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

Contax RTS

Contax (Yashica) · Contax/Yashica mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1975

Known as “RTS I”

Also known as: Contax RTS · CONTAX RTS · Contax RTS I · Contax RTS 1 · Yashica Contax RTS · Contax RTS Porsche Design · Contax RTS body · コンタックス RTS · コンタックスRTS · コンタックス RTS I

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Contax RTS (1975–1982) Contax/Yashica 1975–1982 — No production figure or serial table has been published; the serial number is on the bottom plate (Camerapedia)
Contax RTS Fundus (Medical/Scientific) Contax/Yashica — — —
Golden Contax RTS (gold-plated limited set) Contax/Yashica — — —
  1. Every figure in the tables is from the Yashica instruction manual (the cameramanuals.org scan) unless a note says otherwise: the stepless 4s–1/2000 automatic range, the 14 manual click-stops, the EV −1 to 19 meter, the 6V cell, the 92% finder, the 140-degree advance and the 142 × 89.5 × 50mm, 700g body. The 1/60 X sync is printed on the manual's German specification page and given by Japanese Wikipedia; ImagingPixel's "1 to 1/2000" shutter range is the manual's calibrated click-stop scale without the long-time settings.
  2. No launch price has been found in either currency. Japanese Wikipedia lists no body prices and Kyocera's archived product pages for the RTS were not reached; English Wikipedia says only that it was priced to compete with the Leica R series.
  3. Japanese Wikipedia records a known failure: the steel plate carrying the tripod socket bends under a winder or a heavy lens, jamming the cam that sets the electromagnetic-release contacts and causing wind, mirror and shutter faults; its advice is not to load the tripod socket. No other source reached confirms it.
  4. Serial numbers seen in dealer listings, 009888, 014148 and 047306, are data points only; no dating table is known.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Shutter-speed dial on the left shoulder and a feather-touch electromagnetic release with a release socket for cable switches, infrared and radio controllers (Yashica manual)
  • Mirror-lock lever, depth-of-field preview button and self-timer lever on the front of the body (Yashica manual; 35mmc)
  • 16-dot LED shutter-speed display and an aperture scale across the top of the finder; a tab appears at the bottom edge when exposure compensation is set away from ×1 (Yashica manual)
  • Direct-X hot shoe and a motor-drive coupling terminal in the base plate (Yashica manual)
  • An RTS II has a main switch, an AE-lock lever on the front, an eyepiece blind and titanium curtains; an RTS has none of these (Japanese Wikipedia)

Contax RTS (1975–1982):

  • CONTAX on the prism front and RTS on the left of the prism; black finish only
  • Shutter-speed dial on the left shoulder, AUTO, B and 14 click-stops from 4 seconds to 1/2000; exposure-compensation dial on the right shoulder (Yashica manual; 35mmc)
  • No main switch, no AE-lock lever and no eyepiece blind: the RTS II added all three (Japanese Wikipedia)
  • Cloth shutter curtains, where the RTS II's are titanium foil (Japanese Wikipedia)

Contax RTS Fundus (Medical/Scientific):

  • Base plate usually engraved Medical/Scientific (English Wikipedia, Contax)
  • A 3mm guard ring around the shutter release and a lock button for the speed dial (English Wikipedia, Contax)

