I am a fan of Contax cameras. The Aria usually sells at a premium, but I saw one at a more reasonable price a couple of years ago so I snapped it up.
For what its worth my thoughts on the Aria pros and cons:
Pros:
- Viewfinder is superb. Excellent focussing screen, Perfect tradeoff between eye relief and magnification. Intuitive and easily legible exposure information.
- In-built motor is fast and quiet.
- matrix metering is a nice to have feature, but not sure how much difference this makes if not shooting slide film.
- very compact and light. With the 45mm f2.8 the camera balances nicely and is not much bigger than many ‘point and shoot’ cameras.
- The mirror mounting frame looks like it has a corner trapping design that would stop the sliding mirror problem that affects all other Contax cameras. This was the last Contax SLR made any many forums suggest that it is only Contax camera that doesn’t have the sliding mirror problem.
Cons:
- The CR2 batteries do not seem to last particularly long.
- The build quality is not anything special (mostly plastic to save weight).
- The camera is so light that it becomes front-heavy with most Contax prime lenses (for example I have found it poorly balanced with 50mm f1.4, 28mm f2.8 and 85mm f2.8).
In summary, a great camera to treat as a compact ‘point and shoot’ with the 45mm f2.8. For using other lenses I would lean towards other Contax cameras. My favourite is the RX, which has an F4-like feel to it, without the extreme weight. The RX has a whisper quiet shutter/motor, and sufficient weight to feel nicely balanced with most Contax primes.
Mar 23, 2026 at 04:30 PM
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