Contarex in the aero museum

[Julio1fer]

This Contarex was my late father’s pride for many years. He gave it to me along with three lenses (35, 135 and the 50 /2 Planar), a Zeiss monocular that works with the Planar, a close-up bellows and a number of filters.



I took it for exercise in a brief visit to the newly opened aeronautical museum, which is run by our Air Force. In this visit I concentrated on the main hangar, a difficult place for photography because of the light direction. Most of the shots were close to full aperture, with the 35mm Distagon and the 50mm Planar.

My first flight was in this Vickers Viscount, 55 years ago.



Inside the hangar, a lot of beautiful machinery.









The Pucará was a light attack plane that saw service on the Argentina side in the Falklands war. It was the most modern plane in the exhibition.





This is a place to come back, equipped with a wider lens and HP5+ instead of FP4+

In this roll I had development problems, with old D-23 and very cold water to deal with. The scanner and its software saved the day.

Thanks for looking!

[GrahamS]

Well done, Julio. You made a success of a difficult shoot. The 3rd image down from the top appears to be of a De Havilland Chipmunk. I learned to fly in one of those. Once upon a time, when I worked in a photo dealer specialising in all things Leica and all things Zeiss, I was asked by a customer to copy some A4 size maps onto colour slide film and I was given a Contarex and a 115mm f3.5 Macro Tessar lens to do so. The images were perfect, apart from one serious problem. There was what appeared to be severe "parallax" error. The images were not central in the frame as they were in the viewfinder. We tried another Contarex body with the same result. How could there be parallax error with a SLR, and a Zeiss SLR at that. But there was. The ground glass screen was not aligned with the image central axis, showing more on one side than the other. I eventually switched to a Nikon F which had recently been released on the market, without any "parallax" problems. I wonder if your Contarex exhibits this problem?

[Julio1fer]

Thanks Graham! I think it is indeed a Chipmunk, you may want to check in the museum site, but I remember the “Urutau” inscription in the side. This is the museum picture from its site in https://museo.fau.mil.uy/aeronaves.html



The lateral alignment issue that you mention would naturally show itself in reproductions. I never noticed it in normal compositions. My father did a lot of reproductions with this Contarex, for old documents that a local amateur historian brought to him. Never mentioned the alignment problem that you had. Next time I will try a test!

[Julio1fer]

Found a picture of the Chipmunk in the roll, so it is confirmed. The sign board can barely be read.

[Bennybee]

That is a very fine looking example of the Contarex Bull's Eye! And indeed a nice place to go back to for more fine pictures of those lovely machines. Good work, Julio!

[Julio1fer]

Thanks Bennybee! Actually the camera is a bit battered. A local tech fortunately put it in good shape. The Planar has some separation (which does not seem to affect the pictures), and the selenium cell is way out. It is a user camera, which has mostly sentimental value.

[titrisol]

Vickers Viscount!!! I think I flew one of those in the mid 70s (Fuerza Aerea Ecuatoriana/TAME)

Great pictures, the Contarex is a wonderful machine

[alexvaras]

What a lovely camera and photos!!

[Bennybee]

Thanks Bennybee! Actually the camera is a bit battered. A local tech fortunately put it in good shape. The Planar has some separation (which does not seem to affect the pictures), and the selenium cell is way out. It is a user camera, which has mostly sentimental value.

Well it certainly looks good in the picture. The selenium cell being dead or off was to be expected. These cameras fetch big $ but this one having been your dad's is its biggest value - it certainly is a keeper (and a user) then. I still have my dad's camera too, but that is just a pressed metal thing, a Richard 6x6 from around 1956. My father was not so handy with cameras, and later he could hardly master my Topcon Unirex, even though that camera had an 'Auto' setting. The Richard camera is a simple wind and click affair - if you didn't forget to choose between 'bright' and 'cloudy' ...

[GrahamS]

Found a picture of the Chipmunk in the roll, so it is confirmed. The sign board can barely be read.

Wonderful aircraft. It was fun to fly, even if I needed a cushion to raise the seat height. I was only 15 years old. Thanks for the memories, Julio.