Jena prewar Sonnar 1.5/5cm coated?

M

MaZo

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Hi all. I browsed many threads about prewar CZJ lenses and still I'm not sure when coating started for good. I've seen info that it started around lens number 2520300 (as per Pacific Rim Camera article). Now to the point - would this "T" Sonnar 1.5/5cm no. 2370387 be factory coated? Is it legit at all? I tend to think so, as both 2520xxx and 2370xxx serial no.'s are from the year 1938.

2qvrzh5.jpg


fwi14.jpg


2ustxqp.jpg
 
Possible. But given the existence of after market coatings (both Zeiss and third party) it is impossible to tell unless you find that lens listed as within a coated batch in the factory books - and many early pre war coatings appear to have been outside a batch, so that could only provide positive evidence.
 
hm..I haven't found that Pacific Rim Camera article. My copy has serial number is 2517495 and it does NOT say "T". Would that mean also made in 1938 and very likely not coated, right?
 
kuuan said:
hm..I haven't found that Pacific Rim Camera article. My copy has serial number is 2517495 and it does NOT say "T". Would that mean also made in 1938 and very likely not coated, right?
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I believe it may be this one. (I've included the parent directory for Contax but if you scroll down you'll find the link to the 50mm f/1.5 Sonnar page.)
Cheers
Brett
http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/zicontaxsh.htm
 
That lens looks genuine to me. I have a '37 50/f2 Sonnar (2228818) that is coated but no T. The pale blue colour of the coatings on your 50/f1.5 look the same as mine. I believe the changeover time was something like late '37 which could account for mine being coated but not labelled with a T.
 
It looks very much like my uncoated ones to me, by the intensity of the reflections and their apparently complete spectrum.
 
Older lenses can develop a sort of bloom that looks a little like oil on water. I do not know the technical term.

This can sometimes be mistaken for coating (or at least a very worn and almost lost coating).
 
kuuan said:
oh, so that could mean that possibly mine has coating, right?
glass has a bit of a greenish, blueish teint ( I don't have the lens with me and only these old photos )


CZJ Sonnar f1.5 5cm by andreas, on Flickr


NEX5N with CZJ Sonnar f1.5/5cm by andreas, on Flickr
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The reflections on that first shot in particular look whiter than mine Andreas. I would guess that one is uncoated. It's confusing as to when exactly they started coating. Maybe they were making coated and uncoated lenses at the same time to cover all marketing bases.
 
mcfingon said:
It's confusing as to when exactly they started coating. Maybe they were making coated and uncoated lenses at the same time to cover all marketing bases.
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They did not coat all lenses by default until after WWII. It started out as a option, and even in 1939 they must still have sold a considerable amount of uncoated Sonnars, as coated ones nowadays are more rare on the used market than uncoated ones.
 
thank's sevo and Mcfingon for your infos, so I settle for it being uncoated. Should use it more and see ( now the lens is not with me, will take some months )

Dralowid said:
Interesting solution. I assume there is an inexpensive adaptor behind the Kiev (or Contax) lens mount? Could you tell me which it is r if you made it yourself how thick is it?
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right, selfmade, the mount was taken from a broken Kiev camera and attached to a Pen-F to Sony E mount adapter. I had taken the Pen-F adapter because I already had it ( Pen-F lenses surprisingly have 2 variations of mounts and not every adapter fits them all. This adapter had only fit some of my Pen-F lenses, therefore I already had bought another on which all Pen-F lenses fit ) but a Leica M or LTM to Sony E mount adapter should work too. Just make sure that the opening of the adapter is wide enough for the Contax / Kiev mount to fit in, use an E mount adapter which is not a single, solid piece but whose female part is screwed into the adapter and can be taken off.
 
wish you much success!
thinking about it, I am curious if a Leica M > E mount helicoid adapter also could be used. After all the focusing with the Contax mount is not all that pleasurable and one could prefocus it to about the range where one needs it and do the precise focusing with the adapter ( the cheap ones available on the 'bay' don't have a removable female part though and possibly the Contax mount won't fit inside the M mount. I don't have the adapter with me right now to check, but once I will I certainly will )
 
adapter

adapter

Kuuan,

If you talking about the Voightlander M to E close focus adapter, they make a
C-VM adapter to use with it that allows focusing of Contax 50mm lens only. This extra adapter costs about US$ 210 in addition to the US$ 310 cost of the close-up adapter. This is an extremely expensive way to go. But it shows you can make your own and expect it to work.

Bill
 
Speaking for Italy, which is not very far from Germany, in the early postwar years many professional or high level amateurs used to have their uncoated lenses coated by private firms.

This was told me many times by old photographers in the eighties when i was learning.

They used to recommend me not to do it to preserve the allure of uncoated lenses in bw photography.

In Milan there was such a coating service some 30 years ago, which worked also for telescope makers.

The term for coating, now disappeared, was" azzurrare", i.e. to make lightblue.
 
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