Le Sserafim's Sakura, known for her love of cameras, shows off two from her collection in mirror selfies from her Instagram account. At center is the writer's own Contax T3, the same model the singer bought in Japan on Aug. 25 but has yet to pose with. SCREEN CAPTURE, CHO YONG-JUN Girl group Le Sserafim's Sakura appears to have paid at least $3,400 for her newest camera ? the Contax T3, a 25-year-old film compact notorious for breaking and made by a company that quit its camera business two decades ago. But why? Sakura's Instagram post on Aug. 25?showed a Japanese camera shop shelf lined with premium film point-and-shoot cameras. On the top row sat the titanium Contax T3 at 544,000 yen ($3,400). The black titanium version of the same camera was an eye-watering 865,000 yen. "The T3 I'd always longed for," the Le Sserafim member wrote in the post. She was not alone in that longing. I own one. I know it well: I bought mine in Korea a few months before Sakura bought hers. And mine broke in less than 48 hours. Premium film compacts fill a shelf at a Japanese camera shop, the top row including the titanium Contax T3 at 544,000 yen ($3,400), in a photo Le Sserafim's Sakura posted on Aug. 25. A second frame, at right, shows a T3 on the shop counter before she bought it. SCREEN CAPTURE What is the Contax T3? The Contax T3 is a point-and-shoot camera that combines German optics with Japanese electronics. It uses 135 film, the standard 35 mm roll. Regarded as one of the holy grails of film point-and-shoot cameras, the T3 was born of a partnership between Kyocera, the Japanese electronics and ceramics maker, and Carl Zeiss, the prestigious German optics manufacturer. It was released in 2001, as the film era was coming to an end amid the shift to digital. Small enough to wrap a hand around while still holding a roll of 135 film, it was the pinnacle of film camera technology crammed into a truly pocketable body. Originally priced at 98,000 yen, it was designed for anyone who wanted a premium-feeling, no-fuss camera: load a roll and press the shutter, with no dials, focus or settings to adjust. 온라인 바다이야기 게임 Paired with a sharp lens, it was also known for producing high-quality, sharp, contrasty images. Even in its day, the T3 was regarded as a top-of-the-line premium point-and-shoot alongside models like the Minolta TC-1, Ricoh GR1v, Leica Minilux and its own predecessor, the Contax T2. However, the T3 reportedly significantly undersold the T2 due to its short lifespan and the declining popularity of film cameras at the time. Kyocera's Contax line did not adapt well to the fast-changing digital era of photography, and the company gave up its entire camera business just four years after the T3's release. That left the Contax T3 as the brand's last film compact camera. Three popular premium point and shoot film cameras released in the 21st century, toward the very end of the film era. From top left, clockwise, the Ricoh GR1v; the Contax T3; and the Fujifilm Klasse W. CHO YONG-JUN Rising popularity and price The camera was not always this expensive. With fewer and fewer people shooting film as their main way of capturing images, the T3 traded at around 700,000 won ($510) in the early 2000s, in line with other premium compacts of the time. The retro boom of the mid-2010s ? and the sight of celebrities using the Contax ? changed everything. Rapper G-Dragon's tack-sharp 2016 mirror selfie showed him holding a pristine black T3. Singer Lee Hyo-ri has said many times that she was shooting her film photos on a gold titanium T3 even before G-Dragon, and even before Kendall Jenner showed off her own Contax T2 on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" (2014-) in 2017. That celebrity exposure, combined with the nature of a discontinued camera, where every broken T3 goes to the grave and no new one can be sourced ? and the simple joy you can feel with a well-built film camera ? naturally pushed up the secondhand price of the premium point-and-shoot. The once-700,000-won camera fetched 1.5 million won in 2017 and north of 2 million won around 2020. 바다이야기상어출현 Now, in 2026, the T3 goes for at least 3.5 million won at used camera shops in Korea and on eBay. G-Dragon takes a photo with his black Contax T3 film camera at the Chanel x Frieze "Now and Next" event in Seoul on Sept. 1, 2022. SCREEN CAPTURE Singer G-Dragon takes a selfie with his Contax T3 camera in a photo uploaded to his Instagram on Nov. 2, 2016. SCREEN CAPTURE Mine lasted two days I jumped on the bandwagon late and acquired my camera just a few months before Sakura showed off hers. Although I am heavily invested in film photography and cameras in general, it was never a purchase I had planned or expected to make. I could not justify spending more than 3 million won on a camera with such well-documented flaws, regardless of its beauty or how much I yearned for the Zeiss glass. Then a private listing for a slightly worn Contax T3 appeared at 40 percent of the price Sakura likely paid. I could not let it pass. The body had a few scratches and dents here and there, but the titanium was wrapped in a protective film, and the owner, who ran a photography blog, said everything worked fine. It did, for the first two rolls of film. Then, midway through my third roll ? an expensive slide film of 30,000 won at that ? the camera had trouble turning on. When a T3 powers up, the lens twists and extends from the barrel, and the lens barrier protecting the glass slides open. My camera? The barrier tried to open, then gave up, leaving me with a partial view of the lens. G-Dragon is seen with a silver Contax T3 in an advertisement for clothing brand 8 Seconds in 2016. Coincidentally, the Contax T3 used in the video seems to be suffering from the same issue that my Contax T3 suffered 10 years later, with its lens blade not operating correctly. SCREEN CAPTURE This is a well-known failure point on the Contax T3. The very thin metal barrier blades are prone to jamming with the repeated movement of switching the camera on and off. 