dexdog
Veteran
I recently bought a 1950 KMZ J-12 from a Russian eBay dealer because I was curious whether it had Zeiss parts, and if so, how many. Took the lens apart today. Outer barrel parts are aluminum of Soviet manufacture. Internal lens helicals appear to be Zeiss, with 3 matching parts numbers of 899, similar to the parts numbers on the various LTM Sonnars that Brian Sweeney has found, and also found on my 1945 Biogon in LTM. Front lens element is marked 843372, which corresponds to a batch of 2000 LTM Biogons completed on November 26, 1945 according to Thiele, at least one of which got diverted to KMZ in Krasnogorsk. Rear glass group has no serial numbers, and is probably Soviet make. The rear element otherwise looks exactly like the one in my 1945 Biogon, and is also interchangeable with my 1942 Biogon in Contax mount. Anyway, I had fun taking it apart and cleaning it, though it was a lot more fun to get it put back together properly; the fine-threaded helicals are a pain, and there are multiple ways to engage the threads, only one of which is correct.
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