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism, silver-coated, with multi-layer-coated deflection mirror; focusing screen interchangeable from the lens-mount side; 16-dot LED shutter-speed scale and aperture read-out in the finder (Yashica manual) · 0.87× magnification · 92% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
horizontal-travel cloth focal plane, electronically timed on both automatic and manual settings, with both curtains starting from the same position (Yashica manual; Japanese Wikipedia) · Aperture priority stepless from 4 seconds (LT) to 1/2000; manual 14 click-stops from 4 seconds to 1/2000 and B (Yashica manual) · flash sync X at 1/60 through the direct-contact hot shoe or the X terminal (Yashica manual, German specification page; Japanese Wikipedia) · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever, 140 degrees, or several short ratchet strokes; motor-drive coupling terminal and advance coupler in the base (Yashica manual)
Back
interchangeable: the standard back comes off for the Data Back or the 250 Film Back, the latter used with the motor drive (Yashica manual)
Meter
TTL centre-weighted reading by an SPD cell above the eyepiece, EV −1 to 19 at ASA 100 with f/1.4, ASA 12–3200; aperture-priority automatic exposure, with the metered speed shown on manual; exposure compensation from ×4 to ×1/4 with in-between settings; no AE lock (Yashica manual; 35mmc). One 6V silver-oxide or alkaline cell, Eveready 544, Ucar 544, Mallory PX28 or Eveready 537 (Yashica manual).
Motor drive
Real Time Winder RTW, Professional Motor Drive PMD — The RTW winder at 2 frames per second and the PMD motor drive at 5 (Japanese Wikipedia); the camera has no power switch, so either can be left coupled (Japanese Wikipedia).
Designed by
Sugaya Katsuiko — engineering design (English Wikipedia, Contax RTS, which styles him Prof. Dr. Katsuiko Sugaya) · Porsche Design studio (F. A. Porsche) — exterior styling (English Wikipedia, Contax RTS; Japanese Wikipedia)
Weight
700 g
Dimensions
142 × 89.5 × 50, body only, approx. 700g (Yashica manual) mm
Country
Japan
Accessories
Real Time Winder RTW, 2 frames per second, and Professional Motor Drive PMD, 5 frames per second, both coupling to the base-plate terminal (Japanese Wikipedia; Yashica manual) · 250 Film Back, for use with the motor drive, and the Data Back, both replacing the standard back (Yashica manual; Japanese Wikipedia) · RTF540 grip flash, guide number 40, and the clip-on TLA20 and TLA30 (Japanese Wikipedia) · Cable switch, infrared controller and radio controller through the release socket (Yashica manual) · Interchangeable focusing screens, changed from the lens-mount side (Yashica manual)

Coverage of up to 92% of the picture area is the manual's figure, and ImagingPixel and davidde.com repeat it against the RTS II's 97%. The magnification is read from an OCR'd line of the manual; see derived.

Figures we worked out rather than found: The finder magnification of 0.87× is read from the manual's OCR'd specification line, which prints as '0,STX'; the RTS II manual prints 0.87× for its finder in the same place, and the two cameras share the fixed prism. Treat the RTS figure as a reading, not a quotation.

Where sources disagree

Gold
  • A gold-plated Planar 50mm f/1.4 was included with the limited Golden Contax RTS — English Wikipedia, Contax, which names no year
  • 1982, the RTS II's launch year, was Contax's 50th anniversary, the year Japanese Wikipedia dates the 50th-anniversary Planar 85mm f/1.2 — so the set may be an RTS II

Which body the gold set is built on is not settled by the sources reached; the variant is recorded here because the only source names it an RTS.

What reviewers say

History

The Contax RTS is the camera that brought the Contax name back, and the one that created the Contax/Yashica bayonet. Shown at Photokina in September 1974 and on sale in Japan from November 1975, it was built by Yashica to a design by Sugaya Katsuiko under the name Top Secret Project 130, with lenses designed by Carl Zeiss and made in both West Germany and Japan, and a body styled by the Porsche Design studio; English Wikipedia says it was priced to compete with the Leica R series. The initials stand for Real Time System. There is no power switch: the shutter release is an electromagnetic button of 0.7mm travel with no mechanical linkage, so winders, motor drives and remote releases plug into the body and fire it without lag, and the manual lists cable, infrared and radio controllers for its release socket.

