uhoh7
Veteran
whew! glad we got all that settled.
What's a sonnar?
1) anything zeiss calls a sonnar?
2) the lens which made the name famous? and very close technical relatives, including Japanese and Russian copies.
It's a personal choice, but I'll take the latter.
1937 uncoated CZJ 50/1.5 Jena, at f/4 as captured by M9 as dng and exported from LR as jpeg. auto wb. I did not touch a slider.
L1023072 by unoh7, on Flickr
What's a sonnar?
1) anything zeiss calls a sonnar?
2) the lens which made the name famous? and very close technical relatives, including Japanese and Russian copies.
It's a personal choice, but I'll take the latter.
1937 uncoated CZJ 50/1.5 Jena, at f/4 as captured by M9 as dng and exported from LR as jpeg. auto wb. I did not touch a slider.
L1023072 by unoh7, on Flickr
Wulfthari
Well-known
It's not that you repeat the same thing over and over again it becomes true, I posted the link, there is an interview to one of the factory managers that were sent to Kiev Arsenal, why are you insisting again repeating the same thing again?
The quality of the first Kievs is well known, and KMZ started the production of J-3 and J-8 because at that time the Kiev Arsenal was flooded with workload, but when the production was started in Arsenal the quality of the Jupiter lenses didn't suffer.
FrankS
Registered User
It will be interesting to see how this history gets sorted out.
Wulfthari
Well-known
Agreed 100% and perhaps it's better to disengage from this pointless discussion, it reminds me another crazy thread in which despite of the proof that the Industars were Tessar clones some people still argued that were Leitz Elmar clones even after I posted the schematics on the lenses, and BTW I'm not Russian, American or German and I have no personal interest in the dispute, I use gear from every firm I like....BTW congratulations for the pic of the bike, I just received the scans from my test film of my new Leica IIIb and an early Industar 61 and I would like to share.
It's just a test pic taken in a hurry, I didn't use a lightmeter (just sunny 16 rule) but it shows what this old camera and this old lens can do.
DominikDUK
Well-known
Wulfthari you and Sevo are both right. A large amount of Stuff and knowledge was transfered to the west and a large amount of knowledge was transfered to the east.
O2Pilot not to rain on your parade but Germany and Austrian had to pay huge amounts of compensation to the West. The Marshall plan wasn't free either. Germany payed war reparations until last year. Also since the industry was to a large part located in Eastgermany it was also destroyed much more than the Western parts there are some exceptions of course. To completely deindustrialize Germany was actually a plan by the US after WW1.
And now let's talk about great lenses from the east the far east and the west.
O2Pilot not to rain on your parade but Germany and Austrian had to pay huge amounts of compensation to the West. The Marshall plan wasn't free either. Germany payed war reparations until last year. Also since the industry was to a large part located in Eastgermany it was also destroyed much more than the Western parts there are some exceptions of course. To completely deindustrialize Germany was actually a plan by the US after WW1.
And now let's talk about great lenses from the east the far east and the west.
02Pilot
Malcontent
Nowhere did I say that compensation was not paid. I simply noted that the motivations of the occupying powers quickly diverged, and that this had a marked effect on the experiences of East and West Germany.
The Morgenthau Plan to "pastoralize" Germany emerged (and failed to be implemented) after WW2, not WW1; the US position in the earlier peace settlement was based on Wilson's Fourteen Points, which were considerably more lenient toward Germany than any of the other allied powers were willing to accept.
Agreed. This is becoming too much like work.
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
My main concern, FWIW, is that all the negative rubbish I read about the FEDs and so on will put a lot of people off of buying, using and enjoying a decently made camera. And I never/seldom hear these rants about (say) the Japanese copies of the Leica by Nikon and Canon to pick a couple at random.
I bought a FED /Zorki because I'd heard a lot about them that didn't make sense and wanted to find out for myself: needless-to-say, I was delighted; like a lot of others on these forums.
And thanks for the compliment about the old Scott, a lovely bike. I liked your B&W photo's elsewhere.
Regards, David
My main concern, FWIW, is that all the negative rubbish I read about the FEDs and so on will put a lot of people off of buying, using and enjoying a decently made camera. And I never/seldom hear these rants about (say) the Japanese copies of the Leica by Nikon and Canon to pick a couple at random.
