You just have to see this

[Little Prince]

Drool alert!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7542849313&fromMakeTrack=true

No connection, blah blah...

I know I'm bringing untold suffering upon some (Mr. P) who probably aren't in a position to grab this right now.

 

[back alley]

if i had the cash i might be tempted, just because...as this would be more for the 'collection' than for use.
from what i have read the 1.5 is a weak performer.

but then again, i read the 1.8 was not as good as the 2 and so far i like it.

joe

and thanks for the heads up

 

[Little Prince]

Oh. I didn't know anything about the performance of the lens. So far I've not been a 'Canon man'. But that will be addressed sometime in the future. No time soon I hope 😀.

 

[Doug]

Wasn't this lens supposed to be a reasonably faithful copy of the Zeiss Contax Sonnar?

 

[photodog]

I don't recall a 35mm Sonnar lens. Did you guys and gals see that Canon rear cap "A" bid over $50? I'm digging in my drawers to see if I have one somewhere.

 

[VinceC]

>>Wasn't this lens supposed to be a reasonably faithful copy of the Zeiss Contax Sonnar?<<

The 35mm f/1.5 is Canon's own design, from about 1958.
There's a somewhat stubborn Zeiss and Leica collector who has posted a number of online articles over the years insisting that the early Japanese cameras and lenses were exact copies of Zeiss Contax cameras and lenses. In particular, the Nikon 5cm f/1.5 was supposed to be an identical copy of the Zeiss 5cm 1.5 Sonnar. Anyone who has handled early Nikons and Canons (he apparently hasn't) can see that they're anything but exact copies. Anyway, because of the staying power of cyberspace, the Sonnar ripoff rumor persists.

The Zeiss 35mm lens was an F/2.8 Biogon. The Jupiter 12 is made from the same tooling after the factory was shipped to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.

 

[Doug]

Oops, I saw the pic of the lens in the auction, saw "1:1.5" and didn't note the focal length. Assumed it was the 50mm f/1.5. 🙁

 

[Mark W]

It is a fact the Japanese did have access to the German designs and Patents with Alied permission to infringe on the German patents. Many of their post WWII designs are BASED on the German lenses. That said in the second generation the Japanese were doing ther own work.

I have seen papers a testing to this information exchange as a way to help the Japanese Optical industry get up and running ASAP so that US and Alied occupational troops could buy Japanese products and hel their enonomy rebuild.

 

[VinceC]

>>It is a fact the Japanese did have access to the German designs and Patents with Alied permission to infringe on the German patents.<<

I don't doubt it. Both Japan and Germany agreed to "unconditional surrender" and did not regain full sovereignty until the mid-1950s, so neither country had much standing as far as international patents were concerned. Also, Germany and Japan were wartime allies, which implies a certain amount of awareness of each other's technology, if not outright sharing.

Interestingly, Peter Dechert's book on Canon rangefinders, published in 1985, shows that Canon started building small batches of consumer cameras in the mid-1930s, with Nikon (actually Nippon Kogaku) lenses of varying designs. The advertisements included a 5cm f/1.5 lens before World War II even began, though Dechert's book doesn't show a photograph of one (it might have been what we today would call "vaporware.") Dechert also goes into some detail on design changes made by the Japanese companies in the 1930s to avoid infringing on German patents.

The decision by Japanese companies to market consumer cameras to U.S. military personnel was a pretty savvy business move. The Americans had spending money, and photography was a major mainstream hobby.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The Japanese Canon, Nikon, and others certainly were based on the optical formulas of the German lenses. But they could not have been "exact copies" of the Zeiss lens as the focal length was different, 51.6mm vs 52.3mm. I think its a safe bet to state that they used glass with slightly different characteristics. Our Optical Engineer uses the term "prescription" to describe a lens in terms of all of the surfaces, thicknesses, types of glass, etc to design a lens and have it fabricated. Speaking for myself, I would say the Canon and Nikon lenses were a "Sonnar formula" but not the same "prescription".

