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Photos By Michael Dubiner

      

CONTAX TVS DIGITAL- A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER'S REVIEW

The Voice Behnd The Lens
Writings on Photography and Beyond.
With writer, street, documentary photographer Michael Dubiner.

      

     

     The often delayed and much awaited release of the prosumer Contax TVS Digital, five megapixel compact camera is finally over. Originally due out in November 1992 and rumored to be released imminently ever since, the camera is still thinly available. This as a review of it's features and functioning as it relates to its use as a Street Photography camera. As far as I know this is the first Street Photographer's review of this much anticipated camera

     I will omit most of the specs and product pictures of the camera as these can be found at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0209/02092903contaxtvsdigital.asp,http://www.contaxcameras.com/index2.html and other sites. The images shown above are the front and rear of the camera in it's home designed case which allows the camera to hang from my neck (for reasons which I will discuss below).

     I will discuss the qualities I think are essential for a portable Street camera and give you my opinion on how the Contax TVS Digital stacks up to those requirements. The discussion below is not in any particular order of importance. At the end of the article, I will also review some of the additional features of the camera and give you my other comments and opinions on the TVS Digital.

SIZE AND UNOBTRUSIVENESS

     A "pocketable" camera has always been important to me because I need to take it everywhere. Now that I have made the digital plunge, I want the qualities I have available in small film cameras such as the Contax T3 and the like in a small digital camera. I also want the camera to be relatively unobtrusive. In other words, not particularly noticeable; a camera that does not shout; "I am taking your picture". I do not expect any prosumer camera to replace my main digital camera, the elephantine Nikon D1X. However, when I want to put a camera in my pocket or fanny pack or will not have enough room to store it at my destination (a restaurant table for example) size is a very important issue to me.

     The Contax TVS Digital is certainly "pocketable". It is slightly larger than the Contax T3, the film cousin of this camera, and the Olympus C 50, my last pocket digital camera. However, it is significantly smaller than the non-pocketable Canon PowerShot G2, a wonderful camera I owned and gave to my wife because, while smaller than an SLR, it would need pockets larger than a giant's to contain it's girth

     I am not certain how unobtrusive the camera is. The one I received is silver whereas I normally use a camera with a black body, precisely because it is less noticeable. Contax claims a black body will be available in April. We shall see. Since the TVS Digital is slightly larger than my T3 and because no neck case is yet available, I have had to slice into another case I had lying around to make the camera hang from my neck, which is the way I prefer to carry a camera when I am walking around taking pictures. This method of carrying the camera requires me to visualize the shot and photograph it from my chest area, hopefully unnoticed, without drawing attention to myself by bringing the camera up to my eye. The case I mangled is not pretty and also may draw some additional attention to the camera, but it works. Also, while the shutter sound can be turned off on this camera to further unobtrusiveness, with my Nikon D1X, I can and do shoot all my images with my right pinky using the side mounted shutter. This shutter was designed for vertical photography but works perfectly as a surreptitious way to trigger the shutter. The TVS Digital, as with all other prosumer cameras, requires you to use the shutter on top of the camera which makes photography much more obvious. I was "made" three times in one day's use of this camera and also warned by a security guard that photography was prohibited in a Mall on the same day. On the other hand, with the Nikon D1X, whose shutter can be heard in a shooting range, the side shutter technique lures people into believing they are not being photographed as they do not see a finger on the top shutter where they expect it to be. They just do not believe their ears because their eyes tell them something different than they are hearing. It works on the same principle as magic does. I have rarely been identified taking an image with that camera.

     I am experimenting with the remote control that comes with the Contax. I am hopeful that when I become more proficient with it, my visibility will decrease dramatically because my finger will not be on the shutter when taking the image. My initial use of the remote has shown that it is useful but also limited. The remote appears to be an infrared type and is not radio controlled. This requires an unobstructed line of sight view between the device and the camera receiving window. This means that if I have the camera hanging from my neck my left arm has to be in front of me to maintain line of sight between the remote and the receiving window. This is somewhat awkward and also draws attention. You will notice in my image of the front of the camera, I have placed a small piece of black electrician's tape over an LED. I did this because this LED blinks red when an image is taken with the remote control. There is simply no reason to take all the precautions I have mentioned to photograph surreptitiously only to have a red LED blink at the subject when exposing an image. On a similar vein, many cameras offer active auto-focusing, along with their passive system. These also involve a light emitted from the camera in the direction of the subject to assist in low light photography. With cameras I have owned in the past, I normally cover this light, again to assist in remaining discreet. I have found that this has had little affect on the ability of the cameras to focus in low light. The Contax TVS Digital has a passive only auto-focus system so that is not an issue. The low light focusing capability of the Contax does not seem to suffer from the lack of an active auto-focus system

MINIMAL SHUTTER LAG

      The bane of many prosumer cameras is "shutter lag", the time between the pressing of the shutter and the actual exposure. Delays of several seconds are not uncommon. The delay has to do with the camera's auto-focusing and other pre-image operations. The new breed of cameras are getting better at reducing the delay but it is a still a common problem. As a Street Photographer, when I see the perfect image, I want to capture it. A delay of a second or two often means the difference between obtaining or missing it.

