1932 Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F1.5: Test Photos.

Sonnar Brian

Sonnar Brian

Product of the Fifties
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This has been First-Batch lens week for me. My Voigtlander Nokton 50mm F1.0 "Objective of Extreme Rapidity" arrived, mine appears to be one of the first 100 made.

And The first "Objective of Extreme Rapidity" made for 24x36 format 35mm cameras arrived, also one of the first 100 made. It is beautiful. This lens was made for the Contax I camera. I also have a Tessar 5cm F3.5 made in the first batch of lenses for Contax cameras. That batch size was a batch of 5000 lenses, Zeiss had been making the Tessar for a long time before the Contax. The Sonnar was designed for use on the Contax.

This lens had been sent to Henry Scherer and has been set back to original specifications. A set screw is used to hold the barrel into the mount, the barrel screws in and the set screw holds it in place for proper focus. The lens had the set screw removed and was screwed in deeper. I'm glad that Henry set it back: I can use the lens as originally manufactured. I believe the lens was optimized for F2.8 use, as it slightly close-focuses used wide-open and close-up on an Amedeo adapter that is made for Contax lenses. I use the adapter with other Sonnars as well. When the lens is placed on an adapter made for Nikon lenses it back-focuses. That's normal for a Zeiss lens on a Nikon camera or adapter.

I am use to manually compensating for focus shift. All of these are wide-open on the Leica M8.





 
My M Monochrom hates the cold. So that test will wait. I have a full push-on Zeiss filter set for this lens.
The M9 has the Noktons on it and in the bag. Once that is done, will line up Some Sonnars for a real test.
 
Wide-Open on the M8,

L1024527.jpg


L1024529.jpg


At F4,

L1024533.jpg
 
Pretty impressive for a 90 year old lens! Given the results I assume that lens is nice and clear, without haze. A bit soft wide open, and quite sharp by f4, about what one would expect. Looks like you got a good lens. The pic of the holly berries reminds me of the way my 4.25cm Biotar renders wide open at f2. Looking forward to the upcoming test.
 
I will be putting this one through the paces, the glass is clean and clear, aperture smooth, and in beautiful condition.
This and my Nikkor 5cm F1.5 are my two that will never leave.
 
my old Sonnar of the same vintage performed well, too. Like your example, my former lens was very clear, and by the look of the thing it had never been opened for cleaning, either. I forgot to mention that your lens has good contrast given that it is not coated, but it is a Sonnar after all so not too surprising.
 
I have a Sonnar that is a bit later. 1.5million serial number. Sadly, it had to undergo major surgery because a prior owner ham-fisted it. There's a thread on that in this forum here. However it's a lovely lens and I am not going to part with it. It performs exceptionally well.

Also the computation seems to be a bit different than later Sonnars. Even my 1.6million which according to Thiele has the same formula. It's noticeable mainly in how highlights behave as well as the generally flatter field and less "glow" from spherical aberrations. Brians shots demonstrate this well - it's there but it doesn't seem to affect the focal plane as much.

By the way here's the supposed four computations, but I have my doubts:

Sonnar 50/1.5 Computations
Computed 8.12.32 - 1415701 ~ 1754700 [first computation outside of trial run]
Computed 15.04.35 - 1756710 ~ 2554800 [second computation]
Computed 15.08.39 - 2610001 ~ 4013250 [third and supposedly final computation]
[.. Opton lenses have no data]
Click to expand...
 
I have a 5cm/1.5 Sonnar in the 151 range, I may have to run some tests on it and post some photos here. In any case, will have to wait until snowy weather passes
 
TenEleven said:
I have a Sonnar that is a bit later. 1.5million serial number. Sadly, it had to undergo major surgery because a prior owner ham-fisted it. There's a thread on that in this forum here. However it's a lovely lens and I am not going to part with it. It performs exceptionally well.

Also the computation seems to be a bit different than later Sonnars. Even my 1.6million which according to Thiele has the same formula. It's noticeable mainly in how highlights behave as well as the generally flatter field and less "glow" from spherical aberrations. Brians shots demonstrate this well - it's there but it doesn't seem to affect the focal plane as much.

By the way here's the supposed four computations, but I have my doubts:
Click to expand...

This 137xxxx Sonnar is definitely different from my 1607xxx.

The 175xxxx: I have seen lenses with the Black Ring on the mount, like my 1607xxx lens. My 175xxxx lens has the all chrome finish, and is similar to my later lenses. I'm sure there as overlap- but it could be the chrome mounts signifies a change.

I'm not sure where the change in formula after that occurred- but can believe 260xxxx. The earliest one that I had with the hidden set screws was a 268xxxx. I would expect the change to have occurred when Zeiss started using the allow barrel and hidden set screws.
 
