From Digital Camera World · · 2m
The secret project that brought Contax back
How a German optics giant, a Japanese underdog and a Porsche designer rebuilt a legendary camera brand from scratch.
In brief
How a German optics giant, a Japanese underdog and a Porsche designer rebuilt a legendary camera brand from scratch. Contax came back not from German manufacturing but from a partnership: Zeiss glass, Yashica electronics, Porsche styling, and a shared lens mount that let buyers mix all three. Originally reported by…
Zeiss lost its own camera
When Germany split after World War II, Carl Zeiss lost the original Contax business. It still designed world-class optics, but high German labor costs left it without a competitive 35mm SLR.
Japan owned the market
Pentax, Nikon, Canon and Minolta were dominating 35mm SLRs by the late Sixties. If Zeiss wanted back in, it needed a Japanese factory behind it.
Pentax looked perfect
Asahi Optical was arguably Japan's strongest SLR maker, with the Spotmatic a roaring success and a reputation for mechanical precision and lens coatings.
The deal fell apart
The partnership produced the Pentax K-mount and an exchange of optical design methods, then ended around 1972. Pentax wanted to build its own brand, and Zeiss wanted more control than Pentax would give.
Yashica wanted up
Yashica had the manufacturing and the electronics know-how but had never cracked the professional market. It agreed to build a whole new system around Zeiss's requirements.
“Yashica was willing to build an entirely new professional camera system around Zeiss's requirements.”
Top Secret Project 130
That was the internal codename for the Zeiss and Yashica partnership. Zeiss designed the lenses and shaped the viewfinder; Yashica engineered the body and its electronic shutter.
Styled by a Porsche
Porsche Design handled the look, under Professor Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, grandson of Ferdinand and the designer of the 911.
The RTS arrives
Shown at Photokina 1974 and sold from 1975, the Contax RTS brought a new C/Y bayonet mount, an electronic shutter to 1/2000 sec, and Zeiss T* glass, all aimed at professionals.
The poor man's Contax
Yashica's FR and FX bodies shared the mount, so buyers could pair cheap Yashica glass with a Contax body, or real Zeiss lenses with a cheap body. They outsold the RTS roughly four to one.
Vacuum-flat film
The RTS III of 1990 added a 1/8000 sec shutter and spot metering, but its party trick was a vacuum pump that sucked film flat against a ceramic plate at the moment of exposure.
Three unsolved mysteries
Nobody ever explained the number 130. The budget FX-3 was secretly built by Cosina. And a rumor claimed Yashica gave Zeiss a room no Japanese staff could enter.
“Your scribe has been unable to confirm this rumor.”
The short version
Contax came back not from German manufacturing but from a partnership: Zeiss glass, Yashica electronics, Porsche styling, and a shared lens mount that let buyers mix all three.
