Let’s get one thing straight: the Contax G system is the cool uncle of the camera world. It’s sleek, it’s stylish, and it’s got that “I was ahead of my time” vibe. The Biogon 28mm f/2.8? It’s the star of the show—a lens so good, it makes you wonder why Contax ever went out of business.
Sure, the G system is a relic of the film era, but with adapters and a bit of luck, this little gem can shine in the digital age. Is it perfect? No. Is it ridiculously good for the price? Absolutely.
Build Quality: “Porsche-Designed, Not Leica-Copied”
Specs:
Weight: 180g (or “featherlight” in lens-speak).
Materials: Metal, glass, and a dash of German engineering.
Aesthetic: Sleek, minimalist, and just a little bit smug.
The Biogon 28mm f/2.8 is what happens when Contax says, “Let’s make a Leica killer… but with autofocus.” It’s compact, well-balanced, and built to last longer than your average hipster’s beard.
Pro Tip: If your lens doesn’t make you feel like a secret agent, you’re holding it wrong.
By someone who just spent 45 minutes unfolding this thing in public
Introduction: When Your Camera Is Also a Fashion Statement
Let’s be honest: most cameras are about as stylish as a pair of Crocs. The Voigtländer Bessa II? It’s the James Bond of folding cameras—sleek, suave, and guaranteed to make bystanders whisper, “What is that thing?”
This isn’t just a camera. It’s a mechanical origami masterpiece, a 6×9 film beast folded into something smaller than your Instagram ego. Want to shoot medium format without looking like you’re carrying a toaster oven? Meet the Bessa II: the camera that says, “I’m here to take photos… and steal your soul with my vintage charm.”
Design: “Is That a Camera or a Luxury Handbag?”
Specs:
Weight: 900g (or “lightweight” for something made of solid brass and existential dread).
Materials: Leather stitched by elves, metal forged by dwarves.
Party Trick: A collapsible leather handle that transforms from “sleek strip” to “I’m-ready-for-my-closeup-Mr.-DeMille” grip.
The Bessa II is what happens when Germans and Austrians collaborate on a steampunk project. Folded, it’s slimmer than a Leica M3 with a Summicron. Unfolded, it’s a bellows-powered time machine that screams, “I shoot film and own a monocle.”
Pro Tip: If your camera doesn’t double as a conversation starter, you’re doing life wrong.
The Unfolding Ritual: A Mechanical Ballet
Press the hidden button on the base. Click. The lens door pops open like a shy mollusk. Gently push the front standard forward. Snap. The bellows expand like a mechanical accordion. Suddenly, you’re holding a 6×9 monstrosity that makes your iPhone look like a Post-it note.
No other camera unfolds with this much drama. It’s like Indiana Jones swapping his whip for a tripod.
Voigtländer Bessa II
The Heliar Lens: Magic in a Brass Tube
Specs:
Focal Length: 105mm f/3.5 (the “Heliar” version, because obviously).
Bokeh: Creamier than a Viennese pastry. At f/4, backgrounds melt like butter in a sauna.
The Heliar lens isn’t just optics—it’s alchemy. Shoot portraits, and your subjects will ask, “Why do I look like a Renaissance painting?” (Answer: Because Voigtländer sold their souls to the devil for this glass.)
Alternatives:
Skopar version: For budget-conscious wizards.
Apo-Lanthar: Radioactive and ridiculously expensive. Perfect for Bond villains.
The Viewfinder: A Lesson in Humility
The Bessa II’s rangefinder is… quaint. Think “a yellow postage stamp viewed through a keyhole.” It’s dim, tiny, and about as user-friendly as a Rubik’s Cube. Glasses wearers? Good luck.
But here’s the hack: pre-focus before unfolding. Sneakily frame your subject, snap the bellows open, and fire. It’s like photography mixed with espionage.
Street Cred: When the Camera Becomes the Star
Take the Bessa II outdoors, and prepare for attention. Strangers will stop. Old men will reminisce about their “glory days.” Pigeons will pose.
Last week, a Beijing grandpa parked his bike to lecture me on his 1970s darkroom exploits. I got zero photos but gained a life coach.
Street Photography Rule #1: If your camera isn’t attracting more stares than your subjects, upgrade to something louder.
The “6×9 Problem”: Eight Shots, Infinite Patience
Fact: A 120 roll gives you 8 frames. That’s right—eight. In a world where iPhone users shoot 200 selfies before breakfast, the Bessa II is a zen master.
Each click costs $3 and 10 minutes of existential contemplation. Miss the shot? Too bad. The universe whispers, “Git gud, scrub.”
