Overview of all Zeiss Sonnar 5cm f/1.5 aka 50mm f/1.5 versions

Thank you for your impressive work! It helped me a lot.

I just have one question out of curiosity regarding "v5b ZO CR sot": why is the first production lens heavier than all the rest production? As far as I can tell there is no obvious design changes and are all made with brass.
 
@Räuber
I noticed an error with Excel displaying the Zeiss Opton serial numbers: those with a single decimal point get treated as a floating point number. Excel correctly recognizes numbers with two decimal point. 49.000 is displayed as 49, but 1.280.000 is correctly displayed.

The serial number of one of my Sonnars is a 5-digit number, and was not showing up. I fixed it.
 
simonOWO said:
Thank you for your impressive work! It helped me a lot.

I just have one question out of curiosity regarding "v5b ZO CR sot": why is the first production lens heavier than all the rest production? As far as I can tell there is no obvious design changes and are all made with brass.
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@TenEleven explained the answer of this question to me a while back.

Your heaviest "Silvernose" at least i can help explain.

It is most likely identical to a "Silvernose" I had. All the elements (front, middle triplet, rear triplet) were in brass mounts which then slid into the lens tube. The brass mounts could be screwed apart into two pieces to get the lenses out - frankly the manufacturing effort of that must have been absurd and Zeiss probably quickly discontinued it.

.... It's not visible in my photos but the inner lens tube is of course also a discrete part, together with the adjustable focus stand-off ring. The weight of the lens was considerably heavier than its brothers.

It may also have been that the weight combined with the shorter meshing distance of the body helical of the Contax IIa could have caused problems. This was something Nikon also found out the hard way with their f/1.1 lens.
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There were more internal changes of the West-German Sonnar bodies then I picture in the guide. The issue is that it is very challenging to find all those changes and find the line when it was introduced. The aperture mechanism is one of those elements. It is easy to see where it changed from 12 to 11 blades after 1951. But there were more changes to them. They changed the treatment of the blades so you find dark grey or shiny aperture blades in West-German Sonnars.

So I lied. There are still some variations left out in the guide. But it gets more and more difficult to track them down.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
@Räuber
I noticed an error with Excel displaying the Zeiss Opton serial numbers: those with a single decimal point get treated as a floating point number. Excel correctly recognizes numbers with two decimal point. 49.000 is displayed as 49, but 1.280.000 is correctly displayed.

The serial number of one of my Sonnars is a 5-digit number, and was not showing up. I fixed it.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know that Excel can be a pain when it comes to the auto import. When you import it you can tell Excel whats the format of every column. But this is very time consuming. Format those serial numbers as text. That is an easy fix of the dot issue.

Another issue I knew from the start is that all numbers and dates are in German notation. English users are used to dots for floating numbers and another order of day, month and year in dates. The German notation uses comma for floating numbers (as you can see on the Sonnar scales and engravings) and dates like dd.mm.YY (Day.Month.Year). And, yes, German uses a point for thousand marks instead of comma like English writers.

Excel confuses this even more. And I might not think about what people from Asia or other places might experience difficulties using the spread sheet... 🙈

Good luck everyone. 😅👍
 
Thanks for the info. It is certainly a nicely made adapter. The numbers and ridges do differ from the Sonnar and the black triangle is a fraction smaller, but has the same round corners. There are no markings in the adapter.

I bought it because it was defective, it was stuck on the 1 meter (old grease probably). I already got him loose.
It is a fairly light adapter, but the system how it works is very refined and beautifully made.

Have also added some extra photo's, the left lens is a CZJ Sonnar 2/5 cm (fake) and the right one is a Zeiss Opton Sonnar 2/50 mm.
 

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Reading this has done absolutely nothing for my gear acquisition syndrome 🤣 I currently have a chrome f11 sonnar 1.5, a 1956 KMZ J3 in Contax mount with a completely different coating to my 1956 LTM mount lens. I also have a 1960 ZOMZ lens and a 1986 Black Valdai.. all of which make great images.

I absolutely yearn for an early 3K lens, he’ll I’d even take a “Zorki” branded one.

Since finding vintage lenses I’ve very much found my vibe with a sonnar. Even a 1957 Jupiter 8 I have produces such lovely images.
 
I've seen one other J-3 with a Green Coating like that. I'm speculating that it might have been optimized for Infrared film.
There are two versions of the KMZ J-3, with production of the first version lens running from 1950~early 1956, and the v2 running from 1954 to 1956. The v1 uses German glass, the shape of the rear triplet and fixture changed.
 
