Photoclubalpha

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

Cheers, Bob.

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).

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

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.