While taking part in my first vintage fair, I was contacted by a reader of this blog. The reader made me an offer I could not refuse.

“Would I like to try a Contax RTS III with a lens of your choice?” he asked.
“Erm yes please!” I replied without much delay.

So at the fair he brought in said camera as promised. It came with a 28mm lens as I already had a 50mm. He also brought in a box of other items including a 500mm mirror lens with a Contax adapter.

Here is the camera with the wide angle attached.

My goodness this is a heavy camera, but as you can see in perfect condition. I think if I had owned this camera, it would have been a lot more scratched up. I would have scratched it as I carried it and swung it around. Mr Generous really did look after his stuff. Everything in his box of goodies was in its original box or a bag and labeled.

This camera was first introduced in 1990 and you can find all the technical details you like on this page. Really far down on that page you will see details of a ceramic film pressure plate. This other site also mentions it as a starred feature. It ensured a flat film plane as the vacuum enhanced it. Well, that is impressive. This reviewer said it felt and looked like a Porsche of cameras. I have to agree. Even though it was heavy, it was surprisingly comfortable to hold. The hand grip was just the right size for my tiny hands. The diopter adjustment made the already bright viewfinder a delight to look through.

I had this camera for “as long as you like.” I decided to put a few films through it and experiment a bit. For the first film, I put in some Kodak EPH P1600X slide film. Another reader gave me this film a while ago. In fact he gave me a fair bit of this now unavailable film. I wish I had read that link before. It mentions it is a rare 400asa film that can be pushed to 1600. Oh, that is what the ‘p’ indicates before 1600x.

Well, I really should start reading instructions and reviews before I use things, but where is the fun in that. Anyway, this film does not have 400asa written on it. It is not even on the box. You just have to be clever enough to know it??

So as I thought the film was 1600asa and it was from 2002. I set the camera to 1250. I moved the dial two places lower on this camera. First I tried the 500mm lens, as it did not have an aperture dial I used it at various settings. I tried aperture and speed mode hoping the camera would figure it out the aperture of the lens. I also tried manual mode, guessing the lens was an f8 as I had seen other lenses with the same sized aperture. I took ten shots then changed to the 28mm lens.

Then I made some calculations. Sending the E6 film off to be developed would take at least a week and cost about £15 with postage. I have at least 12 rolls of slide film. Gosh that would be expensive.
An order of Tetenal Colortec E6 would be about £50, arrive the next day, and possibly develop 30 films if I could do it. And there is the rub, I have never done E6 processing before. In Japan you could only get black and white chemicals due to government restrictions on the chemicals needed. So I had next to no experience with colour processing. How hard could it be?? Be brave I thought, chemicals ordered!

I found this site and followed it to the letter. I followed the mixing ratios and timings with a quick glance at the pack instructions. If I had known about the pushing element I would have also followed the film guide which I found later. That would have meant adding 5 minutes to the first development stage.

I boiled a kettle. I used it to top up water in the tub which I had previously filled from the hot tap. I put all the chemicals in the tub and took constant temperature readings to check it stayed at 38C. The main issue I had was the wash process, the sink was full and I have a small kitchen. In the end it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I could keep the temperature fairly stable, even on a cold day. I agitated the developing tank every 15 seconds using the agitation stick. I did this instead of taking the tank out of the warm water and inverting it. Then I waited very impatiently for the film to dry.

So the first part of the film was from the 500mm mirror lens.

Well, they are a bit crappy. Underexposed and fuzzy, focusing was quite hard due to the very small depth of field and darker viewfinder. I didn’t like the lens very much, though I am glad I tried a free one as I always wanted to buy one for bird watching. The slides were obviously underexposed which enhanced the blue tint.

Here are some of the results from the 28mm lens.

At first I was disappointed with the results, but then I remembered…Hey, I developed these slides! The film was 17 years out of date, I used it at the wrong settings on the camera and wrong timing of the film processing. So actually, they are not that bad 🙂

These slide also have a blue tint. The ones in the link I shared to before were also blueish. I wonder what the slides would look like when I try another roll and set the camera to 400asa.

As for the camera, it is a bit awesome. I have put a fresh roll of C41 film in it which I will not be processing myself as I want to see what it can do without the hit and miss of my own processing skills. For a Contax camera these can be found for sale at quite reasonable prices. If you are looking for a good quality, manual focus SLR, they don’t come much better than this.

Update: I tried another roll of the slide film today, this time taken at 400asa. I tried a few settings and a yellow filter. I found the yellow filter definitely was not needed and the blue colour cast was probably due to the underexposure of the first film. Some of the new roll were still blue, but some were relatively ok. Either way this roll came out better.

Here are some more from the second roll. It is not my favourite film at the moment, but I will try it in another camera for another comparison test at a later date.