Contax TVS

Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Several months ago, I posed the question, why is Hollywood obsessed with contacts? Then I realized, maybe I'm just obsessed with contacts. And then I started thinking, maybe I should get another contacts. And well, here we are. Truthfully, for the type of work that I do, which is usually pretty, you know, run and gun street style photography, I'm always looking for, I guess, small systems just to make my life a little bit easier. But that's not always the easiest thing to do with the array of filters. I usually stack on my lenses. So naturally, I came upon the Contax TVS released in 1994. And an interesting little tidbit about it. Well, probably not interesting to you, but interesting to me. It's a point and shoot with a filter thread on the lens. Gone are the days of gaff taping filters to the front of my Canon WP1s. Not really, though. I love those Fisher Price toddler safe looking ass cameras. So I took a quick look on eBay. And well, the TVS goes for like about half the price of the famous Contax T2. It's a similar build quality and it also has a Zeiss lens. So the decision was obvious. Maybe not to my bank, but to me for sure. I got the camera in and as per standard procedure, I put a roll of Ektachrome through it with an 81C filter. And the shots looked pretty good, especially for being just a half-assed test roll that I was shooting on the back of something else. So I was committed. Is this camera as good as it seems? I've had a bit of unfortunate luck with point and shoots lately. So I wasn't emotionally ready to, you know, brick another camera. But speaking of, I was pretty bricked up in excitement to see what this camera can do. So there I was. One fair maiden at one fair county fair. Contax TBS in hand. First order of business, track down some alcohol. We're such girls, dude. Second order of business, butt chug it. Just kidding. Let's load film. Loading film is pretty straightforward on this camera. It's like any point and shoot. Just get a good grip and, you know, chokeslam your film to the ground like you're a prison guard using a display of force to keep the inmates rattled. Extend the leader to the far end of the take-up chamber, close the door, and the camera takes care of the rest for you. Luckily, this camera is pretty friendly to all types of film. It actually auto-reads DX codes for you if you got them. If you're like me and you bulk roll film, aka fellow enemy of the state. And by state, I mean Kodak. Then, in my case, with a recycled canister of 200 ISO film, you can just set the exposure compensation over here to plus one. Make the camera shoot your bulk-rolled Ektachrome at 100 ISO instead of 200. Yeah, the F2 is cool and all, but Contax TBS, baby. Anyway, ever the talented multitaskers, Chris and I used one of our hands for photography. We did a quick loop around the fair to scout it out, and we quickly came upon this guy, which isn't great phrasing. That guy was interesting. He has a bunch of free alien info. So, in the spirit of photographing cryptids, I shot him on a blurry, outdated camera with no discernible details. I actually like this shot a lot. A little shudder-draggy on the long end of the zoom lens, but whatever. This shot is a standout photo as well. So, to turn the camera on, you just got to turn this zoom rocker on the lens here. It feels kind of jank, to be honest. Like, one day you'll turn it, and the lens will just fall off. As I mentioned already, the lens is a zoom lens from 28mm to 56mm, which is a pretty good range, to be honest. The consequences, of course, is that it's not a particularly fast lens like its T2 counterpart, but it's Zeiss. So, you know, the photos, they'll be sharp. You know, theoretically. I mean, have you noticed yet how glowy a lot of my images are? Here's a portrait of Mike, a fellow photographer at the fair, who stopped to say what's up. My insane portraiture skills on display once again. I was able to snap the photo right as he blinked. Way to go, me. I guess I'll stick to landscape. So, I know these shots kind of look like, you know, retrochrome, but trust me, it's ektachrome in a bit of, I guess, foreshadowing. I'll show you how to speedrun fresh E100 into retrochrome later. Anyway, the light was still getting there, so Chris and I hopped aboard the likely unmaintained death-from-a-tall-height machine. Chris just got done telling me that sometimes when he pukes, he shits. We sat as far apart as possible to avoid any sparks of romance. I know what kind of ---- goes on on these things. Okay, so I shot this Royal E100 with a warming filter, and I think that was probably what I was most excited about on this camera because not a lot of point and shoots have the ability to, you know, use a filter. The filter size is 30.5 millimeters, but you can get a step-up ring to 40.5 millimeters like I did on that day. Alternatively, if you're feeling crafty, you can use the native UV filter that comes with the camera, disassemble it like I did, you know, like a colorblind technician on the bomb squad, and replace it with a rattan cutout. So, there you go. Don't say that I never let you in on some elite ball knowledge. I'm not talking about testicles. Fair warning though, the light meter is up here on this camera, I believe, so it will not be taking any meter readings through any filter that you use, which is kind of a wild design choice that infuriates me to my core because the Contax T2 put the meter diode right here on the front of the lens, but it has no filter threads. While this camera does have filter threads, but the meter diode is way off in no man's land. Whatever, these photos are starting to get cooked a little bit. I'm fairly certain that these lenses are not supposed to be this glowy either. So, I scoured the lens elements for fungus and haze, but couldn't really find anything substantial. So, I grabbed a microfiber cloth and rubbed the front and rear elements down hard like a genie's lamp. You know, using my three wishes on clear photos, good light, and a few more inches. It wasn't just any microfiber cloth though. I used the highest quality microfiber cloth and spray in the industry. That should give me that legendary 3D pop I always hear about. And then I also threw on a different custom 81C rattan filter and the official lens hood for the TVS, just to try and eliminate as many variables as possible and fix the glow. With the lens hood on this camera though, it kind of loses its prison pocketability. Green, green, and green. All right, that's enough. So, I reluctantly got back out there in the world with Chris and shot another roll just for a sanity check. Proven to everyone that's ever doubted me that I can be a competent photographer, you know, sometimes. Dull the shot. After showing Chris the shot I was thinking of taking and him finding it profoundly derivative, I fired through the roll and it was filled with some bangers for sure. I