What's new
Medium Format Forum

Register a free account now!

If you are registered, you get access to the members only section, can participate in the buy & sell second hand forum and last but not least you can reserve your preferred username before someone else takes it.

1600F + Tessar 80mm lens - first impressions

Paul,

The latest Kodak Series 7 lenshood is identical to the one on my 80mm Tessar. Nothing different about it at all. The lenshood mounts onto my 135mm & my 250mm SOnnar.

When I receive the 135mm Sonnar (the parts one) I will take some photos and post it here. The front element has a chip at the outer edge and some slight coating problem behind the first element, that will hopefully clean up once I find a spare front element. Otherwise the overall condition of the lens is about 90%. Cost of the lens plus shipping is about $90 dollars.

Is the rear mount of your Kilfitt removable? How many screws are used to attach this rear mount plate to the lens?

Evan
 
Hi Evan,


You have all options with the 135 Sonnar for that price.

It does not look like the rear mounting is removable that is not without disassembling the lens.
I have not got the lens here with me I am in another town right now.
Your plan to adapt the lens so that it will focus at infinity looks ok.
You will need exact dimensions to make it work.
I will take a closer look at my lens in a couple of days after I get home.

Paul
 
Simon,

Thanks for the link.
I was surprised the only Tessar for Hasselblad shown was the 160 CB lens.
Not exactly the most wanted lens. It cannot be compared with the Tessar designs for the 1600F and 1000F cameras.

Paul
 
Thank you Simon for the interesting link .

Here an other example of a wonderful pre war TESSAR .
It was built around 1934 . This lens does not have a T* coating , but was already marked T .
 
Hello Jürgen,
I doubt that your T-coated lens is from 1934. Lens coating was invented by Zeiss in 1935. Coated lenses for civil use did not appear before WWII. The earliest coated lens I have owned was a 2,8/50 mm Zeiss Sonnar from late 1942 with Leica screw mount which was T-coated. Coated Leica lenses appeared even later.

Best Regards
Ulrik
 
Hello Ulrik

Thank you for the hint . The figure "about 1934" was given to me by the seller of the camera , but he was not a 100% shure either .
The lens has no DOF scale and the camera is definately a pre war production .
Do you know of documentation for CZ JENA lenses , where the year of production can be checked ? ? ?

Jürgen
 
This question about when the first T coatings appeared is a very interesting one. I have a couple of Zeiss Ikon cameras with the T single coating which struck me as being a little early for the T coating formula - a Ikonta folder camera which seems to me to be dating back to late 1930s and mid 1940s.

I suspect that the Zeiss Jena nomenclature may be the key to this question like Jurgen suggests.

BUT, can I suggest a more accurate way of dating this - look at the lens serial numbers. The camera body model designation and body code/serial number (if indeed a serial number was given to it - in which case the body code is a better guide.) may not be as good a identifier of the len's / Zeiss T coated lens serial number.

AND keep in mind that if the lens was fitted to camera that was a Zeiss Ikon product, I understand that the "SKUs" (stock keeping units) / models grew into a ludicrously big catalogue - a very bad financial issue in terms of inventory management. Some virtually identical cameras were different SKUs/models simply due to 1 very very minor difference (eg a different type of knob used to control the same function).

So some of these issues may explain why my Ikonta and my very early Ikoflex have a T coated lens.

With regard to Leica's first coated lenses they were the very early 35mm lenses.

But after Oscar Barnak's invention I have 2 35mm folder cameras with Zeiss T lenses. But the cameras' build dates were mid 1940s.

So I will be interested to hear what Jurgen and Ulrik discover about the dating of T lenses.
 
Here is an interesting link , which I actually got from Ulrik . Thank you Ulrik .

http://www.zeiss.de/archive or also mail to wimmer@zeiss.de
My question was: When was the CARL ZEISS JENA TESSAR 3,5/75 with the serial number of 3279384 T (from the WELTA camera shown above) built ? ? ?

After just one and a half day I received the following answer : that lens , 3279384 T was calculated in 1947 and built in 1948 .

After the German Demokratic Republik was founded , the WELTA brand was taken over by RHEINMETALL . The WELTA cameras were then still built with different lenses and shutters and also the release button was redesigned .

So my above shown WELTA camera is about 60 years old and was built by the old WELTA factory . On the bottom the name WELTA is engraved and not RHEINMETALL as for the later models .

So the statement , that the camera is definately a pre war production and that the lens was built around 1934 is wrong . Sorry for the misinformation .
I just did not know better .
Thanks again to Ulrik , to point this out .

Regards Jürgen .
 
According to the HASSELBLAD Compendium of Rick Nordin , page 38 , there are two different types of the ZEISS TESSAR lens 2,8/80 .

The lens barrel design is different and it seems , that the earlier lenses are 10mm longer than the later ones , built around the middle of 1953 .

The correct serialnumbers are not known (yet) but I sent an e-Mail to the CZ JENA archives to get more information here .

Paul , with his great sense for wonderful humor , sent me two images showing the difference . He calls the shorter lens , the pancake TESSAR , and I will refer to that nickname from now on .

Now , who of you has a pancake TESSAR and what is your serial number .

My ZEISS OPTON is not a pancake , it is the long version (38mm from the lens frontring to the camera body) and has the serial ZEISS OPTON Nr.: 588747 .

Here are the two different TESSARS . What TESSAR do you have ? ? ?
 
Hello Jürgen,

Most of the time you understand me perfectly but this time you got me all wrong.
I only mentioned pancakes with bacon in my email to you as a delicious honest meal for a hardworking man.
Those pancakes with old fashioned syrup are so good I am prepared to drive 50 miles to go to a restaurant that serves these things.

