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back alley

back alley

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it's deja vu all over again...yogi berra

how do i keep track of these carl zeiss lenses?

pre-war / post-war

t* coated

aluminum / chrome over brass

my 50/2 is a carl zeiss jena t* - so that is east german made? and coated?

my carl zeiss 50/1.5 is post war, newer than my 50/2 but is not t*, so is not coated?

i have read a few articles but keeping it straight without a program in front of me is confusing.

joe
 
CZ invented the coated optic, although it was a war-time military secret. The red "T" is the early post-war designator. Multicoating was a more recent American invention from the mid '60s that was licenced and commercialized jointly by Pentax and CZ (they were dating at the time). Pentax SMC beat CZ T* to the market by a year or so in the early '70s. Here is some T* eye-candy🙂

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Joe,

all Zeiss postwar lenses are coated, regardless East (CZJ) or West (Opton or Carl Zeiss).
Maybe Henry Scherer's website has some info.

Ciao Joerg
 
back alley said:
t* are post war in rf lenses? and no designation is post war in rf?
your lenses are slr and much newer lenses & t*.
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Roughly speaking, no designation of coating means the lens is pre-war and uncoated; the red "T" means post-war and single-coated; the red "T*" means 1974 and multicoated. Some of my CZ lenses for Contax SLR were manufactered in the late '70s, or a few years after "T*" was invented. Some of the optical designs (like that of the F-Distagon 16 fisheye and S-Planar 60 actually predate T*, having been released for the Contarex!
 
I thought we decided your 2.0 was coated? Frank said he saw a light shine on it, early single coat or something.

Zeiss started coating lenses just before and during the war. It was a military secret (the process) protected as it improved bomb sights and other targeting optics I believe. Perhaps not the best kept secret, I think that is a true statement though.

Anyway, not all Zeiss coated lenses carried the T* marketing mark. The process started with lenses with serial numbers in the high 2millions (it is 6am and I am tired, don't hold me to this quote 😉).

And how do you keep the lenses straight? I don't know, I am still a few weeks away from my Contax and I already own 3 50mm lenses for it, when I get a few more I perhaps I will be able to better comment.
 
As others have already posted, your lenses are "T" single-coated, not "T*" multicoated (i.e., no asterisk/star after the "T" as that's Carl Zeiss's post-1970's multicoating trademark). Anything w/"Jena" in name was obviously made in Jena, which of course only means "E. German" if it was made from 1945-1989. Yours most likely is E. German, as relatively few 5cm/2 Sonnars were coated before & during WWII & the E. German 5cm/2 were commonly supplied w/Contax IIa's sold in the U.S. market. If your 5cm/2 has tabs on opposite sides of the aperture ring, then it is much more likely to be a rare pre-1945 lens. Pictures would help. Your Carl Zeiss (i.e., no Jena) 50/1.5 Sonnar is definitely post-WWII & W. German, & is also coated--Zeiss stopped putting the red "T" on every lens once lens coating became common in the late 1950s (only to start up w/the T* when they introduced multicoating).

back alley said:
it's deja vu all over again...yogi berra

how do i keep track of these carl zeiss lenses?

pre-war / post-war

t* coated

aluminum / chrome over brass

my 50/2 is a carl zeiss jena t* - so that is east german made? and coated?

my carl zeiss 50/1.5 is post war, newer than my 50/2 but is not t*, so is not coated?

i have read a few articles but keeping it straight without a program in front of me is confusing.

joe
Click to expand...
 
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rover, the 50/2 is coated, yes, the t is there and i can see colour reflections.
and yes chris, it's only a t, no * there.

i know how how to look for the reflections to check for coating but that's wasn't my concen.
there just seems to be more to know when it comes to cz lenses than say older canons. and it really didn't make sense to have a t and then no t on the lens and then a t* on later slr lenses.
confusing is all, not rocket science i admit.

joe
 
Well, Zeiss was in the process of splitting, rejoining, and ultimately finally splitting their corporation both physically and in court. Even the rights to the use of the name Zeiss and other "brands" was fought over. It is confusing.
 
Yeah, it can get kind of confusing. As rover notes, there's that whole business w/WWII & related corporate changes. What's also confusing is that many people had their uncoated pre-WWII/WWII-era Zeiss lenses coated by 3rd-party optical shops or, I have read, by Zeiss themselves. However, IME, the 3rd-party coatings tend to be more blue than the tell-tale T-coated purple & not to have survived as well (I believe the 3rd-party optical shops used a soft-coating process similar to what Leitz was originally stuck w/after WWII) & I have never seen a lens that has been authenticated as originally uncoated & then coated by Zeiss.

As to Zeiss using the "T" & then abandoning it, I think Nikon did the same thing after WWII, i.e., initially marking their lenses w/a red "C" & then dropping it once coating became common in the late '50s-early '60s.

back alley said:
rover, the 50/2 is coated, yes, the t is there and i can see colour reflections.
and yes chris, it's only a t, no * there.

i know how how to look for the reflections to check for coating but that's wasn't my concen.
there just seems to be more to know when it comes to cz lenses than say older canons. and it really didn't make sense to have a t and then no t on the lens and then a t* on later slr lenses.
confusing is all, not rocket science i admit.

joe
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a few pics of my 2 50's, i think someone asked for them.

so, i have looked but cannot find a list on the web for post war cz lenses showing serial numbers matched to year of manufacture.
did i miss it?
 

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I think your 5cm/2 is certainly post-WWII E. German. The shiny chrome or chrome-like finish, however, jumps out to me because most of the E. German 5cm/2 Sonnars I've seen have a duller alloy finish, more similar to the Soviet Jupiters & are significantly lighter in weight than their pre-WWII ancestors or the post-WWII W. German lenses. If yours is indeed lighter than your CZ 50/1.5, then it's in remarkably good shape.

There is no list on the web for post-WWII CZJ, Z-O, or CZ lenses, though Thiele covers most of the ground in his (German language) books. If you email the lens #s to Harry Brown (harry01562), he can look them up in his copy/copies of the Thiele (& Keesing) books. Charlie Barringer of the Zeiss Ikon Collectors Group (ZICG, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZICG/) maintains a database, too, so I would suggest posting the #s there, too.

back alley said:
a few pics of my 2 50's, i think someone asked for them.

so, i have looked but cannot find a list on the web for post war cz lenses showing serial numbers matched to year of manufacture.
did i miss it?
Click to expand...
 
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I'm going to have to dispute the assertion that Zeiss invented lens coating. The phenomenon was discovered in the 1890s when people discovered that older lenses that had developed a "tarnish" actually transmitted light better. The first practical, controlled processes were developed in the mid-to-late 1930s, but these efforts for the most part ended up in military applications for all major combatants, not just the Germans. Nippon Kogaku, for example, developed excellent coatings for submarine periscopes.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1306/is_n2_v60/ai_14824662
 
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Seems your 5cm/2 is fairly unusual. Keesing notes that a E. German lens in "high quality chrome" (#3092302) was produced in 1947.

back alley said:
chris, i think frank s said the 50/2 was chrome on brass and while the 1.5 is heavier, the 50/2 is also substantial.

joe
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