The specification is the professional electronic SLR of the mid-1970s. A horizontal cloth focal-plane shutter is timed electronically on both the automatic and the manual settings, running steplessly from 4 seconds to 1/2000 in aperture priority and in 14 click-stops with B on the dial, which sits on the left shoulder; both curtains start from the same position, and the X sync is 1/60. An SPD cell above the eyepiece reads centre-weighted from EV −1 to 19, shows the chosen speed on a 16-dot LED scale in the finder, and takes a ×4 to ×1/4 compensation dial on the right shoulder; there is no AE lock. The pentaprism shows 92% of the frame, the focusing screens change from the lens-mount side, the back comes off for a Data Back or a 250-exposure back, and the base carries the coupling for the 2-frames-per-second RTW winder and the 5-frames-per-second PMD motor drive. The manual gives 142 × 89.5 × 50mm and about 700g for the body; a 6V 544 or PX28 cell runs everything, and nothing fires without it.

Hamish Gill’s two borrowed bodies at 35mmc sum up the ownership: a solid, responsive camera with a hair-trigger release that can go off while the compensation dial is being turned, a microprism screen that darkens unless the eye is square to it, an aperture read-out that is hard to see in poor light, and a first roll ruined by a light leak before repair. Japanese Wikipedia records a structural fault that owners should know: the steel plate carrying the tripod socket bends under a winder or a heavy lens and jams the cam that sets the release contacts, after which the wind, mirror and shutter misbehave, so the socket is best left unloaded. The RTS II of 1982 kept the body and the looks and answered most of the rest with titanium curtains, quartz timing, an AE lock, a main switch and a 97% finder, and most RTS accessories carry over to it.

Two special forms are recorded. The Fundus, usually engraved Medical/Scientific on the base plate, has a guard ring around the release, a lock for the speed dial and in some bodies heavier mirror damping, and was sold for laboratory use with Zeiss ophthalmic equipment. A gold-plated limited set with a matching gold Planar 50mm f/1.4 is named the Golden Contax RTS by English Wikipedia, but whether it is built on this body or on the RTS II of Contax’s 50th-anniversary year is not settled by the sources reached. No launch price, production figure or serial table has been found for any of them.

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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.

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $130 across 31 fixed-price listings on 2026-11-02 (middle half $100–$180). Tracked since 2026-11-01, 2 days: unchanged from $130.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-11-02$130$100–$18031
2026-11-01$130$100–$18031

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

Show 83 more listings

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Listings updated 2026-11-02. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Contax 137 MD Quartz · Contax 139 Quartz · Contax RTS II Quartz · Contax RTS III

Lenses for this body: Apo-Sonnar T* 200mm f/2 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 15mm f/3.5 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 18mm f/4 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 21mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 25mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 28mm f/2 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 28mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 35mm f/1.4 (C/Y) · Distagon T* 35mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · F-Distagon T* 16mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Makro-Planar T* 100mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Makro-Planar T* 60mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Mirotar T* 1000mm f/5.6 (C/Y) · Mirotar T* 500mm f/4.5 (C/Y) · Mirotar T* 500mm f/8 (C/Y) · PC-Distagon T* 35mm f/2.8 (C/Y, shift) · Planar T* 100mm f/2 (C/Y) · Planar T* 135mm f/2 (C/Y) · Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 (C/Y) · Planar T* 50mm f/1.7 (C/Y) · Planar T* 55mm f/1.2 '100 Jahre Planar' (C/Y) · Planar T* 85mm f/1.2 anniversary editions (C/Y) · Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 (C/Y) · S-Planar T* 100mm f/4 bellows lens (C/Y) · Sonnar T* 100mm f/3.5 (C/Y) · Sonnar T* 135mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Sonnar T* 180mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Sonnar T* 85mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Tele-Apotessar T* 300mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Tele-Tessar T* 200mm f/3.5 (C/Y) · Tele-Tessar T* 200mm f/4 (C/Y) · Tele-Tessar T* 300mm f/4 (C/Y) · Tessar T* 45mm f/2.8 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 100–300mm f/4.5–5.6 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 28–70mm f/3.5–4.5 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 28–85mm f/3.3–4 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 35–135mm f/3.3–4.5 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 35–70mm f/3.4 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 40–80mm f/3.5 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 70–210mm f/3.5 (C/Y) · Vario-Sonnar T* 80–200mm f/4 (C/Y)

Sources (8)

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.