Pro Move: Unfold the Bessa II slowly. The theatrics buy you time to think, “Do I really want to photograph this?”
Bessa II vs. Fuji GF670: A Sibling Rivalry
The Fuji GF670 (aka “Voigtländer Bessa III”) is the Bessa II’s tech-savvy cousin. It’s lighter, has a brighter viewfinder, and won’t embarrass you at a startup meetup. But it’s also… sterile.
GF670 Pros:
Electronic shutter.
Sharp enough to cut reality.
GF670 Cons:
Lacks soul.
Makes you look like a dentist.
The Bessa II? It’s all analog swagger.
Final Verdict: For People Who Enjoy Difficulty
The Voigtländer Bessa II isn’t a camera. It’s a mechanical flex, a middle finger to convenience. It’s folding-unfolding ballet. It’s eight shots of deliberate genius. It’s the reason your Instagram followers think you’re a time traveler.
Is it practical? No. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is it the coolest folding camera ever made? Abso-freaking-lutely.
Rating: 5/5 stars (and 5/5 awkward public interactions).
Now go forth and unfold responsibly. Or just carry it as a purse. We don’t care. 📸✨
They say every Leica owner keeps a Rolleiflex at home, gathering dust like an old love letter. I’m no twin-lens fanatic, but I get it—there’s something about these square-eyed boxes that lingers. My Rolleiflex 3.5 MX-EVS isn’t the fanciest of its kind. It’s the last of the non-interchangeable focus screen models, a budget relic with no meter, picked up cheap from a forgotten shelf.
Design & Build: A Mechanical Poem
The MX-EVS sits heavy in your hands, a brick of German steel and glass from the early ’50s. It’s all manual, all mechanical—no bells, no whistles—just the way I like it, echoing the Leica M3’s stubborn simplicity. Early models wore white plastic like a shy debutante, but mine’s cloaked in black paint, chipped at the edges, whispering tales of a life before me. The Tessar lens, a 75mm f/3.5, stares up from its twin perch, unassuming yet precise. Rolleiflex moved to Zeiss and Schneider glass later, but this one? It’s raw, honest, built to last—like a typewriter that still clacks in a digital age.
Features: The Art of Less
This isn’t a camera that spoon-feeds you. No built-in meter means you’re on your own, guessing exposure like a drifter reading the sky. The film counter’s automatic, though—a small marvel that clicks with every frame of 120 film, a nod to German ingenuity. The waist-level viewfinder flips open like a secret hatch, revealing a world flipped left-to-right. It’s disorienting at first, a mirror to somewhere else, but that’s the charm—you’re not just shooting; you’re dreaming in reverse.
Performance: Street Shadows and Square Frames
I took the MX-EVS to the streets, chasing echoes of Robert Doisneau and Vivian Maier—masters who saw poetry in the mundane through a Rolleiflex. There’s a story from the ’50s: Henri Cartier-Bresson praised the Leica’s agility in one paper, and the next day, Doisneau countered with the Rolleiflex’s knack for candid grace. I see why. Peering down into that glowing square, reality bends—left becomes right, and time slows. The Tessar lens paints shallow depth and creamy bokeh, turning strangers into soft-edged legends.
But 120 film threw me off. Coming from 135, my “sunny 16” guesses overexposed half my rolls—bright blurs instead of crisp tales. It’s four times the size of 35mm, a beast to scan but a gift in detail. Portraits shine here—square compositions frame faces like old photographs in a family album. Still, I’ve sidelined it lately; my impatience doesn’t match its rhythm.
Pros & Cons: A Love with Limits
Pros:
Gorgeous square shots with dreamy bokeh—perfect for portraits.
Built like a tank, a survivor from 1951.
That flipped viewfinder—it’s a portal to another world.
Cons:
No meter means exposure’s a gamble (and I’m a lousy card player).
120 film’s a learning curve—pricey and unforgiving.
Slow to shoot; it’s a thinker, not a sprinter.
Conclusion: A Letter to the Past
The Rolleiflex 3.5 MX-EVS isn’t for everyone. It’s not sleek like a Leica or loud like a Nikon. It’s a quiet companion, a twin-lens ghost that asks you to pause, to feel the weight of each click. I’ve got a Chinese Orient 120—a Tessar knockoff—that mimics it well enough, and the world’s full of Rolleiflex copies. But this one’s mine, a worn treasure I’ll keep, even if it mostly guards my shelf now.
Wenders might say every photo is a letter to someone gone. With this camera, I’m writing to the streets—Doisneau’s Paris, Maier’s Chicago—hoping the light answers back. Pick up a Doisneau book, let it sink in, and maybe you’ll see why I can’t let this Rolleiflex go.
