[rollei_list] Re: "different types of black boxes" (was: OT / prove it !)
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 16:13:24 -0800
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Roberts" <nickbroberts@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 11:26 PM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: "different types of black boxes"
(was: OT / prove it !)
>
> --- Douglas Shea <dshea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> This can be said for many cameras. Having owned an
>> M3 which I later gave to
>> my Dad I can say I derive much greater pleasure from
>> using my Contax I, II,
>> and IIa cameras that have been restored by Henry
>> Scherer then I ever did
>> from the Leica, and I prefer the Zeiss lenses. The
>> same can be said for the
>> Alpas I use; quality and "joy" in handling that puts
>> Leica to
>> shame...Leica's are nice but that's about all.
>> Highly over-rated in my
>> opinion; if I were offered one I'd gladly accept it
>> -- I'd love to make
>> another gift to my Dad.
>>
>> Doug
>
> Which just goes to show that we're not all the same. I
> much prefer my Leica IIf and IIIf to my Contax IIIa -
> even though the Contax is better engineered, better
> featured and uses better lenses.
>
> Nick
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
>
I am not so sure about the engineering and lenses. I've
worked on older Leica's. They are very well thought out and
are relatively easy to work on and support. The Contax has
an extremely complex shutter which I would not attempt to
work on. While the Leica rangefinder has a shorter base it
also has a built in telescope so its _effective_ baseline is
equal to the Contax. Contax had to use the wider basline
without a telescope because the rangefinder image is
combined with the finder image.
Lenses are hard to tell about. The famous f/1.5 Sonnar is
a good lens but the type has some problems. The Sonnar type
has fallen out of use because lens coating eliminates its
main virtue: low flare due to minimum number of glass air
surfaces. Modern designers use forms of the double Gauss
(Biotar) for lenses of f/2 or faster. This is not to say
that the specific lenses made by Zeiss for the Contax may
have had better prformance than equivalent Leitz lenses for
the Leica. Remember that both companies made very advanced
optics for microscopes and other optical instruments.
Andreas Feninger wrote in one of his books that he
couldn't use a Leica because it impressed him as being too
delicate, so he used a Contax. Knowing what is in the two
cameras I suspect the Leica is the more rugged of the two.
Actually, old screw mount Leica's seem to be very rugged
cameras.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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