Another irregular production Sonnar

Took the 5.8cm lens out to a local historic site, it is a pretty decent lens. These were shot at f4 on my Sony a7III, straight outta camera jpeg, no tweaks on my part. Lower contrast as may be expected from an uncoated lens, especially second pic that has bright light streaming onto headstone.


 
It warmed up this afternoon- and I had a chance to put the Sonnar on the Amedeo adapter and use on the M240. The focal length is 5.8cm, but marked 5cm. The lens is Contax Mount. It focuses correctly at infinity. BUT- to use on a Contax camera would require a custom RF mechanism in the camera. I think it was used for an application for infinity focus only. I've seen custom cameras and lenses built for this.

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The lens uses 40mm filters and hoods, like the pre-war 5.8cm F2 Biotar. One more piece of this puzzle. The SN starts with a "3", which would put it in the post-war range for CZJ lenses. If you drop the "3" and go with "144", I've seen others like this in that range.
 
Wide-Open

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All focusing using the EVF2 Liveview on the M240, 5x magnification.

Conclusions? It uses 40mm filters. It takes far better pictures than I thought it could. The others that I've handled had some scratched up glass in it, looked like shooting through vaseline.

Speculation: If there is a 5.8cm Biotar, we're going to make a 5.8cm Sonnar! And forgot the RF cam had to be sloped for a Leica, and that they would need an external focus mount for a Contax. "Maybe we can sell them as Eyepieces." "Maybe we can hide them and pretend we never made them." After the war- Moonlighting at the Machine Shop.
 
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The lens is uncoated- none of the surfaces are coated.
Hood definitely helps performance. I was surprised when the standard 40.5mm hood did not screw in. Then- remembered by early Biotar takes 40mm accessories.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
I was surprised when the standard 40.5mm hood did not screw in. Then- remembered by early Biotar takes 40mm accessories.
Click to expand...
I had the same issue with my 5cm but really 58mm Sonnar using the sam Walz hood. A single wrap of teflon tape worked well.
 
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To pour some oil into the fire... After saying there are no official designs, prototypes or whatever that support the existence of a Sonnar 5,8cm (6cm) f/1,5 I found it mentioned in a list of Mr. Thiele! It is in the book "Versuchsobjektive Carl Zeiss Jena". In this book there is a 2 page list of experiments of Zeiss Ikon in Dresden (not Zeiss Jena). In this list there is a Sonnar 6cm f/1,5 that dates to June 21 1947. It shows a 7-3 design for full frame. And there is even a constructor mentioned but with question mark: Rudolf Solisch. This is one of the optic calculators that worked in Berteles office.

The book is from 2021. And I have another book from Mr. Thiele about fake lenses where he is going long about how there is no evidence of the existence of a Sonnar 5,8cm (6cm) f/1,5. It is unclear what he used as source of the Zeiss Ikon list in the book of experimental lenses. It is unclear how trustworthy those information are. Is this list complete? Maybe not. For a lot of Berteles experiments on this list the date is missing. For other experiments the name of the author is missing. I could not find any list of Zeiss Ikon lenses anywhere too. It is clear Zeiss Ikon did not only manufacture some prototypes and experimental lenses but projection lenses and maybe even small batches of offered lenses. Internal information about CZJ is rare but about Zeiss Ikon it is almost not existing. Or maybe I have not found it yet.

Nevertheless I wanted to give this information to you guys. Maybe this lens is a not official Zeiss lens because it was created by Zeiss Ikon and someone stole the designs and put up a production somewhere else. Just speculating.
 
Another Mystery Sonnar- and part of the mystery solved.

I picked up this 276xxxx 5cm f1.5 Sonnar some 15 years ago, off Ebay- ~$65 or so. Glass is heavily scratched, but bought it as it was "just different".
The front of the lens looks like a typical wartime lens. BUT the rear group and fixture is different. Decided to compare with the Post-War 5cm F1.5 Sonnar. The fixture is different, but the rear group is the same.

Prototype? Scrounge for Parts? The rear group is obviously the same as the post-war production lens.

Rear group is not standard wartime production, different diameter and fixture.
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The rear group is the same as the post-war CZJ Sonnar.
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Nice catch! You see that this one is fishy by the aperture ring. The grippers have the wrong number of grooves. If you see a Sonnar with those 2 little aperture grippers and with anything other than 5 grooves this is not authentic!

It is the very first Sonnar from this 62th batch that I have seen now. And than this is a hack.
 
Speculation on my part- but this Sonnar looks like "an Engineering Prototype" or "Test Fixture" for what is clearly the optics for the post-war CZJ Sonnar. Too much work to make that rear fixture to fit the post-war triplet into the existing barrel. Something I could see the engineers and machinist making in the shop to test the redesigned optics.

