Contax N Digital

[picman]

I can get hold of a near mint Contax N Digital at a reasonable price. Worth it at this day and age?

Cheers, Bob.

[jcoffin]

By definition, if the price is reasonable, it's worth it. The question is really: "what's really a reasonable price?"

The answer to that is harder: in its day, the Contax N Digital was an outstanding camera in some ways, and unusually poor in others. Obvious good points included access to all the beautiful N-mount Zeiss lenses, and nice image quality, especially for B&W. Obvious poor points mediocre lens selection (great lenses, just not many of them, and none that's particularly fast, long, or wide), only 6 MP resolution, lousy battery life (even for its day), slow shooting and the image quality being restricted to low ISOs (even though it had comparatively large sensor sites, being a full-frame 6 MP camera).

I'd think of it as basically buying a lens with a handy little accessory that allows you to take pictures with the lens. If it includes a lens you'd put to use, it won't hurt to pay a fair price for the lens and a bit (but not a whole lot) extra for the body so you take pictures with it. If it's not a lens you'd use, I'd pass completely unless you're getting such a good price that you can sell the lens for a profit by itself. They probably won't have a large selection, but the usual suspects for used gear (e.g. KEH, if you're in the US) will probably have enough used N-mount lenses to at least give an idea of what the lens with it is worth (assuming it comes with one).

[David Kilpatrick]

In the UK, they are worth about the same price as a new Alpha 700. The other full framer of a similar date, the Kodak, is worth less - even the last Pro SLR/n or /c models rarely fetch more than £500. The nearly full frame, excellent quality Kodak DCS 760 might only fetch half that and it's considered to be better then the N Digital for practical use.

David

[picman]

Thanks a lot jcoffin and David for the info. That means the price I was given is twice a "reasonable price" so I am definitely letting this go by.

Cheers, Bob.