 

[VinceC]

I read an interesting Masters thesis not long ago that discussed Japan's transition from a wartime to a postwar economy. As Japan was a martime power and the Japanese optical companies supplied weapons optics for the imperial navy, they did a considerable amount of development work on lens coatings in a salt-water environment. These coatings were then used in the postwar consumer cameras. In some of the earliest literature, Japanese companies were saying their lens coatings were a main contributer to the quality of their products.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

My latest Nikon RF is an M Synced with a first batch 5cm F1.4 on it. The lens is from the 5/1950 build. The coating does not show the wear that Summarits do, despite them being a few years newer.

 

[djon]

I used to work for a man who'd been one of General MacArthur's photographers in the Pacific and became a friend of Sekei Mamiya while imprisoned in Burma...in San Francisco (Adolph Gasser's) he knew about or had been involved in decisions about which current importer would get solo rights to import/distribute Nikons into the US (Gasser goofed and let Joe Ehrenreich/EPOI have Nikon 🙂.

Anyway, this man said that postwar it was said that Japanese optics had two advantages over German and American, one cosmetic and the other important (didn't mention coatings, but now, in 2005, we see that Japanese were tougher).

1) Japanese glass had fewer or no bubbles, German had bubbles. This is easily observable. Salesmen argued that bubbles meant good glass or that they meant inferior glass, depending on employer.

2) Japanese relied more on precise rotary calculators than did Germans, as a result they could play more with more formulae more quickly. This specifically refers to Nikkor.

Early fast Nikkors were obviously better than pre-Summicron Leitz, which confirms the Japanese had the edge.

 

[VinceC]

>>postwar it was said that Japanese optics had two advantages over German and American<<

For those who are interested (and yes, we've really digressed from the original thread about that cool Canon lens) here's a link to the graduate paper I mentioned which discusses Japanese optical companies capabilities before and during World War II.

Here

On bubbles in glass, I've long loved my Soviet copy of the Biogon 35/f2.8 for my Kiev and Nikons, but the lens does have a noticeable bubble in it. And back when I was doing a lot of Kodachromes, I discovered that the bubble showed up in skies as a faint but noticeable dark spot. These days you could PhotoShop that spot away, but I wasn't able to when projecting Kodachromes to my family and friends (a not uncommon practice in the 1950s). When I got a Nikkor wide angle, it didn't have any bubbles.

On calculations ... I lived in Germany for a decade, mainly through the 1990s. Without any real research, I've long suspected there might've been a cultural thing at work, inasmuch as the German ideal was for women to focus on the family -- "Kinder, Kirche, Kuche" (children, church, cooking). In the pre-computer age, it was not uncommon for legions of young women to be employed in the United States and elsewhere as human calculators to work on tedious, lengthy mathmatical problems like wartime code-breaking or postwar lens design. My impression is that Japan was more open thanm Germany to having young women in the workforce doing clerical occupations. I've always had this mental image, which may or may not be accurate, of a roomful of young Japanese women toiling away on lens equations while their counterparts in Germany were involved in the no-less-noble work of physically and psychologically rebuilding from the ground up their homes, communtiies, families, lives.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

> Early fast Nikkors were obviously better than pre-Summicron Leitz, which confirms the Japanese had the edge.

The Nikkors are better wide-open than the Summarit. The Summarit seems to preserve more details, being lower contrast than the Nikkor. The Nikkors are higher contrast, the Summarit is more subtle. In my opinion, the 5cm f1.4 Nikkor, Canon 50mm F1.5, and Zeiss-Opton 5cm F1.5 Sonnar are fairly equal. The Sonnar has smoother "out-of-focus" regions than the Nikkor. The Sonnar is an amazing lens, especially considering its 1930s roots. I love my Nikkors, but swapped out the shims on an S2 and calibrated its RF to work with the Zeiss 52.3mm focal length. Nikon had meticulous quality control, but that Sonnar is first rate!

I think the German companies used High School and University math teachers employed during Summer break; at least I've read that in some old books somewhere.

And speaking of amazing lenses, a 35mm F1.5!!! DROOL! Nikon only matched the 3.5cm F1.8. I would drool over one of those too. In S-Mount or LTM.

 

[VinceC]

Interesting. The lens still hasn't had any bidders ($399 is probably a little high for a starting bid).

 

[ScottS]

If it started at $299 I'd be tempted to bid. I expect this one will close with at least one bid, though.

Scott