Contax 159 MM

The shutter on the 159 MM hits like a single dry handclap, and at the top end it is moving fast enough to freeze a sprinter. Contax rated it to about 1/4000, which in 1984 was rare air for a 35mm body, and the focal-plane mechanism behind that number still snaps with authority on a clean example. You feel the body wants to be used. The film advance is short and the release has the kind of break that makes you want to keep shooting.

What it really was, was a way into Zeiss glass without paying for the RTS line. The Contax/Yashica mount is the whole point of this camera. You buy a 159 to put a Planar 50mm f/1.4 or a Distagon in front of the film, and the body is the cheap, capable end of that bargain. The "MM" in the name marks the multi-mode metering coupling for the newer MM lenses, which is the detail that lets program mode meter properly wide open. Run an older AE lens and you lose some of that, so collectors learn to check the lens cosmetics for the green markings.

In the hand it is aperture-priority at heart, with a center-weighted meter reading through the lens and a clean LED scale down the side of the finder telling you the speed it picked. The viewfinder is bright for an early-eighties SLR, the split-prism focusing aid snaps in and out cleanly, and the information sits where your eye expects it. There is a program mode and full manual too, but most people leave it in aperture-priority and trust the body to chase the shutter. Flash sync lands around 1/100, which is ordinary for a focal-plane shutter and nothing to write home about.

The honest weakness is the electronics. This is a fully battery-dependent body, no mechanical backup speed worth the name, and the meter and shutter both die when the cell goes flat or when a cold solder joint finally lets go after forty years. A 159 with a dead meter is a paperweight until someone competent opens it, and competent Contax service is neither cheap nor everywhere. Light seals also go to tar on bodies this age, so a cheap one almost always needs seals before it earns its keep.

For a backlit street scene or a high-contrast doorway, do not let the center-weighted meter average you into mush. Take a spot reading off the shadow with the Zone Light Meter app, decide which zone you want those shadows to sit on, and dial the body to match in manual. The Planar will reward the discipline.

Today the 159 MM sits in the sweet spot between the plasticky budget Yashicas and the pricey RTS II that everyone actually wants. People cross-shop it against the Contax 137 and the Yashica FX-3, and they buy the 159 when they want the Zeiss mount and the fast shutter without the RTS tax. It is a working photographer's side door into Contax, as long as you accept that you are buying a 1980s computer that happens to take pictures.