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Contax Tvs Digital first look

We made a short visit at the Yashica booth where they were working hard to get all the things prepared for the big opening tomorrow where the Photokina 2002 will actually kick off. We had the opportunity to get our hands on the new Contax Tvs Digital camera. A brand new digital Contax model with 5 Megapixels in a real smooth and compact body will be introduced during the Photokina. The new Contax Tvs Digital has a 5.25 Megapixel CCD with an effective number of 5 Megapixels and an image sensor size of 1/1.8". This CCD results in a maximum resolution of 2560x1920 and can be manually set to 1600x1200, 1280x960 or 640x480 pixels. The movie mode records in a maximum resolution of 320x240 or in a low resolution 0f 160x120 pixels with a maximum of 30 seconds in the highest resolution or up to 120 seconds in the lowest. The movie mode records with or without sound.

The Contax Tvs Digital has a Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T lens with a range of 7.3-21.9mm which is equivalent to 35-105mm with a 35mm camera. The lens has a brightness of f2.8 in wide and f4.8 in tele. If you're in need of more zoom you could also use the digital variant that has a range of 1.3-4x. The ranges of apertures are f2.8, f3.3, f4.0, f4.7, f5.6 to f6.7, where the range of shutter speed are 1 - 1/2000 second. The minimal focus range of this nice looking camera is 60cm to infinity and in macro mode (wide) 15cm - 60cm. The AF mode is selectable to Wide AF and Spot AF.

There are three metering modes available; multi-area evaluation metering, centre-weighed metering and spot metering. The exposure sensitivity is automatic or manual selectable, but at this stage it is not clear what the correct settings are. The Contax is using a Secure Digital card or MultiMedia card as a record medium where is record its images in a JPEG format (Exif 2.2).

Time was too short to sort out the menu structure of this new Contax model, but for now it seems that it is working with some kind of double menu, C and D. The C menu in still image mode has some selectable functions like self timer/remote release, AF mode, metering mode, ABC, drive (s/c), Long Time mode and Flash light compensation. The D menu selects Color mode, Image resolution, image quality, WB bracketing, sharpness and Chroma. In the movie mode we also can find the C and D menu, C for AF mode and self timer/remote release and D for sound record on/off, color mode and movie resolution. The new Contax Tvs Digital is using a 3.7v Lithium Ion battery pack (1500mAh) or an optional dedicated adapter for power. Its dimensions are 112x60x33mm with a weight of approximately 210g (without battery pack and memory card).

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