As stated in the blog title the Contax 137 MA Quartz…
…is my personal favorite SLR. A claim I do not make lightly since there are other SLRs I rather like. Had quite a few of them. But when things got out of hand and it came time to thin the SLR herd this is a camera that was going nowhere. Never once thought of selling it. Why? I am glad I imagined you asked. While covered in great detail in the linked review, it comes down to sentimental and practical variables.
Sentimental
- I picked up a copy with tattered leather (very common) for nearly nothing.
- At first, I stripped it down to bare metal and it was a good looking camera, but slippery as a bar of soap.
- Then for less than $20 I ordered a new skin and after a few minutes I now had an even better looking camera on my hands.
Practical
- Even before dressing it up with a skin I quickly realized this was a very capable camera. So much so that it knocked my favorite SLR at that time off of its pedestal.
- Gave access to top tier Zeiss glass as well as very good and reasonably priced Yashica and third party glass.
Truth be told in this case the Zeiss lens stayed plastered to the front of the 137 so I eventually let go of the other lenses. Perfectly good lenses, but I never used them. There is nothing wrong with them. It is just that the Zeiss lens is so good. On to this last roll.
Brought it along to use after I finished a roll of Rollei Infrared 400 in Durham. Went with a favorite color film of mine, Fujifilm 400. As usual developed at home Using Cinestill CS41.
Here are my favorites from the roll.
First a few rehearsal pics.
On to Durham.
Another successful analog therapy session.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 