Contax RX II

Kyocera shipped the RX II in 2002 as the cost-reduced version of the RX, near the tail end of Contax's manual-focus SLR line. The one documented change is what it leaves out: the original RX carried a Digital Focus Indicator, a little electronic scale that confirmed focus on the matte, and the RX II drops it to hit a lower price. By then the whole Contax/Yashica system was clearly winding down, and this body was a sensible bet rather than a fresh idea. Keep selling Carl Zeiss glass on a 35mm body to the people who still wanted it. That was the job, and the RX II did it. It was one of the last clean ways to mount a Planar 50mm f/1.4 or a Distagon 28mm on a full-frame film camera with a modern meter behind it.

In the hand it feels like late-period Japanese build, dense and a little plasticky on the outside but tight where it counts. The viewfinder is bright, with a plain ground-glass screen instead of the focus-confirmation scale the RX had, which is the main thing you give up. You focus the old way, by eye on the matte, and with fast Zeiss primes wide open that takes practice. The shutter is electronic, vertical focal-plane, running from a long 16 seconds up to about 1/4000 at the top, with flash sync near 1/120. Press the release and it is a flat, civilized clack, nothing like the slap of a 645 or a Pentax 67.

The meter is center-weighted TTL feeding an aperture-priority auto mode, and it is competent rather than clever. Point it at an evenly lit street and it nails the exposure. Point it into a window or a stage light and it does what every averaging meter does, which is hold the midtone and let the thing you actually cared about fall apart. This is where you stop trusting it. Take an incident or spot reading from the Zone Light Meter app, place your shadows on the zone you want, and set the aperture by hand instead of letting the body chase the highlights. The backlit portrait the camera wants to silhouette comes back with a face in it.

Film loading is conventional and quick, and the body runs on batteries for everything, so a dead cell means no shutter at all. Plan accordingly. The C/Y mount is the real reason to own one. People buy the RX II to put Zeiss in front of film, and the following it has today is mostly a following for the glass.

The honest weakness is dependence and scarcity. Everything hinges on the electronics, and Kyocera left the camera business in 2005, so there is no factory service and no parts pipeline. A dead RX II is usually a dead RX II for good. It is comparatively uncommon on the used market, so clean examples cost real money, and a good CLA from an independent is not guaranteed to be possible. Cross-shoppers usually land here against the Aria, which is lighter and easier to find, or the original RX with its focus aid. You pick the RX II when you want the bright plain finder and you already own the glass. For everyone else, the Aria is the safer way into the same mount.