I have looked at both of these now for months. The question that drives me crazy : Is the Contax 645af a better camera due to the C.Z. lens vs.the Mamiya 645af. If I took the same picture with both and enlarged it to a 11X14 would there be a major difference?

My instincts lean me toward the Mamiya b/c it feels better to handle, and I also like the digital features. Although,the Contax sounds also like a great camera + the Carl Z/ lens. Any comments about either camera will help me put this to rest and I need to rest!

Thank you in advance to anyone who takes time to respond. Carmen

-- carmen wilson (momanddad@att.net), July 12, 2000

Answers

Carmen, I don't know that I can really help you, but here goes. I work in Imaging Services (photographic and digital) at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Al. Our workhorse cameras are Mamiya 645s (but not the af) I regularly print to 30 x 40 from these negatives and they are incredibly sharp even at that magnification. I am not familiar with the Contax, but have used German glass a lot and I find that real difference between it and Japanese glass is image contrast. The German is a bit snappier, but there again I have no experience with the Contax you're looking at. Does this help any?

Regards,

Fred

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 13, 2000.

Carmen, I own a Pentax 645 and am extremely pleased with it, so I would suggest you consider it as one option. The Contax is a very nice camera, but in my opinion the Zeiss lenses are way overpriced. Yes they are excellent, but based on my experience with Zeiss lenses for Hasselblad, the Pentax lenses are every bit as good. I know some purists out there will dispute that, but at the last studio I worked for we used hassys and RB67s, and when I got my Pentax I was shocked to find that it gave up nothing in image quality to these other systems. I haven't used the Mamiya 645 af system, but based on my experience with the RB lenses, and from a few Mamiya 645 images I've seen from friends' cameras, I think Mamiya lenses are just a wee bit soft. Of course we're splitting hairs here, as all the name brand medium format makers produce very high quality gear. My Pentax has proven to be a reliable, extremely user friendly camera that is capable of top notch image quality. Give it some thought.

-- Kevin Kallenbach (visart7@yahoo.com), July 13, 2000.

The Contax 645 seems to have at least two bad features in my taste. First, in manual mode you can only change aperture or shutterspeed in whole f-stops. This is limiting for anyone trying to work with, for instance, the zone-system in black & white and wants to do that in manual mode. Secondly, the camera needs a "warm up", similar to a copying machine (haha) but slightly shorter. So if you want to capture a spontaneous moment with the fast autofocus, you still have to wait a few seconds for the camera to warm up before you can do it. I'm not joking. Unless you have used the camera in the last 20 seconds it shuts off and has to warm up again. This means that a Rolleicord from the 40's or 50's can actually be faster to work with than the Contax.

-- Peter Olsson (peter.olsson@lulebo.se), July 14, 2000.

Differences in the camera body can easily negate any small difference in lens contrast. This was brought home to me many years ago, when I bought a Pentacon 6 as my first medium format SLR. The first few rolls of film I put through it were very disappointing and lacking in contrast. I eventually tracked this down to a bad reflection from the bottom of the mirror box. After lining the entire body cavity with black velvet material the difference in contrast was astounding. So the differences seen between makes of lens may be more to do with their respective camera design than the optics.

Why not hire one of each type of camera and do a side-by-side comparison?

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), July 14, 2000.

When I still had medium format stuff several years ago I had three Mamiya 645s. Of course they weren't af but, anyway, I was really, really pleased with them. I know nothing about the Contax so I can't speak about it.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), July 14, 2000.

Lots of pros use Mamiyas, so I am sure their lenses are just fine. And no one quibbles with Zeiss optics. I am sure there are subtle differences, but neither makes flawed products.

More importantly, what kind of photo work do you do? Large format is subtantially cheaper than MF at the entry level, and for certain types of work it's just easier to make the big jump than the little one.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), July 14, 2000.