax T2. A camera that like the Lomo LC-A has it’s fair share of hype and celebrity endorsements. Along with its “little brother” the Yashica T4 it enjoyed a renaissance in its mid-teens (it was introduced in 1986 or thereabouts) during the turn of the millennium “crap aesthetic” movement that swept through art and design (and yes, I include photography in art).

It’s quite ironic that a top-of-the-line P&S camera became the darling of people like Terry Richardson and Jurgen Teller who were known for having amateur looking photos in incredibly expensive advertising campaigns for Sisley, Marc Jacobs, etc. Imagine if the poor schmuck who paid $850 for the T2 in the late 1980s knew that his beloved camera would become the poster boy for harsh on-camera flash, red eyed, grainy pics that dominated (and continue to make their presence known) in fashion magazines such as Vogue, The Face, Dazed & Confused, I-D, etc. Anyway you can read about the T2’s rise to fame in Kevin Braddock’s 2002 article for The Face here . For some strange reason, a picture of the T3 accompanied the feature . . . Braddock’s thesis is that the popularity of the T2 represents a response to the over-the-top (yet somewhat sanitized) fashion photography of David LaChapell and the like. Quoth Braddock:

“The vogue for compact cameras has occurred concurrently with a broader shift in fashion photography's principal aesthetic: a move into photography that appears to be taken on rudimentary equipment with the least fuss in the briefest possible time. It's a brutally honest, unworked, grainy informality based on 'normal' subjects presented with all the gloss of rain on a car windscreen . . . it amounts to fashion photography as verité, an oeuvre seemingly so sloppy and amateur-looking you'd assume shots had been submitted by members of the Bognor Regis Camera C, instead of top-ranking global lenspeople.”

Does any of this philosophy sound familiar to you folks out there in Lomo.us Land? Perhaps it should considering our tools of the trade and official LSI sanctioned approach . . . hmmmm.

Ok, without further ado, on to the camera!



1) What are the basic features that make this camera unique?

The Contax T2 is, as stated above, a high-end P&S camera. While it may have been a radical departure for people who make $1,000s a day shooting models for Gucci to use a P&S camera no matter how high-end it is, the T2 is plenty of camera for commoners like you and me.

The T2 doesn’t have a whole lot of direct competition (the main rival would be the Leica Minilux). What makes it (nearly) unique (Urg! Qualifying an absolute! My English profs are shuttering somewhere . . .) is that it’s an aperture-priority P&S that has pretty much everything that you need in a compact camera. Aside from a couple of flaws which I will get to later, it is very well designed. It has a focusing wheel on the top (that also functions as an ON/OFF switch) which I often use as a zone focus feature. Also on the top plate is an exposure compensation dial (+ or – 2 stops in half-stop increments) and the shutter release. When you turn the camera on the lens comes out from behind a protective barrier. The flash and f/ stop controls are on the barrel of the lens. Very convenient. The T2 also features a very nice Carl Zeiss 38mm lens.

2) Cost and where it was bought

I bought my T2 off Ebay for about $250 all-in.

3) A link to a specs page for further reading

Here's the manual.

4) Ease of use

Very simple. You can use the aperture priority dial or simply leave it on automatic. Depress the shutter release half-way to lock exposure and focus. If you want to focus on one thing and meter for something else, use the manual focus dial and then lock the exposure. The thing that I like about the T2 is that everything is done via a dedicated switch, dial or button. I hate hate HATE using scroll wheels and directional buttons to negotiate my way through various menus.

I do have a complaint with the aperture priority mode though: you can’t lock the aperture at f/ 2.8 because “2.8” on the dial is the program mode. I often want to lock the aperture wide open to achieve shallow depth of field. Why they would design a camera that allows you to lock the aperture at any f/ stop except wide open is beyond me. Another minor gripe is the top shutter speed of 1/500. I like to keep my P&S cameras loaded with 400 asa film (or higher). An extra stop or two would be useful on sunny days, but P&S cameras rarely have a top shutter speed much higher than 1/500 so I don’t let myself get too worked up about it.

The flash mode is quite basic. When you engage it you relinquish all control over exposure. In fact, because the f/ stop is not indicated in the viewfinder, you don’t know what f/ stop the camera has selected. The shutter speed is indicated, however. The flash will synch at all speeds from 1/500 all the way down to 1/30. This is for me one of the few draw-backs of the T2. I find 1/30 to be a bit slow for handheld work (unless you want blurriness). I would have preferred the flash to synch at 1/60 and above with a slow flash option like Olympus’ Night Scene flash mode. That way you could have had blurry weird shots when you wanted and non-blurry ones when you didn’t.

5) Quality of camera and any comments about it. (lens is good, rewind knob is crap...etc)

The quality of the camera is superb. It’s made out of titanium and mine is still going strong nearly twenty years after it rolled off the assembly line.

6) Quality of photos, and post some good example test shots. Day, night, close, far, flash, etc.

Bright sun:







With fill flash:





Full flash:







7) A scale of 1 out of 10 rating.

I’d give this camera a solid 8.5/10. The image quality is great and aside from the few gripes I mentioned in the “Ease of Use” section above, I love it.

[Fin]

Excellent review! What a sexy little camera!

[Mickey Precious]

Great review. Man, I love those Contax cameras. I used to have a G1 and it kicked ass!

[Amanda]

As a user of both the Contax and the Stylus Epic, do you think the Contax is worth the extra $$$ over the Epic?

[ANDREW!]

Hmm that's a good question Amanda.

I use both camera regularly but for different purposes. The Stylus Epic comes with me to shows and on nights-around-town. This is mostly down to its great "Night Scene" flash feature which I use when photographing live shows and general night time hijinx. I generally have the Stylus Epic loaded with 400 asa B&W film because redeye isn't as noticable with B&W.

I use the T2 more for daytime shooting (especially on overcast days or around dusk with fill flash). It's usually loaded with Fuji NPZ 800 for this purpose. The image quality is certainly better with the T2 and aperture priority is very useful. I also tend to use the T2 when I want to take pictures very quickly without worrying about AF focusing on the wrong thing. Since I mostly take pictures of people I set the focus wheel to 2 meters and the aperture to 5.6 and fire away.

I would be hard-pressed to choose between them if I had to sell one. In terms of $$$, the T2 is much better built than the Stylus Epic and has very useful features that the Stylus Epic doesn't have so, yes I think that it is worth the extra $$$. If the T2 had a Night Scene flash mode it'd make the Stylus Epic redundant, but alas . . .