Skopar vs. Heliar vs. Lanthar vs. Nokton vs. Ultron nomenclature

[bml]

Can anyone tell me about the signifiance of the nomenclature of CV lenses? What is the reason for the Nokton, Skopar, Lanthar, Heliar, and Ultron names?

 

[BrianPhotog]

Can anyone tell me about the signifiance of the nomenclature of CV lenses? What is the reason for the Nokton, Skopar, Lanthar, Heliar, and Ultron names?

Price point and some design characteristics.

Skopars are the smallest and slowest of a series. They are small enough to stick in a pant pocket. They are also typically a little "harsh" (contrasty) when rendering images.

Ultrons are larger then Skopars but are faster and render tones more smoothly, too. They are also priced higher.

Noktons are the fastest and most expensive of a series.

A good example is the 35 Skopar, 35 Ultron, and 35 Nokton.

Heliar and Lanthar lenses are (I believe) named soley by design and not price point as they are not part of a series.

 

[Terao]

Lanthar is an indication of a long lens using Lanthamum (exotic glass material now banned used to improve the quality of longer lenses). The current Lanthar contains none so its just a brand name.
Heliar and Skopar have been used by other manufacturers so I think its a description of the optical design of a lens (skopars are four element, heliars 5).
Nokton (and Noct and Noctilux) I've always taken to mean that its designed for extremely low light - noct=night...

 

[Sonnar2]

Cosina is licensed by Ringphoto Germany to use the old German design names like Heliar, Skopar, Nokton as well as the name Voigtlaender and there are free to use it.
The Skopar, Ultron and Nokton is used in a sence that Brian already pointed out. The Heliar is used in different ways. The 15mm and 75mm Color-Heliar don't have anything in common than the name, especially design-wise. However, there are the 3.5 and 2/50 Classic Heliar which originated from the last Voigtlaender Braunschweig Color-Heliar design (5 elements in 3 groups).

cheers Frank

 

[Bill58]

I suspect that the continued use of the names is also the result of some Madison Ave. advertising hype (how do you say that in Japanese?).

 

[Adam-T]

I don`t know why they called the 90mm "lanthar" as there isn`t any Lantanum in there, very strange (there IS Lanthanum in the Russian Industar 61 50mm F2.8 L/D however), they may as well have called it the "Flouron" as there isn`t any Flourite in there either ;-) - The CV90 is an incredibly sharp lens at all apertures however and is the only APO lens in the range (the 75 oddly is not an APO design), maybe they should have called it the 90mm F3.5 Achromat or something?

 

[Terao]

I've always thought that Heliar came from Helios - greek for Sun. Same as all the -lux lenses refer to that particular measure of light, or more generally just means light. Therefore Noctilux means "night light"

 

[Adam-T]

the name "Helios" always brings back thoughts of Russian M42 lenses for the Zenit range and of variable quality ;-) , I didn`t know it was greek for "Sun" - interesting! ..

I have a 50mm Nokton coming tomorrow (Sold a Compact Digicam and a couple of other bits) so I`ll have a run of CVs from 28 to 90mm, they really ARE excellent value 🙂

 

[pvdhaar]

the name "Helios" always brings back thoughts of Russian M42 lenses for the Zenit range and of variable quality ;-) , I didn`t know it was greek for "Sun" - interesting! ..

A long time ago, I had a Helios-44-2 (58mm/f2) on the Zenit SLR. But it wasn't low quality. In fact, it was outstanding. Build was nice, and optics were great. It's entirely possible that its manufacture coincided with a visit from Leonid Brezjnev to the factory, but the design was decent enough to make me believe it wasn't a one off.

 

[Adam-T]

I`ve seen good Helios lenses, mainly the older ones but the one which came with my Zenit TTL was pretty awful, it was the last version of the 58mm F2 and was only of any use at all at F4 and smaller.. saying that though, the earlier silver Jupiter 8s (also made by KMZ) were sharper wide open than the later black 1970s ones (or from my experience anyway) .

 

[Sonnar2]

Hi Adam,
APO-chromatic means the chromatic aberration at three main color wavelengths is zero. This does not mean the chromatic aberration curve in the whole area of visible light is flat achromatic means full chromatic correction for just two colors. The 3.5/90 is a truly (but just barely) Apo-lens. If there is no Lanthanum glass present, then the only reason why to call it ApoLanthar was the famous name. But in the old (German) Voigtlaender name convention there were Apo-Skopars as well (LF lenses). But these were of lesser speed (f/8 instead of f/4.5 for the Apo-Lanthar)

cheers Frank

[corrected]

 

[rxmd]

Hi Frank,

APO- means apochromatic correction for 3 of 4 main colors

what's the fourth main colour?

🙂rolleyes: Infrared? 🙄)

Philipp

 

[Huck Finn]

Heliar and Skopar have been used by other manufacturers so I think its a description of the optical design of a lens (skopars are four element, heliars 5).

I think that you are correct historically, but this is not how Cosina uses the names for its modern lenses.

Cosina's Voigtlander Skopars are mostly 7 elements (28, 35, & 50) except for the 21, which has 8 elements. In addition, the designs of all 4 of these lenses are different.

Their two classic Heliars are 5 element designs, but the 75/2.5 "Color-Heliar has 6 elements & is a completely different design from that of the 2 50 classics.

See the Cosina website at www.cosina.co.jp/seihin/voigt/v-lens/v-l-m/index.html