Alright, the old reviews are mostly gone now but those with 15+ years of reading Photozone may remember that Klaus once did review a batch of Contax N lenses converted to Canon EF by Conurus (the fact that this conversion had been available was foreshadowing the era of adapters that set in once the mirrorless mounts have become the norm rather than curiosity, 10+ years later, for the mind behind Conurus, Bo-Ming, later lent his work to Metabones to produce the first practical EF-E adapter). Among the reviewed lenses was a Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5, a pretty decent standard zoom that was sharing mostly only the FL/aperture with the crop of outwardly similar consumer wonders from Canon, Nikon and Minolta...
Long story short, last night (insomnia is a biatch...) I was browsing the listing of a big local second-hand photo gear online shop, and found a 24-85 listed there for a paltry $300, but unconverted - still in the original Contax N mount. That piqued my interest, and it appears there are functional Contax N to E mount adapters by (who else?) Metabones, although one is listed on their site for $400 - costlier than the lens itself would be. Still, I thought that if I had had some extra cash, I would've totally snagged that lens just for fun. Another con for me is that there is no adapter to Nikon Z (crazy much for even thinking about that, Rover?) but it would have been quite an adventure to try that lens if there had been such an adapter. "Adventure" is how Klaus used to define converting the Contax N lenses back in the good old days of 8MP tests anyway...
Long story short, last night (insomnia is a biatch...) I was browsing the listing of a big local second-hand photo gear online shop, and found a 24-85 listed there for a paltry $300, but unconverted - still in the original Contax N mount. That piqued my interest, and it appears there are functional Contax N to E mount adapters by (who else?) Metabones, although one is listed on their site for $400 - costlier than the lens itself would be. Still, I thought that if I had had some extra cash, I would've totally snagged that lens just for fun. Another con for me is that there is no adapter to Nikon Z (crazy much for even thinking about that, Rover?) but it would have been quite an adventure to try that lens if there had been such an adapter. "Adventure" is how Klaus used to define converting the Contax N lenses back in the good old days of 8MP tests anyway...