Tech Specs:
Lens: 75mm f/3.5 Tessar (4 elements, 3 groups)
Shutter: Compur-Rapid, 1s to 1/500s
Film: 120 (12 shots per roll)
Weight: ~900g
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(A review crafted like a Sunday morning stroll—leisurely paced yet full of quiet revelations)
The Forgotten Pathfinder
In an age where cameras evolve faster than TikTok trends, the Contax G1 emerges like a weathered paperback on a digital library shelf—unassuming, undervalued, yet brimming with stories waiting to be told. This titanium-clad relic (1994–2001) weighs less than a barista’s latte art pitcher (460g) and costs less than a smartphone lens protector (250–250–300 in 2025 USD). While others chase megapixels, the G1 asks: “What if the best camera isn’t the newest, but the one that never demands an upgrade?”
contax g1
Design: Bauhaus Meets Butterfly
Titanium Truth: Not a veneer like Leica’s “luxury” coatings, but full-metal honesty. The brushed finish feels like a poet’s well-worn notebook.
Ergonomic Whisper: Curves softer than a Parisian bistro chair, fitting Asian hands like a calligrapher’s brush. Even winter can’t frost its plastic grips—a small mercy for gloveless shooters.
Size Sorcery: 28% smaller than its sibling G2, yet somehow roomier than a Tokyo capsule hotel.
Optical Democracy
Zeiss’ Quiet Revolution Before “cinematic” became a YouTube filter buzzword, the G1 democratized pro optics. Its trio of lenses (28mm/45mm/90mm) delivered Hollywood-grade rendering at student film budgets. Today, they still outclass 90% of modern mirrorless glass—like finding a vintage Rolex at a flea market.
Auto-Focus Quirks Yes, it hesitates in dim light. But so do we when faced with life’s unscripted moments. The G1’s occasional refusal to shoot? Not a flaw—a Zen master’s lesson in mindfulness.
Generational Face-Off
Feature
Contax G1 (1994)
Leica M6 (1984–2002)
Price (2025 USD)
250–250–300
3,500–3,500–4,500
Weight
460g (light as regret)
585g (heavy as legacy)
Shutter
1/2000s (sunlit freedom)
1/1000s (eternal twilight)
Film Rescue
Auto-rewind saves mistakes
Manual crank saves pride
Soul
Tokyo salaryman’s secret escape
German engineer’s lifelong companion
The Joyful Contradictions
Autofoxus in a Manual World: Faster than 2012’s Fuji X-Pro1, yet slow enough to make you see
LCD “Watercolor” Displays: Leaking pixels become abstract art—a built-in reminder that imperfection breeds character
Green vs White Label: Choose between supporting rare 21mm lenses (green) or embracing minimalist purity (white). Either way, you win.
contax g1
Who Should Buy This?
✓ Film Rebels: Tired of hipsters’ Pentax K1000 clones ✓ Digital Nomads: Seeking a tactile antidote to screen fatigue ✓ Leica Skeptics: Who suspect the Emperor’s rangefinder has no clothes ✓ Practical Romantics: Believing love letters should be handwritten, not AI-generated
The Tai Chi Revelation
Here lies the G1’s secret—a yin-yang balance Western engineers still struggle to replicate:
Titanium toughness vs plastic pragmatism
Autofocus convenience vs manual mindfulness
1990s tech vs timeless aesthetics
Like practicing tai chi in a subway station, it finds calm within chaos.
Final Verdict: The Anti-GAS Antidote
For the price of three streaming subscriptions (250–250–300), you escape:
The upgrade treadmill’s hollow promises
Pixel-peeping paranoia
The weight of “pro gear” expectations
What you gain:
A mechanical haiku writer
28/45/90mm lenses sharper than nostalgia
Proof that joy needs no Wi-Fi connection
Epilogue: The Camera That Laughs Last
We photograph to cheat time—yet chase gear that becomes obsolete before our film even develops. The G1, with its titanium bones and analog heart, mocks this paradox. In its viewfinder, life isn’t measured in FPS or dynamic range, but in the courage to press the shutter when it truly matters.
Pro Tips:
Film Hack: Load expired stock—its latitude forgives the G1’s metering quirks
G2 Temptation: Resist. The price gap buys 50 rolls of Portra
Ultimate Flex: Pair with Contax T2—pocket the difference vs buying a Leica CM
Rating: ⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️◻️ (4/5 for tech fetishists) 🌅🌅🌅🌅🌅 (5/5 for sunset chasers)
“The real ‘Killer App’ isn’t in your phone—it’s the camera that outlives your need to prove anything.”