Sonnar Brian said:
I've seen one other J-3 with a Green Coating like that. I'm speculating that it might have been optimized for Infrared film.
There are two versions of the KMZ J-3, with production of the first version lens running from 1950~early 1956, and the v2 running from 1954 to 1956. The v1 uses German glass, the shape of the rear triplet and fixture changed.
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Thanks, that’s a really interesting angle. Although, one maybe I should have considered as I have an exceptionally blue Jupiter 8M “T” which we believe is topographical and maybe coated to remove atmospheric haze.

I love all of my Jupiter 3’s but i would still really love an early ZK… the nearest I have is a ZK ZORKI J8 that came with my early kiev body. Its collapsible and really cool but not very useable I need to clean the front element but short of damaging the paint on the ID ring im unsure it can be done.
 
A small update to the guide of Sonnar 5cm f/1,5. I updated the images of the post-war variation v4b ZJ CR as since I found one. More comparison pictures can be found in this topic.

Soviet aluminum wartime Sonnar 5cm f1,5?

I'm still on a hunt for a special wartime Sonnar 5cm f/1,5. It is an aluminum T-coated lens with silver filter rim and broad grip ring for Contax. You can find it as [v4b ZJ CR as] in my guide. I had one in my hands years ago but let it go. There is another variation that only differ by the...
rangefinderforum.com rangefinderforum.com

Another update I was working on all the last days is the addition of a camera column in the spreadsheets with all the serials. I had the idea that it might be a good and interesting information to add the serial of the camera the lens was attached when spotted. Since Contax cameras should be better documented than the lenses it might be a good tool to estimate the production date.

You can find this information for the Sonnar 5cm f/1,5.


And the Sonnar 5cm f/2.


Unfortunately it is pretty late to track such an information. A lot of records are empty at this moment. I did my best to fetch most of the serials out there from Ebay. Unfortunately Ebay only stores auctions for up to 3 month. And even worse, Leica Auctions, Westlicht and LPphoto have changed their website. All old / previous auctions seem to be gone. What a terrible case of web rot. 🥲

By the way if someone has a good source to distinguish different variations of the Contax II, III, IIa, IIIa then let me know. I might walk through the serials of those cameras and try to find the variation as well.
 
This particular adapter is 1:1 and does not use an indexed Cam. SO- when I use it with a Zeiss lens on a Leica camera: I need to custom shim the lens for best focus. It should work on the Russian camera with regard to focus, assuming the lens is correctly shimmed.

When is adapter is used on a Leica: it is perfect for Nikon inner mount lenses such as the 5cm F2 and 5cm F1.4 in S-Mount.
 
Hello

I recently bought a bagload of old soviet cameras and lenses and from one bakelite case came ou this: supposedly a wartime sonnar 50mm 1.5. It seems that the helicoid part was made separately, perhaps it was made in a private workshop. It has a LTM mount and It takes quite sharp photos.
What might the “0.0033” mean on the focusing ring?
IMG_7389.jpegIMG_6941.jpeg
 
Thank you for the interesting example. The bottom part has the Soviet engravings of Jupiter lenses. The name ring is typical Zeiss Jena. So I think the lens block is from Zeiss Jena but the Leica thread mount was (probably) build in Krasnogosrk. The aperture scale and distance scale puzzles me a little bit. Please can I have a better photo of this lens from the site so I can see those scales better? I think it looks pretty close to Jena engravings but it should be KMZ engravings...
 
MM24 said:
Hello

I recently bought a bagload of old soviet cameras and lenses and from one bakelite case came ou this: supposedly a wartime sonnar 50mm 1.5. It seems that the helicoid part was made separately, perhaps it was made in a private workshop. It has a LTM mount and It takes quite sharp photos.
What might the “0.0033” mean on the focusing ring?
View attachment 4852774View attachment 4852773
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The Optics and Barrel are certainly wartime, started out in Contax Mount- as did my lens from the same batch.
I converted my lens to Leica Mount this week, using a Jupiter-3 Mount. Easy Job.

Someone went through a lot of work to do yours. I have seen Knurling like this before, on some other custom converted lenses. A lot of work, and it still works- You have an uncommon lens.
Sonnar_Front.JPGSonnar_Side.JPG
 
Sonnar Brian said:
The Optics and Barrel are certainly wartime, started out in Contax Mount- as did my lens from the same batch.
I converted my lens to Leica Mount this week, using a Jupiter-3 Mount. Easy Job.

Someone went through a lot of work to do yours. I have seen Knurling like this before, on some other custom converted lenses. A lot of work, and it still works- You have an uncommon lens.
View attachment 4852802View attachment 4852803
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You know the old adage, "Never trust a programmer with a screwdriver." This is almost always true. You are one of the rare exceptions. There's some terrible mojo going on in that workshop. ;o)
 
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