Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Contax I

Zeiss Ikon · Contax RF mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through a removable back · 1932

Known as “Black Contax”

Also known as: Zeiss Ikon Contax I · Contax 1 · コンタックスI · Black Contax

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Six external iterations Contax RF 1932–1936 T, U, V, X, Y, Z and A prefixes — the Zeiss Ikon letter blocks running 1931/32 to 1936, each a block of 99,999 numbers No figures published per version
  1. No source consulted publishes serial breaks for the Contax I's versions, and none gives a total production figure for the model. Dating is by letter block, and version is by photograph. Gandy puts the second half more bluntly than this entry had: even now, he writes, Zeiss experts seem unsure how many Contax of any type were made.
  2. Corroboration pass, September 2026. This entry previously rested on camera-wiki. Two independent collector references were found that carry its substantive claims: Pacific Rim Camera's Contax I page and Stephen Gandy's Contax I page at CameraQuest. Between them they confirm, without citing camera-wiki, the 1932–1936 span, the black-enamel-only finish, the six externally distinguishable versions and their order, the double bayonet with the 50mm helical built into the body, the removable back and cassette-to-cassette loading, the letter-block dating table, the near-universal repair letter, and the absence of any published production total. The single-source badge is cleared on that basis.
  3. Rare market variant, from Pacific Rim Camera and not found elsewhere: some Contax I bodies were engraved for export to China, carrying Chinese characters reading "Made in Germany".
  4. A period price, from Early Photography's Contax II page: when the Contax II arrived in 1936 at £50 10s with an f/2 lens, the Contax I was not discontinued but kept on sale beneath it at £41. The overlap is worth knowing when a body's letter block sits at the end of the run.
  5. Sources differ over the postwar letters, though not over the ones that matter to the Contax I. Camera-wiki gives M = 1940/42, N = 1941/43, O = 1943 and Q = 1943/44; Petrakla gives M = 1940/42 and N = 1942/3 and treats O as unlisted and speculative; a third list gives M = 1940/41. The prewar letters T through A are identical in all of them.
  6. Two categories of fake circulate and both are worth knowing before buying. The "No-Name Contax" — a body with the maker's marks removed or never applied — and the "Ivory Contax" are collector names for cameras that are, in the main, modern fabrications. Pacific Rim Camera says the same of the black and green-tan Contaxes engraved for the Luftwaffe: they are generally Kiev conversions. Navy-marked Contax IIs and IIIs, carrying a Reich eagle over M, are the better-documented military category.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A vertical-travel metal shutter of articulated slats, where the Leica has horizontal cloth
  • 90mm rangefinder base — more than twice the Leica's, and the camera's strongest argument
  • A removable back for loading, against the Leica's bottom-loading spool
  • Two windows: focus in one, frame in the other. The single window arrives with the Contax II
  • Black lacquer and a boxy, sharp-cornered body

Six external iterations:

  • camera-wiki counts no fewer than six versions distinguishable by external features alone, and more by internal ones
  • Later versions relocate the rangefinder coupling and change the control layout

Serial-range notes

one letter and five digits
THE RULE. Zeiss Ikon numbered cameras with a letter followed by a five-digit number, moving to the next letter each time 99,999 was reached — a system inherited from ICA in 1909 and used for every Zeiss Ikon camera, not for the Contax alone. The Contax I falls in the blocks T = 1931/32, U = 1932/33, V = 1933/34, X = 1934, Y = 1934/35, Z = 1935/36, A = 1936. The letter is the date; the digits are only position within the block. Because the blocks were shared across the whole Zeiss Ikon catalogue, and not every number in a block was issued, they say nothing about how many Contax Is were made. The same seven blocks, with the same year pairs, are given independently by Stephen Gandy, who takes them from the Foto Saga benchmarks volume (ISBN 2-906840-06-8) and attaches the same two warnings — that not all numbers in a block were issued, and that the code covered other Zeiss cameras, so it cannot be read as a Contax production count.
a second letter, before or after the block letter
An extra letter means the camera went back to the factory for repair or modification, and on the Contax I it is close to universal — two sources say so independently. Early Photography records bodies AU21435 and AV24886, which are U and V block cameras carrying the service letter. Stephen Gandy states the rule in the same terms, adds that Contax Is WITHOUT a second repair letter are very hard to find, and reports that the commonest repair letter he has met is an A placed BEFORE the block letter — which is what AU and AV are. He also gives the reason: many of the first cameras were recalled for one fault or another, to be replaced or remanufactured. Do not read the added letter as a date.
wherever you cannot find it
Where the number is. Gandy puts the Contax I serial on the bottom of the shutter cage and again on the inside of the removable back — a doubled marking Nippon Kogaku would repeat on the Nikon years later. Pacific Rim Camera notes that the location of the serial number is itself one of the details that moved during the four-year run, so a body whose number is not where you expect it is not thereby suspect.
V31399, Y96909
Dated examples. Early Photography puts V31399 at about 1932 and Y96909 at about 1934, against the table's V = 1933/34 and Y = 1934/35 — close, but a year adrift in both cases, which is the accuracy the letter blocks actually give.
the number on the lens
A different sequence entirely. Carl Zeiss numbered lenses in one continuous run across all types, dated from the company-wide lens table — 1932 = 1364483–1389279, 1934 = 1500474–1590000, and so on. The Contax I outfits recorded by Early Photography pair body AU21435 with a Tessar numbered 1294445 and body V31399 with a 13.5cm Sonnar numbered 1455546. Body and lens numbers are unrelated, and a replaced lens dates nothing.
the letter block, read as a version
No published list ties the six external iterations to serial breaks, so the letter is the only handle on which version a body is. Early Photography dates the changes by year: pimples on the front and semi-silvered rangefinder mirrors in 1932; a one-piece front plate and, later, a tripod foot in 1933 (Kuc type 3); slow speeds added in 1933 (type 4); rounded rear body corners, a larger rangefinder window and an infinity-lock release in 1934 (type 5); the rotating-wedge rangefinder, which moves the viewfinder window outside the rangefinder, also in 1934 (type 6); an arrow speed marker and four accessory-shoe screws in 1935 (type 7). Reading the letter for a year and the year for a version is an inference, not a documented correspondence.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through a removable back
Finder (main)
Optical viewfinder · no rangefinder image
Finder (rangefinder)
Coupled rangefinder with a separate eyepiece
Base length
90 mm
Shutter
vertical-travel metal slat, self-capping · 1/25 to 1/1000 and B on the earliest cameras, slow speeds added partway through the run — the top speed twice the Leica's
Country
Germany