모바일 Seastorygame One camera repair account on Instagram showed that a single grain of sand working its way into the barrier can jam it and disable the entire camera. But I had an ace up my sleeve: Samsungsa, a repair shop in Seoul that once served as the official service center for Contax and Pentax cameras in Korea. As soon as I showed him the broken camera, the shop owner, white-haired and in thick glasses, clicked his tongue and assessed the damage. "Wow, the barrier is completely disintegrated," he said. "But I can fix it." He confirmed that it was a common issue with the model and said he would try to repair the camera with its own parts, but would replace them with parts from his stock if necessary. Thankfully, the T3's popularity and the extensive documentation of its failure points put it in a better position than many less popular cameras of the era when it comes to parts and serviceability. After entering the camera's serial number, he told me that the very camera I had bought had already come in for service in the early 2000s, shipped by airmail from Canada. Two weeks and 150,000 won later, my camera was back to life. Since then, I have secured a hard-to-find filter adapter so I can put one more layer of glass over the lens, in the hope that the barrier will not fail again. It is working so far. My Contax T3 as I bring it with me to my short trip to Shanghai in July. CHO YONG-JUN What the money buys Sakura said she had longed for the camera, and I get it. It is a joy to use, most of the time. The T3 feels good in the hand and is easy to just grab and shoot, even if you know nothing about cameras. If you do know your way around a camera, the T3 is ready for that too. There are controls for lens aperture, exposure compensation and manual focus distance, along with settings to fire the flash automatically or never at all. All are creature comforts for experienced photographers. But even without them, it simply excels at taking good photos. Despite its early-2000s technology, the camera manages to autofocus on most of the things you point it at. 바다이야기 pc버전 다운 It is also very quiet for a heavily motorized camera. A photo of a lotus flower I took with the Contax T3 in late July. The photo was taken with a Kodak E100 slide film, developed and scanned with Oxang Film in Seoul. CHO YONG-JUN And the results do not disappoint. The 35 mm Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens with an f/2.8 aperture means, in plain language, that the camera takes photos slightly more zoomed in than a typical phone camera at its 1x setting, with pleasing background blur. My photos had plenty of contrast, and the pictures of people I took came out well. That zoomed-in lens and generous blur also mean that photographing the food on the table in front of you can be a nuisance. I have had cases where the camera did focus on the food, but mostly on the bowl closest to the lens, and everything else went blurry. Selfies are not its strength either: the lens fits you and one very close friend, who will have to stand very close, and not much else. The camera fits in my jeans pocket with no problem, but I am still hesitant to carry it there for fear that the lens barrier might somehow break. Instead, it lives in my hand or on a neck strap. Even when I am not using it, it is usually in a pouch inside my everyday bag. It is truly worthy of the title of an everyday camera ? the one you carry all the time to shoot anything: portraits of friends, cityscapes, nighttime flash shots and even street photography. So, should you buy one? Two months in, I have chewed through 25 rolls of film, including 12 on a short trip to Shanghai, and I am still looking for that photo ? the piece de resistance I can be truly proud of. To be clear, the Contax has given me dozens of photos I am very satisfied with, just none that blew me away. That is quite unlike the Ricoh GR1v, which I shot for fewer rolls of film. That camera, with its own known faults, gave me a photo that made me gasp on its sixth roll. But don't get me wrong: The Contax T3 really is that good ? when it works. But anyone buying a 25-year-old body with dying electronics and no official support should also accept that the camera can die one day and become a titanium brick. 카카오릴게임 That risk is technically lower in Korea and Japan, where veteran technicians still service it, but your mileage may vary. And if you simply want a camera that takes good film photos, there are plenty at half the price, or even a tenth of it. Jenner's camera, the Contax T2, was sold in far greater volumes and does not have the T3's notorious lens barrier issue. It goes for under $1,500. An Olympus Mju, sold as the Stylus in North America, can be had for under $200 and produces 80 percent of the image the Contax can. Hell, a Kodak disposable for less than $30 is still a film camera, and it will give you film photos at a fraction of the cost. But none of them is the camera that Sakura bought and shared. If you want that camera, you have no other choice. A dim cafe interior, shot on the writer's Contax T3 on expired Fujicolor C200 in late July. The camera focuses accurately on the far glass despite the low light, but at f/2.8 the sharp zone runs only a few centimeters deep at close range. CHO YONG-JUN Two halls face each other across a courtyard at Gyeongbok Palace in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Aug. 28, shot on an iPhone, at left, and on the writer's Contax T3, using black-and-white Kodak Double-X film, developed and scanned by Oxang Film in Seoul. The T3 frame separates the overlapping tiled roofs into distinct grays under a blown-out sky, where the phone keeps the sky's blue and lets the roofs go dark. CHO YONG-JUN Beers are being poured at a bar in central Seoul, taken with a Contax T3 film camera. An expired Fujifilm C200 film was used to take this photo, which was developed and scanned by Oxang Film in Seoul. CHO YONG-JUN Shanghai's Pudong skyline glows at night in a frame shot on the writer's Contax T3 on CineStill 800. The camera's meter holds the exposure in a scene that mixes deep shadow with bright neon. CHO YONG-JUN The sun rises over Shanghai's Pudong skyline, shot on the writer's Contax T3 on Kodak Portra 400. Pointed almost directly into the sun, the Zeiss lens holds contrast without the washed-out haze that backlighting usually produces. CHO YONG-JUN BY CHO YONG-JUN [] combined