The old Tessars shown here I found between the remains of a couple of 1000F cameras.
Never knew one of them is a"pancake".
I hope the other one is not named fruitcake.

Paul
 
I received an answer from the CZ archives .
Unfortunately they can not give the serial numbers for the two different
barrel type "TESSARs" .

Here an image of two functional samples from the CZ archive .

I was rereading page 38 of Rick Nordins compendium and understand the text as follows :

After WW2 , the first TESSARs were called ZEISS-OPTON TESSAR 2,8/80mm .
Later , might be around the middle of 1953 , the barrel design was changed and the lenses were not called ZEISS-OPTON TESSAR any more but CARL ZEISS TESSAR 2,8/80 .
It seems , that there were more than 7000 pancake type TESSARs produced , while the number for the produced OPTON TESSARs will be around 2200 .
I can not proof these figures of course , they are a guess using the table on page 38 .

If the above said is true , the "rare" TESSARs are the OPTON-TESSARs .
I have seen quite a lot of TESSAR images published by auction houses .
All seen serial numbers were later than the middle of 1953 and all were pancake type TESSARs .

If anybody has better knowledge of figures , please post them here .

Jürgen
 
Hello Jürgen,



To me the Opton lenses are rarer as are the "pancake" versions.

I have a pancake Zeiss Tessar, two Zeiss Tessars and a Zeiss Opton Tessar.
The pancake Opton version is to me the rarest of all. I have never seen one.

Contrary to what Zeiss reports I am under the impression that the pancake lenses were produced in much smaller numbers than the normal Tessars.
I had tot go all the way to Australia to find one! ( Sorry Simon, you missed it)

I admit this is a confusion topic and the information from CZ does not help much either.

Paul
 
Paul

The production year , which is possibly mixing up everything , is the year 1953 , where the name OPTON was given up and the pancake design came in .
So I think , it might even be possible , that we have ZEISS-OPTON and ZEISS-TESSAR lenses in the long version as well as pancake type ZEISS-OPTON and ZEISS-TESSAR lenses .
 
Jürgen,

I agree with you on that point.

What still puzzles me is the fact that CZ states there should be more pancakes than normal Tessar lenses.
To my knowledge the pancake version is much rarer than the normal one.


BTW the Opton name was used again later with lenses where the model name Tessar, Planar and Distagon was left out completely.
That was part of the longlasting court case between the two Zeiss companies at Jena and Oberkochen.
 
Well this has become a very interesting issue and one that Jurgen and I have discussed quite a bit lately. :) :) :)

The lens I have here in OZ is a "Carl Zeiss Tessar 80mm 1:2,8 f=80mm". I am quite sure it is a pancake design. I make that finding from observations only - nothing scientific or documentary - both the photo Jurgen has posted and other images of 1600F cameras with "standard" 80mm Zeiss lenses fitted as well as my experience with 35mm format pancakes.

Mainly, I am familiar with the physical appearance of pancake design in 35mm format in both Leica thread mount and M mount as well as SLR. Recently Voigtlander (Cosina) has been adding pancake lens versions to its catalogue and it is quite easy to identify pancake design over normal designs.

Actually if my memory serves me well I think Pentax and possibly another Japanese SLR lens maker have recently released pancake designs. Typically pancake designs are limited to both 35mm and 50mm focal lengths in 35mm format.

When discussing the apparent / possible large number of pancake Zeiss lenses built for the 1600F and 1000F, I wondered why Zeiss would bother - especially in lenses for MF 6x6. Jurgen made a very interesting comment. He suggested maybe with resources like steel and aluminium were in short supply after WW2, so designs using less materials may have been necessary. And I totally agree with his general view that we should not assume too much - to find some documented information would tell an interesting story. What a shame that Zeiss' records are not so well documented as to give a definitive answer.

Wow!! regardless of whether or not the lens I have is a pancake design, it is certainly a top quality lens and its attributes are wonderful. Oh, and by the way, have I said before that the Tessar takes BEAUTIFUL photos!!?? :) I am indeed priviledged to have this lens regardless of its designation. :) Thanks to Jurgen!! :)

Does anyone here know how the lens elements arrangement differs - does the pancake have fewer elements and fewer groups? How does the arrangement differ between the 2 Tessars? If the term Tessar strictly sticks to an optical design, how is that affected when it becomes a pancake???

I think I need to research Cosina's pancakes to see if they reveal answers to the optical design questions.

BUT, DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW THE PANCAKE DESIGN PERFORMED OPTICALLY COMPARED TO THE NON-PANCAKE DESIGN??
 
The Tessar design consists of four lenses, hence Tessar from the Greek "Tessares" which means four.

Two lenses are cemented and form the inner part with the remaining two at the front and the rear of the lens.

The design is over a hundred years old.
 
Moin,
the pancake-Tessar is often found. My personal statistics:

 [FONT=&quot]2x Carl Zeiss Opton T Tessar (long barrel version)

[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]3x Carl Zeiss Tessar 2,8/80 (short barrel version)

(2x Kodak Ektar 2,8/80[/FONT])

The changeover happened in the 83xxxx serial number range.

Ulrik
 
Thank you very much , Ulrik for your "pancake" comment .
That matches rather exact what I thought it would be .
Unfortunately CZ archive could not give exact serial numbers .

So , according to the little table in RICK NORDINs compendium , we could assume that there were about 7500 "short barrel" TESSARs produced and only about 2400 "long barrel" (OPTON) TESSARs .

Have you ever heard of a 3,5/75mm TESSAR for the 1600F/1000F cameras .
I got this info from CZ archives . They do have at least a prototype .

BTW , it is against the FUC rules to eat more than two pancakes . So you seriously should think about , how you can avoid this .:z04_whip2_1:I love pancakes too .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top