first 5cm/1.5 Sonnar made

[dexdog]

The lens arrived today, see attached pic. There is a touch of fungus on one of the lens elements, but other than that the glass is in really good shape when examined backlit with a flashlight. Fungus is so faint that I could not even see it without using the flashlight- it is not visible just by holding the lens up to sunlight. No swirls or other cleaning marks on the front or rear glass, and the barrel is better than I expected. Lastly, the rear lens group is stamped with the last 5 digits of the serial number. Lens is definately the real deal. I will post it to ZICG soon.

 

[Joerg]

Congrats!!!

Ciao

joerg

 

[porktaco]

fstop tops out at 8?

LOOK, THIS ONE GOES TO 11

 

[dexdog]

Yep, minimum aperture is f8; the aperture was not decreased to f11 until 1934, and further decreased to f16 in 1935, according to John Keesing.

 

[porktaco]

 

[dexdog]

A couple of pics made with Sonnar 1374171 on the NEX 7. No tweaking or sharpening, other than that normally made by in-camera jpeg mode.

http://chobe.smugmug.com/Other/Sonnar137471/24539129_F4MF52#!i=2003783026&k=bS8rt9Q


Standard Sonnar look, not bad for an 80 year old lens. You can get a real good look if you load "original" size from the pop-up that appears when you scroll over the images.

 

[goamules]

Wow, what a great lens, it's shooting very nice. Good to get it at a reasonable price, instead of at a very high "rarity factor" price.

As far as rarity with anything, it really doesn't matter how rare something is in determining price. Price is determined by demand. I have many extremely rare lenses (A Karl Struss is just one) that don't sell for as much as others that were made by the thousands and are quite available. It's about demand and recent hype factor.