Just had to go look this up in the manual, apparently that mysterious lever changes the depth of preview button into a mechanical shutter that always fires at 1/50th even when your battery is dead, so your expensive camera never turns into a complete paperweight.
I needed it once on a winter climb of mt rainier when my batteries died of the cold which led to the purchase of the external adapter cord for use with the PMD battery pack.The 12AA batteries of the PMD never failed me but weighed early as much as the camera .lol
Best RTS series, but *always* 99% suffer from a broken condensator inside somewhere, so the display into blue is at best partially being shown, or faded, damaged, or no inside OVF LEDs after all. I've seen since 1990 that as being said before, 99% of all RTS III seem to suffer from this issue, sad but true.
The AX was Contax swansong in technology, better being said, a solution looking for a problem - focusing manual focus Zeiss lenses by 10mm inside the body, which was a overengineered piece of tech into 1996 by the japanese ceramic giant Kyocera, which bought Yashica into later 83. Zeiss, for whatever reason(s), didn't wanted their Contax Zeiss lenses to become auto focus. The Contax N1 & NX bodies, besides the very limited 5 lenses with AF introduced into 2000 - came too late, too expensive. Photographers already jumped ship to CaNikon offerings with AF. Think EOS EF system, Nikon F with AF, F100, F5..etc.
There is a contax auto focus out there its only a prototype…as mentioned Zeiss weren’t happy with the lens modification….it would have been a world first have a look here ruclips.net/video/FrfloNvh4I4/видео.htmlsi=Y76B1rD_GfNFoNBY
Just had to go look this up in the manual, apparently that mysterious lever changes the depth of preview button into a mechanical shutter that always fires at 1/50th even when your battery is dead, so your expensive camera never turns into a complete paperweight.
Well spotted it’s one those things you never need to learn about …until you really need it 😂
I needed it once on a winter climb of mt rainier when my batteries died of the cold which led to the purchase of the external adapter cord for use with the PMD battery pack.The 12AA batteries of the PMD never failed me but weighed early as much as the camera .lol
Okay! Whay about Contax RTS III, One of the Contax camera technology
great camera but I didn't,t end up buying one
Best RTS series, but *always* 99% suffer from a broken condensator inside somewhere, so the display into blue is at best partially being shown, or faded, damaged, or no inside OVF LEDs after all. I've seen since 1990 that as being said before, 99% of all RTS III seem to suffer from this issue, sad but true.
Also look the Contax AX, other piece of technology
I have had a play with both the AX and and RTS III there both lovely but I end up with an RX
The AX was Contax swansong in technology, better being said, a solution looking for a problem - focusing manual focus Zeiss lenses by 10mm inside the body, which was a overengineered piece of tech into 1996 by the japanese ceramic giant Kyocera, which bought Yashica into later 83. Zeiss, for whatever reason(s), didn't wanted their Contax Zeiss lenses to become auto focus. The Contax N1 & NX bodies, besides the very limited 5 lenses with AF introduced into 2000 - came too late, too expensive. Photographers already jumped ship to CaNikon offerings with AF. Think EOS EF system, Nikon F with AF, F100, F5..etc.
There is a contax auto focus out there its only a prototype…as mentioned Zeiss weren’t happy with the lens modification….it would have been a world first have a look here ruclips.net/video/FrfloNvh4I4/видео.htmlsi=Y76B1rD_GfNFoNBY