I bought a FED /Zorki because I'd heard a lot about them that didn't make sense and wanted to find out for myself: needless-to-say, I was delighted; like a lot of others on these forums.
And thanks for the compliment about the old Scott, a lovely bike. I liked your B&W photo's elsewhere.
Regards, David
Dante_Stella
Rex canum cattorumque
Funny you should ask, Wulfthari - I've done work for the auto industry (meaning numerous OEMs, Tier-1s and Tier-2s worldwide) for 15 years, and it's not uncommon that localizing production of components presents challenges in price and adherence to specs, even when the same company is doing it in both places (availability of skilled labor can be a factor). And I'm not sure whether you're saying you localize all the time or change suppliers, but changing suppliers usually has a 2-3 year lead time. Changing in the middle of a production cycle is expensive, risky (you often get sued), potentially disruptive (unless you have a second set of tools, you can't change seamlessly), and risks quality issues. I don't think I characterized moving production as impossible - I thought I said it had the potential to be unsuccessful.
That's what informs my view that you can't dismantle and assemble an even an entire plant - and bring along the brains - and expect to do everything exactly the same way once you get to the destination. As you point out in your post, raw materials issues could force optical recomputations, and if you have a shortage of skilled machinists, you may simplify or change parts. And if you don't have the drawing for something, you have to create it by doing a measure and draw off a number of known good Zeiss lenses to establish dimensions and tolerances (and lenses have tolerances in the 1/100 mms for metal and 1/1000 on some mount parts). One big picture answer that is missing here is what precise tooling would have existed for a lens (the Jupiter-3 is what I thought we were discussing) that is mostly machined parts?
But this may be an academic question because the history doesn't seem support the idea that the USSR was able to acquire the right assembly lines (or even drawings). It would be interesting to spend some time getting to the bottom of historical questions on LTM lenses. The assessment of Mr. Gubas, writing for the Zeiss Historica Society, was that the Contax cameras and lenses - the centerpiece of the Soviet effort - were all done mostly from postwar Jena drawings (not Zeiss-Ikon Dresden drawings) and were not simply a continuation of prewar products. I was suprised to read that Contaxes were not made during the war but not surprised that the Dresden facility and its drawings were annihilated during the firebombings. Even the postwar "Jena" was not the wartime Jena facility but a new suburban location. The Zeiss foundation talks about the Americans cleaning out Jena (the real Jena) before the Soviets arrived.
As to the Sovietcams page you link, it doesn't say anything to the contrary. It says that the PT3005 (Jupiter-8) was a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar assembled in the Soviet Union. But if the LTM history tracked the Contax history (and I would have to imagine it did), a postwar "Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar" was itself a Soviet copy, made from postwar drawings, in a new plant that was not the location of any original Contax production. It seems like all they did was move production from one location (the new "Jena" plant) to the USSR. Maybe LTM lenses were made at some third location that miraculously survived the war, but the prospects do not look good that the Jupiter line was the result of transplanting a running wartime factory. It does indeed look like an entire assembly line was moved - only it was one assembled by the Soviets and then moved.
Fascinating story. I think I was under the misapprehension that it was a question of how much the Soviets took - it is really more a question of whose production line they took: apparently their own.
Dante
uhoh7
Veteran
I've been under the impression that the J-3 is the closest of the copies, optically---including post war zeiss---to the original Jena f/1.5
To what degree this was achieved with the skills and machinery found in the ruins of Germany, or reverse-engineering, I've never been totally clear.
It was certainly within the capabilities of the Soviets to reverse-engineer the jena f/1.5 with nothing more than one example, as they did exactly that with the most expensive and advanced technology of ww2, the B-29, in a very short time frame.
The sudden appearance of the Tu-4 at a Soviet airshow in 1947 caused a panic among the capitalists, as now Chicago was in range of Soviet nuclear weapons.
Stalin himself demanded the Tu-4 be an exact copy of the B-29, but it turned out 1% heavier.
Of course this was a huge coup, as we in the US spent way way more on the B-29 than we did on the early nukes.
Now if only Putin would wake up and have the retina iMac copied
Having bought a number of soviet lenses, I don't anymore, because I've had so many bad copies, it's actually cheaper to get the real thing LOL
But a nice clean J-3, with good calibration: well, cost aside, that I would prefer to a zm50/1.5 or the CV
Here's a video of a guy who is using the J-3 for the first time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC-VFAf9P_s
His description of the varied "moods" of the lens is really quite good. You really cannot overstate the transformation between the muted glowy WO performance, and the high contrast punchy images which appear at f/4. He could be describing my pre-war jena exactly.