In a world addicted to 35mm and 50mm platitudes, the Contax G90 stands like Emily Dickinson’s solitary dash—an outlier whispering “I dwell in possibility.” This 90mm titanium sparrow (265g) defies physics: smaller than a whiskey tumbler, sharper than a Manhattan winter wind. Priced at 220–220–250 (2025 USD), it’s the working poet’s telephoto—no cultish aura, just silent brilliance.
Design: Stealth Sonata
Barrel Minimalism: Brushed titanium colder than a Vermont lake in November. The retractable hood clicks like a Zippo lighter—urban ASMR for street shooters.
Focus Ballet: Contax G2’s autofocus hums like a Tesla coil, nailing distance while Leica users squint. “Where Leica’s 90mm demands a philosopher’s patience, this lens channels Kerouac—fast, hungry, unafraid to blur.”
A viewfinder is not a tool. It is a confession. A whispered pact between the eye and the infinite. Long before cameras stole the world’s shadows, painters framed their truths with bare hands—carving rectangles of meaning from the chaos. The Leica SBLOO 35mm is heir to that ancient heresy. It does not capture light. It curates it.
Hold it to your eye, and you become a thief of horizons.
The Geometry of Longing
The SBLOO is a reverse Galilean telescope—four lenses in five groups, folded into a chrome-plated labyrinth. Light enters, bends, surrenders. Inside, mirrors conspire to concentrate the world into a bright, unforgiving rectangle.
Brightness: Not illumination, but revelation. The SBLOO’s frame glows like a gas station sign on a midnight highway—a beacon for the lost.
Eye Relief: 8mm. A distance as precise as a sigh. Press too close, and the edges blur. Pull back, and the frame becomes a memory.
This is not a viewfinder. It is a threshold.
A Catalog of Ghosts
Leica’s viewfinders are named like old jazz standards—cryptic, haunted, heavy with history.
Focal Length
Name
Personality
21mm
SBKOO
The anarchist, swallowing streets whole
28mm
SLOOZ
The wanderer, hungry for skies
35mm
SBLOO
The poet, balancing chaos and order
50mm
SBOOI
The monk, austere and unyielding
90mm
SGVOO
The sniper, isolating souls
135mm
SHOOC
The astronomer, mapping distant griefs
The SBLOO is the 35mm—a focal length that sees as humans do, if humans could see without desire.
The Ritual of Exclusion
To use the SBLOO is to perform surgery on reality.
Raise the viewfinder. Feel its cold weight against your brow—a stethoscope for the visible world.
Frame. The brightlines cut the scene like scalpels. A child’s laughter becomes a quadrant. A cloud, a diagonal.
Breathe. The 8mm gap between glass and eye lets the outside world bleed in—a reminder: You are still here. This is not a dream.
A Warning: The SBLOO does not lie. It shows you what you ignore—the homeless man outside the frame, the crack in the pavement, the love affair dissolving in the periphery.
The Myth of Objectivity
Leica’s engineers will tell you about coatings, refractive indices, anti-glare magic. Ignore them. The SBLOO is not optics. It is alchemy.
Its brilliance comes from absence. No electronics. No LEDs. Just polished glass and borrowed light. To look through it is to understand: Photography is not about recording. It is about betrayal. You betray the world by choosing what to exile from the frame.
Epilogue: The Viewfinder as Time Machine
In an age of screens, the SBLOO is a relic. A rebellion.
Attach it to a digital Leica, and something shifts. The live view dies. The world reverts to its analog truth—grainy, fleeting, alive. For a moment, you are Oskar Barnack in 1914, Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1932, Robert Frank in 1955.
The SBLOO whispers: “To see is to choose. To choose is to lose. Now go—lose beautifully.”
Technical Notes (for those who still crave facts):
Type: Reverse Galilean, 35mm brightline
Magnification: 0.4x
Compatibility: Screwmount and M bodies (adapters weep quietly)
Price: $450 (or three sleepless nights in Marseille)
The Leica SOFORT arrives like a postcard from a stranger—unexpected, cryptic, bearing the smudged fingerprints of time. It is not a camera. It is a provocation, wrapped in red leather and German pragmatism. “SOFORT” means “immediately,” but nothing about this machine feels hurried. To hold it is to hold a paradox: a Leica that laughs at permanence, a Fuji wearing a Savile Row suit.
The Anatomy of Ephemera
Body
Material: Plastic, but the kind that whispers “I could have been Bakelite.” Red, white, or black—colors borrowed from a Tarkovsky film.