      My informal testing of the TVS Digital's shutter lag showed that the camera is faster than many prosumer cameras I have used and slower than a few others. In a few months some web sites that do sophisticated scientific testing will tell us the TVS's actual shutter lag time. For now, I can only give you my informed comparative opinion. However, one thing that is extremely annoying about this camera is its failure to always make an image when I think I am taking a picture. Unfortunately, the focus mechanism makes a slight but perceptible click when the shutter is pressed which sounds very much like a shutter release. I often mistook this sound for the exposure of an image. I then removed my finger from the shutter, believing I had taken a picture, but in reality, all I did was focus the camera on the subject I wanted to capture. I have missed several images that I thought I had photographed because of this flaw. As a result, I have taken to mashing the shutter release, hoping to obtain an exposure. In fact, the shutter only requires a light touch and patience, keeping the shutter depressed after the focus noise is heard. I expect my continued use of the camera and resulting familiarity with it will limit this problem. By the way, the remote control requires the same light touch and continued depression of the remote shutter release after the focus sound is heard to capture an image.

     In order to optimize my speed, I set the camera to the continuous drive setting allowing for images to be made continuously at 2 images per second for a maximum three frames at high quality. I also turn the sound off so as to be as unobtrusive as possible. I set the camera so that it does not switch into the "sleep mode". In combination, these settings use more power but keeps the camera always available to take an image without a long delay and attendant noise and the movement of the lens when the camera "wakes up".

SPEED OF THE CAMERA IN LOW LIGHT

      Street Photographers almost never use a flash in surreptitious low light image making for obvious reasons. As you know, with film, there are 3 variables which control the camera's low light capabilities; film ISO, maximum aperture and shutter speed. The typical prosumer high megapixel camera has a maximum aperture of F 2.8. A few cameras are faster but suffer from size disadvantages or only shoot higher ISO equivalents at low resolutions. Thus, unless I deliberately want to blur my images for artistic reasons, I need high shutter speeds which are obtained by a combination of high ISO equivalents and use of maximum aperture. For example my Nikon D1X shoots at a ISO equivalent of 3200 and I am using a F 1.8 lens on it for Street Photography. This allows for high shutter speed even in limited light.

     I have learned to "trick" the prosumer cameras by setting the exposure compensation at -1 or -2 in order to obtain an ISO equivalent of 800 or 1600. The drawbacks in using this technique are much higher noise (as one gets with "pushing" film or using super fast films such as Tmax 3200) and vastly more time in Photoshop adjusting for the noise and underexposure. In fairness to all of the prosumer cameras, including the Contax TVS Digital, they were not designed to be used the way I use them. Manufacturers design the exposure compensation for things like backlighting or stage photography where the lighting situation needs slight adjustment but is otherwise normal. Without increasing shutter speed, prosumer cameras would be useless for non-flash, low light photography Street Photography.

     The Contax TVS Digital did not do particularly well when pushing it's capacity. Shooting at -2 exposure compensation (equivalent to ISO 1600) gave me virtually unusable images. Many were simply too dark, no matter how much post exposure adjustment I tried in Photoshop. Exposure compensation of -1 allows me only an ISO equivalent of 800 and thus a slower shutter speed, which resulted in some blurring in a few images which otherwise would not have occurred. As importantly, there was significant noise in these images. The Olympus C-50, with a maximum equivalent ISO of 320 probably had less noise at an exposure compensation of -2 (leading to an adjusted equivalent ISO of 1280) with the attendant advantage of the higher shutter speed. The TVS Digital thus requires more post-processing work when used this way and a few images were unusable because of the inability to accommodate the noise or camera or subject movement.

QUALITY OF THE IMAGE

     Obviously, I am looking for acceptable quality in the images I make. Under ideal conditions, virtually all of the high megapixel prosumer cameras give high quality results. I am more concerned with "capturing the moment" than I am with a perfect quality image. I realized long ago that in fast moving, low light situations, you are just not able to obtain perfect quality images. In film, you get increased grain, in digital, it is noise and in both, there is the risk of inadvertent subject movement. What I have found is that if the image is compelling enough, the viewer either ignores the degraded quality or accepts it as a function of the limited ability to obtain an image in low light. Many images, in my opinion, are actually enhanced by the moody quality of the grain and contrast

     The Contax TVS Digital has an excellent quality lens which Contax is known for. The lens anti-reflection coating gives good flare protection and increased contrast. Overall, the camera gives good excellent quality images when used as designed. However, when pushed to the maximum, as described above, noise is high and at times is unacceptable. And as indicated previously, the noise forces the image maker to spend significantly more time at the computer, post-exposure.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES COMMENTS AND OPINIONS

     A surprise to some image makers is that this high end and pricy camera ($900) only supports the JPEG format. No RAW or TIFF images here. I think this has to do with the limited processing power of these miniature cameras. It simply takes too long to process the image and write it to the card with the camera locked and unable to shoot another image during this time. With the Olympus, I would only shoot JPEG's as the processing times with TIFF's were unacceptably long.