Where sources disagree

Whether Contax I lenses and bodies work with the 1936 redesign
  • Yes — the mount ran unchanged from the Contax I through the II and III to the postwar IIa and IIIa (camera-wiki)
  • Yes — the Contax II inherited the Contax I lens mount, and took the full range of Contax I lenses, which were re-issued in a chrome finish (Early Photography)
  • No — Contax I bodies and lenses are not interchangeable with the later cameras (Mike Eckman)

Better supported: That the mount carried over, now on two independent sources against one

Early Photography's Contax II page states the carry-over directly and independently of camera-wiki, which moves the weight decisively. What the majority reading does NOT mean is that every lens fits every body: Stephen Gandy names a specific exception in the other direction, the prewar 35mm f/2.8 Biogon, whose rear element fouls the thicker aluminium shutter slats of the postwar IIa and IIIa and is damaged on mounting, while the postwar West German 35s fit prewar and postwar bodies alike. The blanket "not interchangeable" is not supported; a blanket "interchangeable" needs that exception attached.

How many versions exist
  • Six, by external features alone (camera-wiki)
  • Six lettered types, Ia to If — Jim McKeown's price guide, followed by Pacific Rim Camera and by Stephen Gandy at CameraQuest
  • Seven numbered types — Hans-Jürgen Kuc, Auf den Spuren der Contax
  • More again, once internal changes to the rangefinder coupling are counted

Better supported: None. The two published schemes describe the same camera and disagree only on where to cut it

The disagreement is not about the camera but about how to slice it. Pacific Rim Camera sets the two schemes side by side and names both: Kuc uses seven numbered variations, McKeown six lettered ones, and Pacific Rim follows McKeown while saying plainly that both systems can be confusing. Gandy's independent list of Ia to If matches Pacific Rim's feature for feature — pimples and no slow speeds; one-piece front plate; slow speeds and tripod foot; infinity-lock button; viewfinder moved outside the rangefinder windows; four screws in the accessory shoe. Pacific Rim adds that examples exist with features split between two versions, so the boundaries are not clean in the metal either. No source consulted enumerates the internal revisions or gives serial breaks for any of them, which leaves dating a Contax I a matter of comparing photographs rather than reading a table.

What reviewers say

History

The Contax I is a better idea than a camera. Everything it does differently from the Leica of 1932 is defensible and most of it turned out to be right: a 90mm rangefinder base against the Leica’s 38, so focusing is more precise; a bayonet mount instead of a screw thread; a removable back instead of loading through the bottom; and a vertical metal shutter reaching 1/1000 where the Leica’s cloth curtains stopped at 1/500 and could be burned through by the sun.

It is also heavy, boxy, sharp-cornered, and unreliable. Zeiss Ikon was seven years behind Leitz and rushed, and the camera spent its whole four-year life being revised — camera-wiki counts six versions distinguishable from the outside alone, and more once the internal changes to the rangefinder coupling are included. Most Contax Is that still work are late ones.

It still has two windows: you focus in one and frame in the other, exactly as a Leica III does. The single combined window that everyone associates with the Contax arrives with the Contax II in 1936, and it is that camera, not this one, that changed what a rangefinder is.

What the Contax I established was the mount. The bayonet with its two parts — an internal one carrying a focusing helical built into the camera body, an external one for wide-angles and telephotos that focus themselves — outlived Zeiss Ikon, was adapted by Nikon for its own rangefinders in the 1950s, and was still being manufactured in Kyiv in 1987.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Contax I
Contax I, 1932–36 — Rama, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)
Contax I
Contax I with a Tessar — Rama, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $980 across 28 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $600–$1,100). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $980.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$980$600–$1,10028
2026-09-06$980$790–$1,10027

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Contax II

Lenses for this body: Biotar 4cm f/2 · Sonnar 13.5cm f/4 · Sonnar 5cm f/1.5 · Tessar 2.8cm f/8 · Tessar 5cm f/3.5 · Triotar 8.5cm f/4

Sources (10)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.