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Are all Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm F3.5 Sonnar lens equal?
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PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 3:04 am    Post subject: Are all Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm F3.5 Sonnar lens equal? Reply with quote

The title says it all.
Are all versions of the Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm F3.5 Sonnar lens of equal quality and do they all give equivalent results?
eg are zebra lenses better - later lenses better etc
Very interested to find out.
Thanks in advance


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 3:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Probably the last ones in PB mount are the best as they have the best coatings. They will have the worst build quality though.

You shouldn't overlook the Russian Sonnars, the J11 and J11A ca be every bit as good as a CZJ Sonnar 135, in fact, my J11 and J11A I felt were both slightly better than my zebra CZJ 3.5/135. The J11 is a copy of the earlier 4/135 Sonnar and I have heard others say the 4/135 is slightly better. There are other, later Russian Sonnars too - Tair 11, J37, and a couple more, they have great reputations too and will have more modern coating, later ones being multicoated.


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, they are slightly different. I love all of them , may oldest silver what I like best.


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 7:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the replies.
Appreciated.


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 8:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tested a load back for fun, and the M42 MC version along with PB version and the Jupiter 11A were best. All are great though!

http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=31562


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 9:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ManualFocus-G wrote:
I tested a load back for fun, and the M42 MC version along with PB version and the Jupiter 11A were best. All are great though!

http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=31562


That was a great test.
Thank you for posting it.
OH


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.mflenses.com/gallery/v/german/zeiss/sonnar/?
You can see here I think all variants of 135mm.


PostPosted: Sat May 04, 2013 12:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Attila wrote:
http://www.mflenses.com/gallery/v/german/zeiss/sonnar/?
You can see here I think all variants of 135mm.


Very impressive.
Thank you for the link.
Very much appreciated.
Cheers
OH


PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2013 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My Zebra version was better than the MC version. Better in terms of sharpness and color rendering.
Zebra version, both for 35 and medium format, suffer from the same disease: blades are getting stuck every once in a while. Sometimes in between too Very Happy
And both are known to be complicated prime lenses in terms of repairing them.


PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2013 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's very easy to repair stuck blades on Zebra 135/3.5. You get from the rear, unscrew rear element and you have access to the blades. Mine had a thick layer of dried oil, worse than Russian lenses. In general zebra lubrication sucks, zebra Sonnar rendering is lovely though


PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2013 11:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

beautiful colors


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 1:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fermy,

I could make a poster from this photo, so beauty it is.
Nice one , congrats,

[]s,

Renato


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks guys! In fact I did make a poster of it, it's on the door of my dining room Wink


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I appreciate all the feedback.
Thank you amigos.
OH


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 6:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For those who can attach Canon FL or FD lenses to their camera bodies, this telephoto lens used essentially the Zeiss Sonnar optical formula and is great and readily available at auction at very reasonable prices:

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/camera/lens/fl/data/100-1200/fl_135_35.html

http://alensaweek.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/week-10-canon-fl-3-5135/


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting, I have FL 135/3.5, I don't find the rendering similar to my zebra Sonnar.


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How do the two differ?


PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2013 8:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Canon is a classical portrtait lens. Some under-corrected SA, smooth rendering. I think Zeiss is sharper a tad. Color signatures are different of course. Canon is much better made mechanically, fully metal.


PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 12:58 pm    Post subject: QBMs Reply with quote

Can anyone compare sonnar MC 3.5 135 M42 and sonnar 2.8 135 (for rollei)? Except second one is faster is there any difference in picture quality of this lenses? It would be also interesting to compare them to tele tessar 4 135 (for rollei)? I recently have to try Voitlander 4 135 (also QBM) it was very nice lens but I have that lens for one day, one of my colleagues ask me to adopt it for digital canon for use.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does anyone know how many versions of Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 are there out there?

I see some with "SONNAR" inscribed fully while some is just a "S" after the red MC inscription on the front. What are the difference? Is the serial number sequence the same for all the different variants?

Which version are you guys having? How's the performance?


PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is some difference among early F4 version, zebra F4 version and F3.5 MC & F3.5 PB version. Compering only F3.5 models I think MC is the best. Followed by
zebra. PB is good, but coating (admittingly more resilient to cleaning liquids) enhances color / contrast in somehow strange way. Some might like it and it was a applauded in film era, but digital sensor is different story.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

evilhomura89 wrote:
Does anyone know how many versions of Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f3.5 are there out there?

I see some with "SONNAR" inscribed fully while some is just a "S" after the red MC inscription on the front. What are the difference? Is the serial number sequence the same for all the different variants?

Which version are you guys having? How's the performance?


In the wild and wooly post-war years when Zeiss Jena and Zeiss Oberkochen were fighting patent/trademark wars in courts worldwide, the various court decisions meant that CZ Jena had to use different identifiers in different countries. For example, your 'Sonnar' marked lens and your 'S' marked lens could be the same lens with a changed nameplate.

To complicate things further the nameplate differences weren't always factory applied. Often importers would have the lenses changed before sale in a particular country. Common examples of this would be a red 'T' converted into a Cross of Lorraine or a box with a cross inside. All the same lens but different nameplates.

These days I suspect that sample variation has a greater impact than original quality when judging between specific lenses.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

newst wrote:


In the wild and wooly post-war years when Zeiss Jena and Zeiss Oberkochen were fighting patent/trademark wars in courts worldwide, the various court decisions meant that CZ Jena had to use different identifiers in different countries. For example, your 'Sonnar' marked lens and your 'S' marked lens could be the same lens with a changed nameplate.

To complicate things further the nameplate differences weren't always factory applied. Often importers would have the lenses changed before sale in a particular country. Common examples of this would be a red 'T' converted into a Cross of Lorraine or a box with a cross inside. All the same lens but different nameplates.

These days I suspect that sample variation has a greater impact than original quality when judging between specific lenses.


Thanks for the clarification.
I've also assumed that anything with the "electric" word on the lens nameplate would have that 3 electric pins behind. However, I've found one of the lens with electric nameplate but without the 3 pins on ebay. Which made me suspect that the particular lens is refurbished using parts from different lenses. I would expect this to have some sort of impact on the image quality.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pancolart wrote:
There is some difference among early F4 version, zebra F4 version and F3.5 MC & F3.5 PB version. Compering only F3.5 models I think MC is the best. Followed by
zebra. PB is good, but coating (admittingly more resilient to cleaning liquids) enhances color / contrast in somehow strange way. Some might like it and it was a applauded in film era, but digital sensor is different story.


I was wondering if you know what is the "correct"/accurate color cast of the good/better coating found on these CZJ 135mm MC lenses. Thank you!


PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 4:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

evilhomura89 wrote:
Pancolart wrote:
There is some difference among early F4 version, zebra F4 version and F3.5 MC & F3.5 PB version. Compering only F3.5 models I think MC is the best. Followed by
zebra. PB is good, but coating (admittingly more resilient to cleaning liquids) enhances color / contrast in somehow strange way. Some might like it and it was a applauded in film era, but digital sensor is different story.


I was wondering if you know what is the "correct"/accurate color cast of the good/better coating found on these CZJ 135mm MC lenses. Thank you!

The accurate colour cast is no colour cast at all.
Though the most common cast is either being a bit warmer or cooler than neutral, this is simple to fix in post, Lightroom has an eyedropper WB tool that can remove any colour cast in one click, your AWB in the camera may correct the cast too.