The Contarex is a 35mm SLR camera made by

Zeiss Ikon Carl Zeiss AG (), branded as ZEISS, is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics, founded in Jena, Germany in 1846 by optician Carl Zeiss. Together with Ernst Abbe (joined 1866) and Otto Schott (joined 1884) he laid the f ...

. It was first presented at

Photokina Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, an ...

in 1958 and initially scheduled for delivery in the spring of 1959, but it was not made generally available until March 1960. It is popularly known as the ''Contarex I'', the ''Bullseye'' or the ''Cyclops''. The camera was aimed at the high-end and professional markets; in 1961, the retail price (including the 50mm f/2.0 Planar lens) was $499. The camera body, weighing 910 g., is complex, comprising some 1100 parts, with seven principal alloy pressure castings and additional stamped cover plates to complete the structure. However, it is rugged and

roller bearings In mechanical engineering, a rolling-element bearing, also known as a rolling bearing, is a bearing (mechanical), bearing which carries a load by placing rolling elements (such as balls or rollers) between two concentric, Groove (engineering), g ...

are used in the

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

mechanism. Inevitably it requires a specialist for its repair; 43 parts have to be dismantled to remove the top plate for internal access. The Contarex was the first 35mm SLR

focal plane shutter In camera design, a focal-plane shutter (FPS) is a type of photographic shutter that is positioned immediately in front of the focal plane of the camera, that is, right in front of the photographic film or image sensor. Two-curtain shutters ...

camera providing direct

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

coupling to the shutter-, aperture-, and

film speed Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relations ...

-settings; they are interconnected by cords. An aperture simulator for the exposure meter in the ''Cyclops window'' uses an iris in front of the selenium meter cell. The meter needle, to be aligned with an index triangle, is visible both in a top plate window and to the right in the viewfinder. The camera also has a interchangeable

focusing screen A focusing screen is a flat translucent material, either a ground glass or Fresnel lens, found in a system camera that allows the user of the camera to preview the framed image in a viewfinder. Often, focusing screens are available in variants w ...

which is, by default a split image inside of a micro-prism. A thumb-wheel on the camera controls the

lens A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements''), ...

aperture, and the value is shown in a window on top of the centrally located meter cell (the ''Cyclops window''). The aperture in the interchangeable automatic lens closes when the shutter release is depressed and reopens when the camera is wound on for the next exposure. Due to the limited meter range, not every camera setting combination is possible to accommodate on the ''Contarex I'' exposure meter. A custom modified Contarex was used by astronaut Ed White during the first NASA's extra vehicular activity (

EVA Eva or EVA may refer to: * Eva (name), a feminine given name Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters * Eva (Dynamite Entertainment), a comic book character by Dynamite Entertainment * Eva (''Devil May Cry''), Dante's mother in t ...

) on June 3, 1965, during the flight of

Gemini 4 Gemini 4 (officially Gemini IV) With Gemini IV, NASA changed to Roman numerals for Gemini mission designations. was the second crewed spaceflight in NASA's Project Gemini, occurring in June 1965. It was the tenth crewed American spaceflight (inc ...

Lenses

The standard lens is the ''Carl Zeiss Planar 1:2 f=50mm'' in bright aluminium finish with a chrome 49 mm thread filter ring and an outer bayonet for ZI filters. The lens focuses to 30 cm, which is closer than the usual 50 cm. The focusing helical is remarkably smooth and precise. There is no aperture ring on the Contarex lens itself. It is set on the camera aperture wheel. The Contarex

lens mount A lens mount is an interface – mechanical and often also electrical – between a photographic camera body and a lens. It is a feature of camera systems where the body allows interchangeable lenses, most usually the rangefinder camera, singl ...

takes only Contarex lenses and accessories.

References

External links

{{commons category, Contarex
The Contarex lenses

The Contarex camera – 1959
135 film cameras SLR cameras