TenEleven said:
I have a Sonnar that is a bit later. 1.5million serial number. Sadly, it had to undergo major surgery because a prior owner ham-fisted it. There's a thread on that in this forum here. However it's a lovely lens and I am not going to part with it. It performs exceptionally well.

Also the computation seems to be a bit different than later Sonnars. Even my 1.6million which according to Thiele has the same formula. It's noticeable mainly in how highlights behave as well as the generally flatter field and less "glow" from spherical aberrations. Brians shots demonstrate this well - it's there but it doesn't seem to affect the focal plane as much.

By the way here's the supposed four computations, but I have my doubts:
Sonnar 50/1.5 Computations
Computed 8.12.32 - 1415701 ~ 1754700 [first computation outside of trial run]
Computed 15.04.35 - 1756710 ~ 2554800 [second computation]
Computed 15.08.39 - 2610001 ~ 4013250 [third and supposedly final computation]
[.. Opton lenses have no data]
Click to expand...

I can confirm that my 1754223 Sonnar 5cm F1.5 is a later computation than 1607399. Starting with the trial batch being a "v1", the 1415701 being "v2", then the 17054223 is a V3. The rear triplet on the V3 is about 2mm longer than the v2.
Sonnar175xV3_145xV2_c.jpg


Both appear to be v2 formula lenses- different fixtures, and shapes- same length.
V2_Sonnars_two_types.jpg
 
Thank you @Sonnar Brian

That confirms my suspicion that the Thiele Fabrikationsbuch is wrong at this point. Or better the compiled information contain not the whole story.

I was skeptical because when you look into my overview (or look it up in the Fabrikationsbuch II) you can see that Ludwig Bertele created 3 optical calculations for the Sonnar 5cm f/1,5 in rapid order. The reason for this is the rushed introduction of the Sonnar lens for the Contax and that Bertele was a perfectionist. He was not satisfied with the first productive calculation (v1) of the Sonnar 5cm f/1,5 and recalculated it after only 2 batches produced (v2). And even then he was not satisfied. Maybe it was for the competition with Willi Merte (Biotar) or maybe it was his own perfectionism but he recalculated the Sonnar a second time and created a new third (v3) optical calculation on 1935-04-15. He later created 2 further recalculations that went in productive too.

The question is how were those changes applied to production. In case of the first change it is still debatable what happened when. The first change happened in batch 6 and the result was the Sonnar f8+ or f9,5. I think all lenses in batch 6 use the v2 optical calculation.

But now to the change v2 -> v3.
  • Berteles optical v3 design dates to 1935-04-15.
  • the Fabrikationsbuch states that the first batch that uses the v3 optics was batch 28 where production started 1936-04-14.
  • However there are 2 batches that where started after 1935-04-15 that use v2 optics in the Fabrikationsbuch.
    • batch 25 from 1935-05-18 starting serial 1660301
    • batch 26 from 1935-11-14 starting serial 1753701
  • to sum up the information in the Fabrikationsbuch II
    • batch 23 = v2
    • batch 25 = v2
    • batch 26 = v2
    • batch 27 = v3
I have been collecting lenses from batches around this change to answer the question did CZJ wait to use the v3 optics for about a year or not?

Since I can't take my lenses apart like Brian can I tried to see differences in the images I can take with those lenses. I have lenses from batch 8, 23, 25, 26 and 28. It is not quite as accurate as measuring the glass elements but after examining my examples I would come to the same conclusion as Brian.
  • batch 23 = v2
  • batch 25 = v3
  • batch 26 = v3
What does this mean now?

Mr Thieles information heavily rely on the CZJ production cards. Those cards were paper cards used for every batch to decide what has to be manufactured and in which quantities by the CZJ plant. Usually this information is very accurate. People had to sign on this card to show that they are responsible for decisions made during the production process. But it seems that those cards do not always tell us the truth what was produced in the end. Those cards are like orders. When an order was placed someone noted the quantity and the lens name. Someone else noted the optical design to use. And a third person noted the construction design of the barrel that should be used.

We can see now that sometimes the production line manufactured another design than on the card. It looks like the new optical design was pushed to the glass grinders department and replaced the old v2 design. There is a small push in center sharpness with the newer v3 optical design. So it made sense to dump the v2 design and go for the v3.
 
Last edited:
Räuber said:
I forgot I wrote about all 6 computations that where used in the regular versions of the Sonnar 5cm 1,5.

vividlyfading.blogspot.com

Zeiss Sonnar 50mm F/1.5 - Overview

Introduction The Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5cm F/1.5 (1.5/50) is a 50mm standard lens for range finder with a very bright F/1.5 aperture m...
vividlyfading.blogspot.com vividlyfading.blogspot.com
Click to expand...
This is a great article, and a real resource. An incredible amount of work- and Thankyou for doing it!
 
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