A first film found its way into my Contax Aria – an Agfa Vista 400. As lens I used a Yashica ML 2.8/24mm. The Contax Aria is a beautiful piece of technology and one of the last SLR models from Contax.
Technical specs can be found here, so there’s no need to duplicate them.
And here comes the correct lens …
The Aria is the smallest and most lightweight Contax SLR model. It’s even lighter than the Contax 139 or the Contax 159. Dials and switches are similar to the other predecessor models like e.g. RX or AX. All are well placed and pure fun to use. Showing a size comparison, just look here.
The lens – a Yashica ML 2.8/24mm – is rated not bad, reviews and ratings can be found on the web.
To give the combo a little bit room to shine, I took it on a hike in the Upper Palatinate. Hiking to the Haarkapelle – not sure if Hair-Chapel is the right translation, as it lies near a (very) small village named Haar and a small ridge called Haar-Rangen. It’s a small chapel in the middle of a forest, built as a remembrance of a good man. The hike goes along a fair number of ponds and we had a cold but sunny day at late February. So all was prepared for some nice pictures.
The film – an Agfa Vista 400 – is currently in the making and dm and I expect it to be back in about a week.
Until then, I have made at least some digital shots with my lovely Ricoh GR II. Here you go …
START UPDATE
I checked online the status of my film and just got the info that my film is not listed in their order system … ???
So I went in the dm-shop and told them … they say they sent it out to the lab.
They called the lab which tells they never received that film.
I placed a search request … let’s see …
END UPDATE
The combo worked very well and handling is quite a pleasure. The little Aria does not stand in the way and simply works. The Yashica gives a beautiful focal length with it’s 24mm and it’s a joy working with it – a very solid construction. Did I say, that 24mm is a focal length I like ;)
Let’s see what comes back from the processor …
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Well, finally after 4 weeks I called them and … my film was back from processing :)
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Using the scanned samples – 1500px – I made some tweeks with SilverFX and … voila … here they are ;)
What slightly irritates me is, that the 3rd party lens shade was advertised for a 24mm lens … and here I have vignetting on all images. What I found further was, some flares when having the sun in the image. But I think that’s not so bad for a 24mm lens. All images can be found here.
Enjoy 😉
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