Having just spent a good part of my Sunday morning here in the south of France reading through all these posts, I feel a sense of weariness, and frustration. Ladies and gentlemen, there just isn't going to be a Contax G3. The way the photography market has moved in the last 6 months -- digital gains everywhere -- makes it almost infitintely unlikely that Kyocera will invest money in launching another model of obselescent technology, certainly as a film camera. Contax already has 2 digital models, why would they spend a fortune retrofitting a G series to take a digital chip, with all the limitations of the current G design re. the sensor specs.? [Bear in mind that the CCD and oither sensors require incident light to fall as close to 90 degrees as possible, hence the use of less than full-frame chips in most digital cameras, and this rules out the Zeiss 21 and 16 mm lenses immediately.
I love my G2 (+21, 28, 45 & 90 mm): the optical quality of the lenses is amazing, and the build quality of the G2 body is a delight to behold (and to hold). In addition, I use an Olympus OM4-Ti for any shots requiring a lens greater than 90mm, and a Leica Digilux 1. [For the info. of those people above who gave uninformed views on the Leica, it too is beautifully made, has a brilliant lens, has easy to use software, is easy and comfortable to handle, and, most important, takes pictures of superb quality: I have just completed some A4 size portraits, printed on an Epson 2100, that are breathtaking, if anything better than any silver halides I have had printed.]
Anyway, the Contax is always the instrument of choice where the circumstances allow, but I admit to some frustrations, similar to those voiced above, although I do wonder what planet some of our correspondents are living on when I see their wish list.
There are 3 things I would change in any mythical G3: the focus lock/park feature discussed at length above; a new spot metering facility (like my Olympus and Leica), and (for me) most of all, fix the infuriating TLA flash system so that it works accurately with the TTL metering. I use the fill in flash a lot, and am tired of having to use the camera in manual mode, then compensating up to 2 stops in order not to have an over-flashed image. Contax just dropped the ball on these flash units: beautiful to look at, but simply not up to scratch in performance.
But as I said, we are all dreaming. We have to get used to the ideas that we shall have to live wikth our G1s and G2s, for all their shortcomings, and concentrate on the features that have made us Contax junkies in the first place. The only real alternative to a film G2, and it doesn't give autofocus, is a Leica M7, but do you really want to forego your investment in Contax/Zeiss for a system that is much more expensive and a good deal less easy to use? I think not.
I love my G2 (+21, 28, 45 & 90 mm): the optical quality of the lenses is amazing, and the build quality of the G2 body is a delight to behold (and to hold). In addition, I use an Olympus OM4-Ti for any shots requiring a lens greater than 90mm, and a Leica Digilux 1. [For the info. of those people above who gave uninformed views on the Leica, it too is beautifully made, has a brilliant lens, has easy to use software, is easy and comfortable to handle, and, most important, takes pictures of superb quality: I have just completed some A4 size portraits, printed on an Epson 2100, that are breathtaking, if anything better than any silver halides I have had printed.]
Anyway, the Contax is always the instrument of choice where the circumstances allow, but I admit to some frustrations, similar to those voiced above, although I do wonder what planet some of our correspondents are living on when I see their wish list.
There are 3 things I would change in any mythical G3: the focus lock/park feature discussed at length above; a new spot metering facility (like my Olympus and Leica), and (for me) most of all, fix the infuriating TLA flash system so that it works accurately with the TTL metering. I use the fill in flash a lot, and am tired of having to use the camera in manual mode, then compensating up to 2 stops in order not to have an over-flashed image. Contax just dropped the ball on these flash units: beautiful to look at, but simply not up to scratch in performance.
But as I said, we are all dreaming. We have to get used to the ideas that we shall have to live wikth our G1s and G2s, for all their shortcomings, and concentrate on the features that have made us Contax junkies in the first place. The only real alternative to a film G2, and it doesn't give autofocus, is a Leica M7, but do you really want to forego your investment in Contax/Zeiss for a system that is much more expensive and a good deal less easy to use? I think not.
