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Review Contax Aria

Hello everyone,

I am thinking about buying Aria or RX. Can you help me with one advice? I tried Aria, but have not seen RX yet.

After pressing of the shutter release, Aria has short high pitch (motor/s?) noise - may be mirror and aperture electronic& motor operating - before the shutter noise comes with short delay.

Has the RX the same noise first and the same short shutter delay after pressing the shutter release? If not, where is the difference in this point between Aria and RX?

Has Aria motor operated mirror as RX and what is louder in Aria as in RX - the shutter or the mirror?

I posted this message also in the RX Review.

Thank you in advance.
 
Hi Valentin,
I use the RX and the response from the shutter is for all intents and purposes instant. The shutter and the mirror are very quiet indeed (for an SLR). The mirror being slightly louder and of a higher pitch in sound than the mirror. I was doubtful about how quiet it would be before I bought it but I am more than pleased.
 
Tom and Marc,

I have an Aria too and although I never had any problems using matrix metering with my 50mm f1.7 lens, I noticed a tendency to overexpose by at least 1 stop in strong sunlight, only when using wide-angle lenses (25mm, 28mm). The proposed solution for this is to quit using matrix altogether and switch to spot. However, your posts suggest that this metering problem occurs in all modes and not just matrix...? :<

Also I find that this behaviour is somewhat inconsistent and if I dial in about a stop of negative compensation for some wide-angle shots, I get underexposed pictures instead. Help?!

jin
 
Hi all,
is the ARIA the only Contax body which has
"imprinting on the first two pictures". This is a timesaving feature for later picture analysis.
THX, Rainer
 
Rainer,

No. The data back for the AX does the exact same thing. And...I love this feature, not that I use the data very often, but when I need it, it's there.

Austin
 
The G2 data back will either imprint the information between frames or in the first two frames.

I'm not certain, but I think the G2 data back costs almost as much as I paid for my Aria body.

--Rick
 
Jr Ong, the first thing that alerted me to the overexposure problem with the Aria's segmented meter was a shot at a construction site using the 28mm f2.8 lens. The ground was light, the concrete was light, the light was bright, and the slides were overexposed by about 1.5 stops. Subsequent experimentation (before I called Contax) showed that the segmented meter would overexpose whenever the light was bright and falling on a light-colored subject, no matter what lens. I expect that your wide angle lens is taking in a lot of sky or other light colored subject matter and the segmented meter is doing its best to prevent underexposure, resulting in overexposure. I would never use the segmented meter except in perfectly normal situations or in backlit ones, or with color negative or B&W film. I use slide film almost exclusively and simply pretend the segmented meter mode does not exist and use spot or center-weighted instead, with a slight increase in the ISO to insure slides exposed to my liking.
 
Tom, your experience sounds identical to mine with the NX matrix metering. My slides were consistently overexposed. I now use spot metering and AE lock all the time.
 
Tom, thanks - that has been my experience too, because the overexposed shots were in bright, sunlit conditions and were overdone by 1-1.5 fstops. I will be sure to use spot mode only from now on. Thanks for the tip.
 
jr ong, the overexposure problem with my Aria seems to occur, no matter what kind of metering I use, but it is really only about 1/2 stop or so. If you don't shoot slides or use different film material than I do (i.e. Velvia), you might probably find the exposure perfectly right. The problem with the unpredictable exposure compensation delivered by the matrix metering is still another case. With it, I experienced a similar behaviour as the posters before me, and thus I would also recommend to use spot metering, if not a handheld meter.
regards, marc
 
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