Getting outside with the Contax G2

I have so many fun cameras. I have some nice m-mount bodies, I have a mam6, my little point and shoots, even an XPan now! And I've been leaving all of them at home and pretty much only taking out my Contax G2 to play. (Ok I have taken out the XPan quite a few times too).

I think the reason for this is mainly that the weather here in Switzerland has been, in a word, shit, so I haven't really gotten out all that much. And then the results I get from my Contax G lenses are so good that it's the first camera I think about taking. I have to justify not taking it in order to take something else instead. The lenses are just perfect and I don't need to edit much when I scan. I also have to do barely anything when I use the camera, just stop down to f/8 or f/11, leave it on auto everything, and leave exposure comp on +1 to +2 depending on how much snow I'm in.

I do really want to use my M7 again but it turns out it doesn't like winter very much. Something something the lubricant in the winder gets cold and then it's very tough to advance, my camera feels like it's going to break and I get overlapping frames like this:

Pretty pathetic for a Leica, if I'm being honest! Especially for one born in ~2004? None of my other cameras seem to struggle like this.

I do miss having good manual focus though. The Contax G1 has ok autofocus, and it's about 20% better on the G2, but it's still pretty bad. The camera will not take a photo if if it can't get a focus lock, which is really annoying, and even when it does get focus, sometimes it's quite off.

It would be perfect if you could quickly manually focus the G lenses, but on both the G1 and the G2, the manual focus setting is not good. On the G1, there's a dial on the top which in theory sounds good, but the dial has absolutely zero resistance, so it can easily move off your selected focus with the lightest of nudges. On the G2 it's a bit better, there's a dial on the front but you have to turn it while looking through the viewfinder or at the top display since it's a multi-purpose dial. In either case it's not great and it's my biggest complaint with the camera.

I don't actually mind the viewfinder. Yes it's small (and slightly better on the G2) but you get used to it, and it's quite accurate for framing.

Anyways the title of this post is getting outside and you haven't seen any pictures outside with it yet. Here you go. 

I tried shooting some Reflx lab 800T with the 35mm f2 and got surprisingly decent results!

I went on a little trip with the boys to Montreux. I had finally found a Contax G2 for a decent price and was testing it out with some catlabs pro 320 (sucks, do not buy this film). All of the Montreux pics are with the 28mm.

The numbers on the side are because the G2 came with the data back, and I set it up to print the timestamp between the borders. Kinda cool! Anyways catlabs 320 looks really bad and super thin when developed with Cinestill df96. I won't be buying it again.

More Montreux. Colorplus I think:

I've been trying to figure out a "look" that I like with Negative Lab Pro. As you'll see from these and the following pictures, I'm still in the process of figuring it out lol. For some reason when I invert I get these strong burnt orange shadows everywhere and correcting it out leaches some of the vibes from the pics. Here's some Ultramax from when I left more of it in.

We made it to Villeneuve popped in a roll of Wolfen NC500 and it was one of the dirtiest rolls I've ever scanned.

On a later weekend, I took the G2 and the 35mm lens to hike Gemmipass with Nico. I finished off the NC500 as fast as possible because I really wanted to try shooting Ektar. Luckily, Gemmipass is super beautiful and I had no problem ripping through the rest of the NC500 roll.

NC500 is... definitely a look! And I don't think I totally hate it! I shot all of these at a base ISO of 200 but then cranked the exposure compensation probably +1.5 to +2 since there was so much snow. 

I then put in some Ektar. Spoiler alert, after seeing the results from this roll, I bought 7 more rolls of Ektar.

I was in love. This kind of high key, saturated, punchy, and crisp look reminds me of those old outdoor gear advertisements you'd see in magazines. I've then been trying to remake this look since. It only seems to really work with the Contax G lenses.

Shooting just 35mm for all of Gemmipass made me realize I wish I had just a bit more reach for compositions. Luckily (?), Contax made a zoom lens for the G2, which apparently sucks ass according to Camera Daddy. I bought it and used it on the Swiss Film Club photo walk in Zurich at the end of February. I also dragged Kaan and Lennox along with me. Mostly Ultramax:

I think the contax zoom lens works great! Not mad about any of the photos and they still look pretty sharp and contrasty. Only annoying thing is the 1 meter minimum focusing distance.

Happy to see that the lens worked, I then went with Kaan and Dominic to do a little winter walk around the non-lake side of the Churfirsten near Alt St. Johann. I shot ektar of course.

I struggled a lot more with the inversion on these two rolls though. The first roll came out very magenta and the second came out very green. I then had to balance that against the white snow and the skin tones, AND I noticed my sensor had dust, so I kind of gave up. Cleaning my sensor myself later on was a whole additional drama that honestly put me off film photography for a minute.

There you go. Some pictures outside with the Contax G2. Happy now?