My Life On 35mm || Contax T2 Test
When my friend Sol hit me up and offered to do a camera swap with me and let me give his Contax T2 a try, I was so excited. This is a camera that I have thought about buying for a while, but hesitated due to it’s hefty price tag. I obviously scooped up the opportunity instantly, happy to give him my mju-ii for the next few weeks as I got to give this highly coveted film camera a go! So I loaded it up with some Fuji Superia 400 (my favourite budget film) and took it around with me for the week on a few dog walks and tested it out.
The difference in size between the Contax T2 and the Olympus mju-ii definitely took some getting used to, but I quickly got over it as I continued shooting. Whilst it is definitely larger than the mju-ii, it’s still significantly smaller than my Sony A7iii that I shoot most of my work so I don’t find it to be as bulky as some people do. What I loved instantly about the Contax was the amount of control you have for a point and shoot. You can choose between setting the focus distance manually or using the camera’s built in auto-focus, you can pick your aperture, it’s easy to turn the flash on and off as you wish, you can set it to a 5 second timer with just a flick of a switch, and you can easily tell the camera to push or pull the film with the turn of a nifty dial. These are things you can’t do with mju-ii, as the Olympus is a much simpler camera that is designed to have everything on auto so all you have to do is literally just point and shoot. I never realized how much I was missing this kind of control until I started shooting with the T2. I have always wanted a simple film camera where I didn’t have to think too hard, and this one has been exactly that but still lets me control the photo enough to get the results I want.
When I got back the scans from this first roll I shot, my mind was blown just how sharp and contrasty the photos were. If you nail focus, the camera produces images so tack-sharp in a way that I haven’t seen with any film camera before. Also, the bokeh you get when open at 2.8 is this soft, just-out-of-focus look that is really pretty. But what blew me away the most was the difference in contrast between the kinds of shots I was getting on my mju-ii before, and the shot that came out of the Contax on this roll. I am such a sucker for some dreamy contrasty pictures, and this roll just swept me off my feet in terms of contrast. A lot of this is due to the Carl Zeiss Sonnar 38mm F/2.8 lens with T* coating that the Contax has. The lens helps create these medium-contrast negatives with just a hint of vignetting that results in these incredibly punchy images that are just bursting with character. Dare I say it, I was a girl smitten with this camera.
If shooting this roll has taught me anything, it’s that I need a Contax T2 in my life. I really don’t want to have to give this one back, and I hope I can convince my mate to sell his to me so I can just keep it forever! I am excited to give some other film stocks a go with it whilst I still have the camera, as I would like to see if I end up liking some film stocks I didn’t like as much in the past when I used them with my mju-ii. Nevertheless, I am so grateful I got to give this camera a go, as I can totally see what the hype is all about! What do you guys think of the photos from this camera? Do you think the camera is worth the hype? Let me know in the comments below!