The Contax 167MT is a beast!

In all honesty if I have to think of a SLR model the first to come to my mind is the Nikon F3 and, maybe, the Canon AE-1. Probably because they are definitely more common and they’ve been the flagship of this genre of camera system for decades.

But, in the last few weeks, I have been lucky enough to shoot with this beautiful model of a Contax 167MT and I’ve to say that I’m impressed. I was completely unaware of the existence of this series of reflex produced by Kyocera under the name Contax and so I went a bit more thoroughly and it seems they were reliable cameras made, especially, for professional photographers in search for a fast (supeeeeeeeeeeer fast!) and solid SLR.

This model was made in the 1986 and the main features were program, shutter and aperture priority, manual modes, spot metering, permanent AE-lock, automatic bracketing, in short, a real modern reflex with all the features still present in the digital ones. This particular model has a super sharp and amazing lens, a Carl Zeiss Planar 1.4/50, one of these kind of lenses that you are sure the results will be great.

On the practical side the camera responds beautifully. In every kind of situation and subject it takes amazing pictures and thankful for a huge viewfinder the composition is easy to create and the focus is smooth and super precise. I didn’t find particular difficult the settings, they are quite basic and everything is showed on a screen (ISO, Manual, Av, Tv, Normal, Low and High shutter speed program) and also inside the viewfinder. The motorized film transport supports three types of drive modes, S: single, C: continuous and S-T: self-timer mode. And this feature impressed my a lot. When you shoot in C the camera is super fast and you can easily take pictures of sport event or other things in movement without loosing a frame!

For some more info about this camera you can check here in our shop.

All pictures by Alessandro Iotti