Yet, despite all this careless treatment, my camera has never taken a scratch nor required servicing in the 12 or so years that I’ve owned it. On top of which, my own Contax 645 has traveled umpteen times around the globe, rattling away in the overhead luggage bins on countless long-haul flights. This means that even if the rain comes pouring down and we need to scale a cliff face in order to get the shot, then the Contax is getting dragged along for the ride, whatever the outcome.
I should also point out that I am no gear geek and have a thoroughly unhealthy lack of respect for the tools of my trade cameras are of value to me only in so much as they allow me to do my job, but the photo always comes first. Specs and Features BuildĪlthough I’ve used literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these cameras - often ones that passed through the punishing hands of hardworking professionals on a daily basis - I’ve never seen a Contax 645 in poor condition.
#Contax 645 autofocus full#
But it’s also simply because the Contax’s strong point is speed - rarely high on any landscape photographer’s list of criteria and certainly not worth paying an extra premium for if you won’t be making full use of it. Of course, this is partly because most landscape photographers will be looking for greater resolution than a 4.5 x 6 cm negative can provide. While I’ve also shot numerous landscapes with the Contax over the years, it is by no means a landscape camera. You should probably keep this in mind as I share my experiences below. Indeed, I’m told that it’s in high demand from retro-obsessed wedding photographers that have radically inflated the price of this camera in the last 10 years or so.įor my own part, I mostly shoot spontaneous, unposed environmental portraits, often using strobes. In practice, this means that the Contax is well suited to shooting documentary, street photography, portraits, fashion, and even weddings. The Contax 645 will be of interest to any photographer who desires the image quality of 120 film, but without the compromises usually associated with medium format film cameras in terms of speed, weight, size, handling, and ease of use. In short, I’ve been using the Contax 645 AF consistently for the best part of the last 20 years, and so I’m likely as qualified as anyone to comment on its features and handling.
in the brief window between the Contax 645’s discontinuation and its elevation to the status of cult medium format film camera that it enjoys today. Thankfully, I bought my 645 body and half a dozen Zeiss lenses at a time when they were still relatively cheap: i.e. However, when I belatedly learned that the Contax 645 had been discontinued, I realized that the time had come to purchase one of my own. This means that over the years, I’ve handled rather a lot of them. Instead, due to the frequency with which I traveled on assignment, I preferred to rent one at my destination each time I needed to shoot. While I quickly came to rely upon the Contax 645 as central to my way of working, initially, I didn’t possess a Contax of my own. Indeed, if I were ever forced to choose only one camera to work with, I’m in no doubt as to which it would be. What Do I Know About the Contax 645?Īlthough I’ve occasionally branched out into using other makes, models, and formats of cameras over the years, I’ve been using the Contax 645 since it was still a new product, and it remains my default camera today. Yet despite the Contax 645 having become something of a cult camera, there’s little in the way of information available online from people with anything but the most superficial experience working with it, a situation I hope to redress in this review by covering the camera’s design, features, and handling from the point of view of a photographer who has used the camera professionally for almost two decades. And while the smaller negative size of 6x4.5 cm might appear to put the Contax at a disadvantage when compared with the aforementioned 6x7 models, I would argue that it comes with a range of features that more than make up for this minor shortcoming. As a result, it now commands correspondingly high prices on the used market. Indeed, it comes with most of the features you would expect to see on a modern camera - albeit in a slightly less evolved form.Īlongside the Mamiya 7ii and the Pentax 67, the Contax 645 has gained a reputation as one of the best medium format cameras ever made. Produced during the twilight of the film era, the Contax’s design is far removed from that of earlier medium format SLRs. It’s a camera that will largely appeal to analog photographers looking to benefit from the greater resolution of 120 film, while still retaining many of the advantages of a 35mm SLR in terms of speed and mobility. The Contax 645 AF is a relatively small and lightweight medium format film camera dating from the late 1990s.
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