So often discussions of lens "character" center on WO attributes. To me it's the whole picture that matters. I use f/4 and f/8 much more often than f/1.5, and this lens is equally unique at those apertures.
The 28 cron I love as much at f/11 as f/2, it's a different lens at each.
To what degree this was achieved with the skills and machinery found in the ruins of Germany, or reverse-engineering, I've never been totally clear.
It was certainly within the capabilities of the Soviets to reverse-engineer the jena f/1.5 with nothing more than one example, as they did exactly that with the most expensive and advanced technology of ww2, the B-29, in a very short time frame.
The sudden appearance of the Tu-4 at a Soviet airshow in 1947 caused a panic among the capitalists, as now Chicago was in range of Soviet nuclear weapons.
Stalin himself demanded the Tu-4 be an exact copy of the B-29, but it turned out 1% heavier.
Of course this was a huge coup, as we in the US spent way way more on the B-29 than we did on the early nukes.
Now if only Putin would wake up and have the retina iMac copied
Having bought a number of soviet lenses, I don't anymore, because I've had so many bad copies, it's actually cheaper to get the real thing LOL
But a nice clean J-3, with good calibration: well, cost aside, that I would prefer to a zm50/1.5 or the CV
Here's a video of a guy who is using the J-3 for the first time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC-VFAf9P_s
His description of the varied "moods" of the lens is really quite good. You really cannot overstate the transformation between the muted glowy WO performance, and the high contrast punchy images which appear at f/4. He could be describing my pre-war jena exactly.
So often discussions of lens "character" center on WO attributes. To me it's the whole picture that matters. I use f/4 and f/8 much more often than f/1.5, and this lens is equally unique at those apertures.
The 28 cron I love as much at f/11 as f/2, it's a different lens at each.
Wulfthari
Well-known
I just wanted to disengage from this discussion but seeing that you are so insistant I REPEAT again, pointing out the article on Zeiss Historica by Larry Gubas in 2001 (that I consider a reliable font) and Wolfgang Hahn's interview in the other link:
So the Soviets demanded (and obtained) 8 sets of technical drawings for the Contax camera and a similar amount of drawings for the lenses in object, that were to become in order:
1) Jupiter 12
2) Not produced (probably because at that time the Soviets already had calculated the indigenous Russar series for recon/espionage use)
3) Jupiter 8
4) Not produced (they already had the Orion series 28mm/f6)
5) Jupiter 3
6) Not produced but perhaps the know how
7) Jupiter 9
8) Not produced (see point 4)
9) Jupiter 11
Now, I would like to understand the rationale of reverse engineering something you already the drawings, the Tu-4 was reverse engineered because the Americans never accepted to share their technology of the B-29 with the Soviets so they had to grab one, perform a complete tier down, take all the measurements and produce the drawings by themselves. BTW, with that plane they didn't do a good job because the B-29 was designed using Imperial units so the Soviet engineers were confused when they measured numbers that were multiples or crazy fractions (3/8 etc..) of 25.4 mm, with the results that all the measuremente resulted screwed up and they could get any clean number, so they got confused and they overengineer a little (for instance, if they got 18.3976 they round up to 18.4 or 18.5) with the result that NOTHING in the Tu-4 would fit into the B-29 and vice-versa.
That's a case of reverse engineering, but in this case CSJ PROVIDED the Soviet the DRAWINGS, tooling and even the people to perform the job, so in reality there is no reverse engineering AT ALL. The Soviet also rebuilt the production line at CSJ in order to prove that CZJ COULD produce the Contax like Dresden used to do, so they wanted a dry run before packing up to the Soviet Union, here there is an example of a Contax/Volna drawing (probably made by CSJ because most of the original were destroyed during the Dresden bombing):
And here there's a picture of a German worker making a Kiev in Jena:
And here according to Hahn there is the only Contax tolerance they couldn't keep in the Kiev product:
The rest of the cameras (and lenses) were made according to Zeiss Ikon standards. And NOTHING from the old Contax was brought in Western Germany, the new Zeiss Ikon company at the West had to redesign a completely new camera that was called the Contax IIa.