The optics on this one are "blown". Think I'll take it apart and see if all three groups from the 305x lens fit.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
I've mixed Sonnar and Biotar optics. Front section of a J-8 combined with a rear section of a Xenon. The astigmatism is extreme.
I've seen the X-Rays in the article on the 5.8cm F1.5, believe there is a faint outline of the rear elements- a triplet.

I have a bizarre 276xxxx 5cm F1.5 Sonnar, and it has a smaller rear group. Optics were very worn, but for $75- no complaints. The rear group is different from the Arriflex 5cm F1.5 Sonnar, which is truncated- much smaller diameter that will not cover full-frame 35mm. The bizarre 276xxxx covers the full frame.

I believe it is like this one, 1-3-2:
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BUT: I am not going to separate the group to find out. I've done that for a J-8M, discovered the middle triplet was very different from the published formula.

This article sent to me has the X-Ray of the 5.8cm F1.5 and the 5cm F1.5.

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It is clearly a Sonnar formula lens. The front element has the metal rim around it, but it is a single-element and a middle triplet.
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Suddenly I realised that this drawing of a prototype Sonnar corresponds to a Zeiss patent from 1942. After Bertele left Zeiss Ikon Willy Merté in Jena clearly continued developing the Sonnar type and reduced the number of lens elements by one in the 1:2 and 1:1.5 lenses by partly separating the middle triplet. Maybe the introduction of coating made it viable.
 

Attachments

stuvi.jpg
This is one finding from Marco Cavina. Maybe the Sonnar was used as part of the visor of the German WWII dive bombers. Stuvi is an abbreviation for Sturzvisier = dive visor. There are theories out there that this is the Sonnar 5,8cm f/1,5.
 
Dexdog and I met up yesterday at the Army Museum in Norhtern Virginia- I had the chance to compare his LTM 5.8cm F1.5 with my Contax mount 5.8cm (marked 5cm) F1.5, the latter marked 5cm. The optics and their fixture are the same. The LTM version has a precisely made indexed cam to maintain proper focus throughout range. My lens is in focus at infinity on a standard Contax. It's possible that the lens was made to go with a modified body, with a different pitch helical- but I doubt that. I've seen other lenses made for special applications that are fixed-focus at infinity.

The lenses are well made, and perform about the same as the 1930s pre-war Sonnars. I've seen several that led very rough lives, the glass is damaged. Dexdog and I have very clean examples. The optics are uncoated. The serial numbers on these lenses "are all over the place", but mine starting with "314"- a new RFF member has one that is 2 lenses from mine. Are they worth the ridiculous prices asked for them by some Ebay sellers- no, not for their performance or even for the mysterious history. But they are Sonnars, optics by Zeiss, and manufacturing an unrecorded part of recovery after WW-II.
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zeissikonveb.de

Leica-Sonnar | zeissikonveb.de

Leica-Sonnar, Seehund III, Adler, Uhu.
zeissikonveb.de zeissikonveb.de

Zeissikonveb.de updated his article about the Leica-Sonnar with more information. He published an article from 1949 written by Carl Zeiss Jena. (just translate the page to English) This is mentioning the visor as source of some fake lenses. It is difficult to find reliable data about the origin of this Sonnar since it might originate from Zeiss (Jena/Ikon) military production that was kept secret. It might be that those lenses where not manufactured by the Jena / Saalfeld Sonnar production line.

Here is a page where you can see a lot of pages of a stuvi 5b dive bomber bomb sight. Unfortunately you can't see the lens used by this engine.

www.deutscheluftwaffe.de

Fl.52870 Sturzvisier Stuvi 5B, 1944 | Deutscheluftwaffe

www.deutscheluftwaffe.de www.deutscheluftwaffe.de

What I find interesting is that it might mean that Bertele created way more Sonnar designs than we know today. When I put up a list of Sonnar designs from his hand (1930-41) I wondered that it was shorter than the list of Ernostar designs he had created from 1922-1931. Especially during the war time his output declined. At the linked page there is a (Sonnar) 5cm f1. Probably another ultra bright tele lenses used by military survailance are Sonnar lenses.
 
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Next time I am at the Udvar Hazy Museum- I will look for the sight.
This lens is good enough for photographic purposes. Too large for a camera gun. Could be part of a sighting mechanism, "over-engineered" for that purpose. About 15 years ago a number of Nikkor 5cm F1.4 lenses without aperture or mount were on Ebay, had been used for eyepieces for some Lab.

The Website has one of these on the Banner.
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The linked page of the bomb sight mentions you need to look for a Junkers Ju 87 D-5, Ju 88 , Messerschmitt Me 210 / 410A-1/A-2 😉

I checked Ebay without success. 🤣
 
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