A Love Story Between Stuttgart and Tokyo. The World's First Quartz-Timed SLR.
The Contax name carries a history of defiance. Born in 1932 as Zeiss Ikon's answer to Leica, it survived war and decades of silence before returning through a remarkable collaboration: Carl Zeiss glass from Germany, precision bodies from Yashica in Japan, ergonomics consulted by the Porsche design group. The 139 Quartz, introduced in 1979, was the world's first SLR to use a quartz-timed electronic shutter, so precise that Contax named the camera after it. Only around 200,000 were ever produced. The Carl Zeiss Tessar 45mm f/2.8 pancake lens was designed exclusively to accompany this body, forming the smallest high-quality SLR kit in the world at the time. Together they produce images of crystalline clarity, extraordinary tonal depth, and a Zeiss rendering that no algorithm has successfully replicated.
Sample photos by: PHNTM01(r/analog). All rights belong to their respective owners.