So the Soviets demanded (and obtained) 8 sets of technical drawings for the Contax camera and a similar amount of drawings for the lenses in object, that were to become in order:
1) Jupiter 12
2) Not produced (probably because at that time the Soviets already had calculated the indigenous Russar series for recon/espionage use)
3) Jupiter 8
4) Not produced (they already had the Orion series 28mm/f6)
5) Jupiter 3
6) Not produced but perhaps the know how
7) Jupiter 9
8) Not produced (see point 4)
9) Jupiter 11
Now, I would like to understand the rationale of reverse engineering something you already the drawings, the Tu-4 was reverse engineered because the Americans never accepted to share their technology of the B-29 with the Soviets so they had to grab one, perform a complete tier down, take all the measurements and produce the drawings by themselves. BTW, with that plane they didn't do a good job because the B-29 was designed using Imperial units so the Soviet engineers were confused when they measured numbers that were multiples or crazy fractions (3/8 etc..) of 25.4 mm, with the results that all the measuremente resulted screwed up and they could get any clean number, so they got confused and they overengineer a little (for instance, if they got 18.3976 they round up to 18.4 or 18.5) with the result that NOTHING in the Tu-4 would fit into the B-29 and vice-versa.
That's a case of reverse engineering, but in this case CSJ PROVIDED the Soviet the DRAWINGS, tooling and even the people to perform the job, so in reality there is no reverse engineering AT ALL. The Soviet also rebuilt the production line at CSJ in order to prove that CZJ COULD produce the Contax like Dresden used to do, so they wanted a dry run before packing up to the Soviet Union, here there is an example of a Contax/Volna drawing (probably made by CSJ because most of the original were destroyed during the Dresden bombing):
And here there's a picture of a German worker making a Kiev in Jena:
And here according to Hahn there is the only Contax tolerance they couldn't keep in the Kiev product:
The rest of the cameras (and lenses) were made according to Zeiss Ikon standards. And NOTHING from the old Contax was brought in Western Germany, the new Zeiss Ikon company at the West had to redesign a completely new camera that was called the Contax IIa.
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hmmm, It says that the Americans took a lot or equipment and the staff and took "them to the USA so that this know-how could be preserved".
Regards, David
PS (EDIT) Confusion over measurements reminds me of the Hubble telescope stories...
Regards, David
PS (EDIT) Confusion over measurements reminds me of the Hubble telescope stories...
02Pilot
Malcontent
Except that the Soviets did not develop a working atomic bomb until 1949.
DominikDUK
Well-known
First o2pilot thank you for that small correction regarding the Morgenthau plan.
The B29 was a great achievement and a very important step towards modern civil-aviation along with the Focke Wulf Condor. The first was build for the military and redesigned as airliner and the second was designed as an airliner and redesigned to be long range reconnaisance aircraft and bomber. Weird
David regarding the measurements the European space program Ariane had a problem with them as well. The French used the metric system and the british the imperial system resulting in some very severe problems early in the program.
The soviets were innovators just like the US and any other major power they also stole and copied designs from other countries just like any other major power.
The B29 was a great achievement and a very important step towards modern civil-aviation along with the Focke Wulf Condor. The first was build for the military and redesigned as airliner and the second was designed as an airliner and redesigned to be long range reconnaisance aircraft and bomber. Weird
David regarding the measurements the European space program Ariane had a problem with them as well. The French used the metric system and the british the imperial system resulting in some very severe problems early in the program.
The soviets were innovators just like the US and any other major power they also stole and copied designs from other countries just like any other major power.
Wulfthari
Well-known
I agree with all your post but unfortunately as it is clear this thread has been steered away from the original question: "are the Jupiters like Sonnars?" to a sort of political debate from some people that make a lot of factual errors (the last one is the appearance of the Tu-4 in 1947 that stirred fear of nuclear attacks while the Soviet bomb wasn't ready) so I think some people should refrain from starting unverified rumours regarding these lenses and cameras, if they don't like Soviet gear fair enough, but reinventing History for political reasons is unfair.
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
Luckily the lesson of history is that people learn nothing from history...
And another thing; one day the occupying power sends a load of military trucks and armed soldiers to a factory and load up a lot of equipment and then drive off with some of the personnel as well.
Strangely, the looters went on to produce the cameras in decent quantities at decent prices and a lot of us are still using them today and a lot of repairers have used parts from them to repair pre-war Contax II's.