like a lot of these actually. My hit rate with this camera actually seems to be quite high for some reason. I could easily see myself sliding some of these bad boys into the portfolio. That glow is, I guess, still somewhat present in certain situations like this where it's hotly backlit. But I definitely think wiping the lens's ass helped a lot. This shot is very ketchup and mustard, that is all. I guess this camera just has a free 1.5 pro mist filter built in that is completely unremovable. But the bigger point here is I can actually not destroy my film if I try hard enough. Anyway, back to the hog slop fest that is the county fair roll of burnt to a crisp E100. As the light was getting significantly more beautiful, my shots were getting significantly more of the opposite. Oh, this one's kind of cool. I like this one a lot too. It's very retrochrome for better for purple. The viewfinder on this camera is pretty solid. It zooms in and out with the rocker on the lens and even has a warning guide pop up when the camera is off. I did notice that on the 28mm end of the focal range, the images would sometimes be a little bit wider than what the viewfinder was displaying. Only by a little bit, which I guess isn't a terrible problem to have, but just a heads up. The camera also displays roughly what shutter speed it's thinking of using as well, so that's nice. Okay, so the scorch marks are really taking over now. What'd you do this time, Jason? It didn't rewind? It didn't rewind. It had been a while, but it was time for my usual reminder that bulk-rolled film in an automatic camera is never really a great idea. The camera got ganked up trying to rewind the roll, so I threw it in a makeshift dark bag and rolled it back up myself. The last few frames were definitely f***ed, which is perfect because the one frame I was most excited about was in there. Oh well. My own dumbassery is what does me in sometimes. I should have used my third wish for more brain cells. The inches thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. Speaking of getting cracked, Chris and I raced to reload our film and I smoked his ass. Absolutely crazy, dude. Was that as good for you as it was for me? Anyway, it was time to let the 800T cook a little bit with that after-hour glow. Emphasis on glow because that inbuilt lens effect was still present, even with the warming filter removed. So something I'll say about this camera that I find kind of annoying is that every time you turn it on, the flash is on auto by default. It was never a problem during the day because obviously there's plenty of light, but here at night I had to consciously turn it off every time I turned the camera on, and sometimes I forgot, which made me have to promptly evacuate the scene after I took a photo. Anyway, to turn the flash off, you need to draw upon your ancestral gaming knowledge and button mash this flash button twice like it's Donkey Kong Banana Bonanza or whatever. I do wish that this camera would remember settings, but it just doesn't. Maybe the follow-up version of the TVS2 does. I don't know. I've never used it. Admittedly though, the flash can come in handy sometimes. I like these photos a lot actually, especially this one. A photo friend of mine described it like bugs circling around a nightlight. I don't specifically mind either how glowy it is. It makes the shots look like there's some physical ambient haze present. For whatever it's worth, this camera's autofocus is also quite good. I didn't even realize it until much later. Not a single shot out of focus or missing the intended target, even at night. I guess you really only notice something like that when it's not working. Just like the Contax T2, this camera does feature manual focusing options if you scroll past the autofocus. Unfortunately, it's in meters instead of miles, but whatever. It's nice to have. I'm sure the autofocus on this camera will get locked up when you try to shoot through a window or whatever. Last but not least, manual aperture. It's a little bit confusing on this camera, but yeah, it's got overrides for whatever aperture you'd like to use, keeping in mind that the lens is variable aperture and changes to 5.6 at the long end. For this video, I just left it in P mode, which, again, doesn't stand for what you think it does, gentlemen. Anyway, before we get back to more enlightened discourse on the Contax TVS, I'd like to first take a minute and thank today's sponsor, Squarespace, for their ongoing support. So obviously you've heard of the industry-leading Squarespace before, but you know the team behind the website Building Powerhouse recently implemented a bunch of tools that utilize groundbreaking AI to custom build the website that'll take your personal enterprises to the next level. Tools like Blueprint AI, which utilize groundbreaking artificial intelligence to not only perfect but personalize your new website through a series of prompts designed to create a solid base for your new online hub. Are you a photographer like me looking to show off your work and ultimately even take it a step further and sell prints or one of ones of your photography? Great. You can now use AI to power things like product and video descriptions, as well as email campaigns. It's designed to take some of that load off on crafting your new website workspace to allocate other resources like time and critical thinking to other more important components of your online presence. And if you're looking to go a more direct route and offer in-person advice sessions or photography portfolio reviews, Squarespace now features acuity scheduling to make the act of keeping a detailed schedule quite simple for both you and your clients. And with invoice support to keep things on track, you can start the flow of economy back to you in no time. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. If you use the code grainydays at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. So is Jason obsessed with contacts or is contacts obsessed with Jason? Hard to say for sure, but I do think I will keep this camera for now. I might even get a second one in a better condition. It'll be the no fog version, assuming other TVSs don't have this problem. They did make two follow-ups to this camera, creatively named the TVS2 and the TVS3. The three is kind of a wild departure from the original design of the TVS. It introduced the drawbridge design, which I can only assume came from an era where camera designers were getting absolutely shithoused on medieval ales. From my understanding, the TVS2 is essentially the same as the one with some very minor changes and upgrades internally. I'd probably go with that version over the one. At the very least, the electronics are newer and it probably won't crap out on you as soon as the one. It was released in 1997 instead of 94. So anyway, did this video convince you to get one or maybe not? Leave a comment below. I won't read it, but do it anyway.