     The continuous shutter drive on the camera as mentioned above allows multiple images to be taken in a matter of seconds. The problem with this, as with most prosumer cameras, is that it appears that the focus locks on the first image. Therefore, if something is moving toward or away from you, your last two shots will be out of focus unless you are using an F stop which provides sufficient depth of field. This is rare in Street Photography because it relies the use of maximum apertures to compensate for low light and slightly out of focus backgrounds.

     The proprietary rechargeable battery life is above average. I indicated the settings I used previously which draw more battery power. The only concession I make to battery life is that I turn off the LED if I expect to be shooting for a long time. To date I have been unable to obtain a spare battery for this camera but I am certain they will be available when the camera is more widely distributed. I find that carrying a spare battery is a must for any lengthy outing with any digital camera.

     The camera controls are intuitive, some of the best I have used on any digital camera. A "C" button controls camera functions such as auto-focus drive while a "D" button is pressed for digital controls such as image erasure. There are also buttons for exposure compensation, ISO settings, etc. I barely glanced at the manual before being able to use most of the camera controls. That said, the buttons are also as dangerous to the image maker as I have seen on any digital camera. The buttons are small and close to each other. When pressing one button, the others do not lock. So, for example, when pressing the button starting the erasure of a single image on the card, my finger inadvertently hit the nearby button switching the camera to the "erase all" mode. Without my realizing the mistake, and with limited visual acuity, I confirmed the erasure of all images on the card and thereby lost all of the images that I had taken. This happened on several occasions. By the same process, you can attempt to erase one image and by mistake erase an adjoining image that you want to save. This also occurred repeatedly

     One other feature that I do not like is the review button. While in the picture taking mode you can review only the last prior image taken, and no others. Using this button you can also erase this image. I would assume that it would have been fairly easy to design this feature to allow for review of all prior images, one at a time as other digital cameras I have used permit. If not, at least allowing the review of an image prior to the last one erased should be possible and would make the feature more practical.

     There are many more features that I have not used at length on the camera such as the black and white and sepia mode, white balance adjustments, sound recording, movie recording, etc. that I will not comment on. The camera is as full featured as most SLR's and has more features than many of them.

     The USB cable that is shipped with the camera is only USB 2 compatible. Because I have multiple digital cameras, some with different storage cards, I happened to purchase a SanDisk six in one card reader. This too is a USB 2 device, but unlike the Contax, it is fully backward compatible to USB 1 computers. If you purchase this camera and have a computer that is only USB 1 compatible, you will need to purchase a card reader as well.

      The camera construction is metal and is sturdy and extremely well made, exactly what you would expect from Contax. It uses SD/MMC cards and I immediately obtained a 256 megabyte card to accompany the puny 16 megabyte card that is shipped with the camera. The camera comes with a well made leather case with a belt loop, but no case for hanging the camera from your neck and no lugs on the camera to attach a strap other than one for the supplied wrist strap. This speaks to the Contax designers anticipated use of the camera as an advanced point and shoot and not as a camera hanging on someone's neck being used as a Street Photographer's image machine. The T3 suffered from this defect as well but Contax, probably realizing the market was there, manufactured a beautiful case, which unfortunately is just a tad too small for the TVS digital. Hopefully, Contax or someone else will quickly manufacture a properly cut case to replace my homemade monstrosity.

     Is it a keeper? My answer, despite it's limitations, is yes. It is expensive and does not do much more than my Olympus, and arguably does less in some areas. Yet, the lens on the camera is superb, the construction impeccable. I have been very happy with the numerous Contax film cameras that I have owned and hope to enjoy this one as much. I probably am also somewhat of a snob and just like owning a Contax.

NOTES ABOUT THE IMAGES

      All of the images except for the ones of the camera itself and the color picture were shot on aperture priority, auto-focus, ISO equivalent of 400 at -1 exposure compensation using Photoshop and Power Retouche for post image processing. The color image of the horses was taken on a foggy morning. The camera was set on aperture priority with no exposure compensation, no color adjustment and some minor layers adjustment of levels and contrast.

     

(The author, Michael Dubiner is a professional image maker and lawyer who lives in Wellington, Florida. His articles will appear twice monthly on PixiPort. His work can be seen at PixiPort.com and at his web site, duby.com.)

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