And the ones who wanted to preserve it did what? OK, they invented ebay, but otoh...
Regards, David
Luckily the lesson of history is that people learn nothing from history...
And another thing; one day the occupying power sends a load of military trucks and armed soldiers to a factory and load up a lot of equipment and then drive off with some of the personnel as well.
Strangely, the looters went on to produce the cameras in decent quantities at decent prices and a lot of us are still using them today and a lot of repairers have used parts from them to repair pre-war Contax II's.
And the ones who wanted to preserve it did what? OK, they invented ebay, but otoh...
Regards, David
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
You said "David regarding the measurements the European space program Ariane had a problem with them as well. The French used the metric system and the british the imperial system resulting in some very severe problems early in the program."
All I can say is that it was a good job I was involved in a minor way with the Concorde's data transmission link between Bristol and Toulouse. I was a desk bound (that means semi) engineer in the Govt's policy group. And I spent a lot of time dealing with the Defense Dept and could tell tales but won't.
Regards, David
You said "David regarding the measurements the European space program Ariane had a problem with them as well. The French used the metric system and the british the imperial system resulting in some very severe problems early in the program."
All I can say is that it was a good job I was involved in a minor way with the Concorde's data transmission link between Bristol and Toulouse. I was a desk bound (that means semi) engineer in the Govt's policy group. And I spent a lot of time dealing with the Defense Dept and could tell tales but won't.
Regards, David
DominikDUK
Well-known
No doubt the Concorde was a great achievement but was also made before the Ariane and it wasn't even the first Ariane they had problems with but later ones. I believe the reasons for the mistake was a new resurgence of anti-metrism.
All Sonnars are usable lenses as long as they are in good condition, the FED is an interesting camera and a decent example of Soviet engineering.imo Not everything from the east is bad remember Sputnik or the Ekranoplan
All Sonnars are usable lenses as long as they are in good condition, the FED is an interesting camera and a decent example of Soviet engineering.imo Not everything from the east is bad remember Sputnik or the Ekranoplan
Wulfthari
Well-known
That's the point : the Kiev parts can be used to repair pre-war Contax III. They are interchangeble. That's the reason why there are so many fake Contax III and Kievtaxs on the market: if they were reverse engineered you couldn't do it. They are mechanically equivalent.
BTW, in order to return IT I checked out Zeiss's actual website, there's a brochure regarding the new Sonnar (of course 1.5, they don't produce the 2.0, it has been replaced by the more modern Planar) and there is a schematics:
http://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Ph...center/datasheets_zm/csonnar_1-5_50_zm_en.pdf
This is the original 1932 Sonnar 1.5 (equivalent to the Soviet prototype allegedly recalculated by the Soviet...that I don't believe):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/ZeissSonnar-text.svg/220px-ZeissSonnar-text.svg.png[IMG]
As you can see the fourth element (last group) has been recalculated and became convex, while the original was perfectly flat.
Interesting enough, wikipedia at the voice Sonnar reports this scheme:
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Sonnar.png
That has a CONCAVE element, like the Jupiter 3:
I don't know from where the schematic in wikipedia comes from but it appears that there have been three variants of the Sonnar 1.5 through the years, one of it equal to the Jupiter 3.
I couldn't find a schematic of the Sonnar 2.0, but this is a Jupiter 8:
This is the scheme of a pre-war Biogon:
And this a cutaway of the Soviet Jupiter 12:
In certain cases it appears that the Soviet changed the external shape of the rear groups to make them fit in other cameras (for instance Leica L39) but besides that I think it's safe to assume the Jupiters are faithful coated copies of pre-war Zeiss designs.
For those who are interested in History of Soviet wide lenses this article is one of the best in circulation, most of them is in Italia but you can use google translate:
http://www.marcocavina.com/articoli_fotografici/Soviet_and_wide_lenses_on_Leica_M/00_p.htm
apostasiometritis
Established
I was under the impression that the Brits have been using metric (in Engineering) since before WW2.
DominikDUK
Well-known
They were supposed to just like aviation was supposed to go metric (international treaty) but only two countries did the Soviet Union and China. Germany went imperial after WWII because of the American dominance in civil aviation Boeing and Douglas (later MD), Sail planes are metric and the French and Germans are often metric with small GA props