Weight: 307g. Light enough to forget, heavy enough to remind you: Every photo is a farewell.
Design: Squares and circles in a lover’s quarrel. This is not Fuji’s kawaii flirtation; it’s Bauhaus austerity with a cigarette burn.
Lens
Focal Adjustment: A ring at the base, two zones: 0.6m-3m (intimacy), 3m-∞ (escape). Manual focus? No. Mindful focus. To turn the ring is to negotiate with distance, like a truck driver shifting gears on the Autobahn at dusk.
Sharpness: Startling. The lens—Leica-designed, Fuji-born—slices light with Teutonic precision. Polaroid’s soft nostalgia? Nein.
The Viewfinder: A Window to a Parallel World
The SOFORT’s viewfinder is a cathedral. Bright, uncluttered, a rectangle of pure possibility. Fuji’s Instax Mini 90 offers a peephole; Leica offers a portal. To peer through it is to remember: Photography isn’t about capturing reality. It’s about framing your loneliness and calling it art.
Technical Note:
Parallax Correction: None. Your mistakes are your own.
Film: The Alchemy of Impermanence
Film Type
Leica’s Soul
Fuji’s Body
Saturation
High, like blood on snow
Pastel, like faded denim
Contrast
Low, forgiving shadows
Harsh, a teenager’s first heartbreak
Price
$1.20 per shot (a prayer)
$0.80 per shot (a grocery receipt)
Leica’s Secret: Their film—rebranded Fuji—develops warmer. Is it chemistry? Or the placebo effect of a red dot?
The Ritual
Load the film. Feel the cartridge click, a sound like a bullet chambering.
Choose your distance. 0.6m for lovers, ∞ for runaways.
Press the shutter. The motor groans, ejecting a blank rectangle—a Schrödinger’s photo. Wait 90 seconds. Pray.
A Warning: The SOFORT doesn’t do “spontaneous.” It does delayed urgency. Every shot is a Russian roulette of light and regret.
The Ghost of M
Leica claims this is pedagogy—a gateway drug to M cameras. They’re not wrong. The SOFORT’s manual zone focus is a haiku version of the M’s rangefinder. Use it, and you’ll start craving the click-hiss of a film advance lever.
But here’s the truth: The SOFORT isn’t training wheels. It’s a memento mori for the digital age. Each photo decays. Each fade is a whisper: “You too will vanish.”
Who Buys This?
Not You, if you photograph birthdays.
You, if you’ve ever stolen a glance at a stranger on a train and wondered what god they curse.
Epilogue: The Eternal Instant
Wim Wenders once wrote: “Every film is a letter to someone who no longer exists.”
The SOFORT understands. Its photos are letters addressed to ghosts—written in silver halide, sealed with light.
Technical Specs (for the restless):
Lens: 60mm f/12.7 (Leica-designed, Fuji-built)
Focus Zones: 0.6m-3m / 3m-∞
Exposure Control: Auto, with a grudging nod to manual override
A camera is not a tool. It is a wound—a deliberate incision into time. The Leica I Model C (1930) knows this. It arrives not as an answer, but as a question carved in nickel and obsidian. Hold it, and you hold a blade forged in the smithy of Oskar Barnack’s rebellion: “Why must cameras be grand? Why not let them bleed into the shadows?”
This is not a machine for the obedient. It is for those who wear their loneliness like a tailored coat.
The Anatomy of Silence
Body
Material: Black lacquer, hand-mixed and now extinct—a pigment so deep it swallows light like a midnight ocean.
Weight: 380g. Not heavy, but dense with the gravity of firsts—the first Leica to detach its eye (lens), the first to let light carve its own path.
Shutter: Cloth curtain, still alive after a century. Adjust it, and it purrs like a wolf on a frayed leash.
Lens
Mount: Threaded, like a secret handshake. Early sets (I-III) were monogamous—body and lens serial numbers married, their brass vows etched into metal. Later, Leica let them divorce. Look for the “0” mark—a scar from lovers reunited.
Options: Nickel-plated Elmar 50mm f/3.5 (a dagger), Hektor 135mm f/4.5 (a spear). Chrome came later, but nickel whispers: “I am not here to shine. I am here to outlast you.”
In a world obsessed with 50mm orthodoxy, the Contax G45 arrives as a 45mm heretic—a focal length as deliberate as a sculptor’s finest chisel. While others chase symmetry, Zeiss engineers carved this optical anomaly: a brass-core lens sheathed in titanium, weighing less than a sparrow’s sigh (198g). Priced at 420(new,1996)or420(new,1996)or380–$420 (2025 USD for mint copies), it defies both physics and financial logic.
