Contax reconfirms 6MP digital SLR

21st November - 2001
By Ian Burley

Frazer Allen, product marketing manager for Contax in the UK, has been in touch with us to reconfirm that the N Digital SLR will definitely ship in the early Spring of next year. He promises a working example will be on show at the Focus show in Birmingham, next February.

The European price for the N Digital has also been announced at €8999. At today’s rates, the price in pounds sterling works out at roughly £5700, though Frazer says the UK price is likely to be closer to £6000. In US$ it’s about $8000, though US pricing is likely to be more competitive than that.

To recap on the features, which are now detailed on the Contax Web site at www.contaxcameras.com, the N Digital has a full frame 6.3 megapixel CCD image sensor and can shoot at up to 3 frames per second and a Firewire IEEE1394 interface is included. The N Digital can take the entire range of N-mount Carl Zeiss T* lenses developed for the Contax N1, on which it is based, as well as Contax 645 Carl Zeiss T* medium format lenses via an adapter.

I’m constantly asked if I believe Contax will deliver the N Digital in the aftermath of the demise of the Pentax MR-52 was announced last month (click here). This would have shared the same Philips CCD chip as the Contax N Digital. Pentax axed the MR-52 because of cost issues, not technical ones, we are assured. Typically, Contax customers are less worried about cost than most! At almost £6000, the N Digital will be more expensive than the new Canon EOS-1D (click here). The Canon is more advanced in many ways than the Contax, but can only boast a 4MP sensor that is sub 35mm full frame.

I’ve been to the Kyocera HQ in Kyoto, Japan. Kyocera is the driving force behind Contax cameras. The company also owns the Yashica and Samurai camera brand names. If there is one thing about Kyocera that differentiates it from other Japanese companies, it doesn’t commit itself to a project unless it is very confident that it is the right thing to do and at the right time. All the signs are the N Digital will go ahead as promised.

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