Let me just say off the bat, the 45mm f2 Planar is a magnificent lens.

 There’s a horrible moment when you get that first roll of film taken with a newly acquired camera, and you realize that something is wrong.  My new-to-me Contax G2 with the 45mm f2 planar unfortunately has a focusing problem where its not exactly focusing where I want it to.  I’ve already sent it off to Tocad America to get fixed.

Please excuse any focus problems present in these example pictures, it was certainly not intentional.

(Update, here is my full review.)

These were taken in a lovely Oakland park, the model is my friend, Mischa Marie.

The G2's exposure meter performed flawlessly.

This is what I would call a critical failure of the focusing system.

The 45mm f2 planar focuses to 19 inches, which at f2 gives you about half an inch of focus.

My good friend Yusef Lambert looking quite serious.

For an f2 lens, it can really throw the background out of focus in quite a pleasing way. (Auto-focus. I'm not mad at it, but I am disappointed.)

I focused carefully on his left eye, and his right eye is in focus. Curse you 20 year old camera that I bought used and expect to magically work perfectly despite its age.

Aside from the focusing problem with my G2, it seems to be a very nice camera to shoot. (Please keep in mind I’ve only run one roll of film through it.)

The camera itself feels like a brick with its titanium outer case and an alloy inner skeleton.  If that sounds heavy, it is.

I can certainly say that the viewfinder is very accurate.  Since the G2 adjusts for parallax by both cropping and zooming the viewfinder, what you see through it is exactly what you get on your negative.

When I get the G2 back in about a month, I’ll do a proper review of it.