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Help needed, strange Zeiss lens
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 5:04 pm    Post subject: Help needed, strange Zeiss lens Reply with quote

Has anybody seen a lens like this ? 60mm, red aperture numbers ?
Strange design of the aperture rings ?

Have never ever seen this design on a Zeiss lens.

Number does not help says it is a Biotar.

Hopefully I will get the cameramount for this lens later, so its not on the photo.


Any idea or Information about this lens ?








PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pretty much a crappy fake lens ...


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like some kind of home-made lens to me. However, it may take good photos if you mount it on a camera.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought too it may be a fake, but I dont think so anymore.
Too nice built. perfect engravings.
So no home-made and certainly not crappy

There have been some prototypes according to lens vademecum, that never went in production.
As well as usage in mass x-ray and as movie cam lens.

So I need an expert here


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Of course they did.

This is exact the back cell of the rare war time lens where no Zeiss is on the engraving.

I have researched a lot about this lens and there are always some hints but no clear answer.


So please, I am looking for an expert here that knows.

Speculations dont help


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

These 60mm Sonnars have been discussed here before.

They aren't fakes, they were made by Jena during ww2.

The barrel isn't made by Zeiss, it's a case of using up whatever was available after the war - the leftover 60mm lens blocks were mounted up by unknown people, probably artisans working in tiny workshops.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
These 60mm Sonnars have been discussed here before.

They aren't fakes, they were made by Jena during ww2.

The barrel isn't made by Zeiss, it's a case of using up whatever was available after the war - the leftover 60mm lens blocks were mounted up by unknown people, probably artisans working in tiny workshops.


This is different than those war time made lenses , they have many different variants , different finish. All what I seen speed 1.5 and very different look too.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
These 60mm Sonnars have been discussed here before.

They aren't fakes, they were made by Jena during ww2.

The barrel isn't made by Zeiss, it's a case of using up whatever was available after the war - the leftover 60mm lens blocks were mounted up by unknown people, probably artisans working in tiny workshops.


I found these lenses too on my research.
They have the same rear lens cell like mine. But they dont have Zeiss on the front ring and the barrel is different. At least the ones I have seen. And like Attila said I have as well only found 1.5. I know in the past war time a lot of confusion and leftovers and non matching numbers in the lists do occur.

This lens has a non clicking aperture and the slim design of the rings makes me wonder if it was for a movie cam. I have found a hint that there must have been some trials at Zeiss Jena. Any information about "Kino Sonnar" available ?

It looks like the barrel should match some design. It is actually quite close to some Steinheil lenses. But still different.

This is a real tricky one. I have been researching quite a lot...


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

1.4 or 1.5, that could just be a matter of labelling.

Of course there are a few different barrel styles seen, as I said, these things were put together in workshops after the war when the Germans were desperate to turn anything they could into hard currency.

Imagine someone got their hands on a box of 20 optical blocks, on the extensive black market, they employ a metal worker to make barrels for them then sell them. You can imagine GIs exchanging cigarettes and nylons for one of these Sonnars.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yes, right , this lens finish is looks later made and not Zeiss quality look or typical Zeiss finish.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
1.4 or 1.5, that could just be a matter of labelling.

Of course there are a few different barrel styles seen, as I said, these things were put together in workshops after the war when the Germans were desperate to turn anything they could into hard currency.

Imagine someone got their hands on a box of 20 optical blocks, on the extensive black market, they employ a metal worker to make barrels for them then sell them. You can imagine GIs exchanging cigarettes and nylons for one of these Sonnars.




Sorry but its not that simple. Thats just guessing. Making 20 barrels isnt fun. We are talking about east Germany here so no Gis.
These little shops didnt dare putting CZY on it. Red T I am not shure as well.
This design looks a lot newer I would guess end 50 or beginning 60.

I am still looking for someone that knows about these trials that vademecum is talking about. Or the ones in the mass x-ray. Havent seen these myself


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, East Germany didn't exist when this lens was assembled, it was still occupation zones and no iron curtain. Germany was in utter chaos for a couple of years post May 1945 so finding records or proof is highly unlikely. The black market was massive, you could buy anything with cigarettes and nylons, even tins of Spam.

This lens comes out of that era of chaos where records weren't being kept so to know anything beyond someone took a war surplus optical block and made it saleable by putting it in an aluminium barrel is almost certainly a wild goose chase.

Here's one factoid to consider - the CZJ factory in Dresden was so badly bombed in 1945 that the blueprints for the Contax RF camera were destroyed despite their being stored in a safe two storeys underground. When you have that level of destruction, then it's highly unlikely to find concrete information on anything. We don't even know how many people died in the Dresden bombing and never will because of the chaos of the time.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is (was) a lot of discussing about such lens(es) in teh ZEISS Historica group and it is still unclear if those were fake or genuine. From what I remember Marc James Small and Charly Barringer mentions them in their book "Zeiss Compendium: East and West, 1940-1971 - Zeiss Ikon in the Postwar World" or was it in Marc James Small "Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses"? maybe the latter...


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@iangreenhalgh1 thanks, but I am German so I do know more than enough about this.

Thanks Klaus, thats helpfull I will try to get hold of these sources.

I wish someone had a similar in his collection. ???


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

lensfan1 wrote:
@iangreenhalgh1 thanks, but I am German so I do know more than enough about this.

Thanks Klaus, thats helpfull I will try to get hold of these sources.

I wish someone had a similar in his collection. ???


I knew about a few of those over many years, but I have no record of them. I will see what I find though.

Read here for instance: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45497

Read here: http://ghiweb.com/exakta/fake_lenses.htm

Read here too: http://ussrphoto.com/forum/pop_printer_friendly.asp?TOPIC_ID=2308

Our member taunusreiter wrote that: http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Zeiss_Fakes.html

Our member exaklaus has one: http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=45804&start=15

This is worth reading! http://www.pigment-print.com/Fotografica/CJZ%20Sonnar%2060%20f1.5%20LTM/target1.html

Hope that helps and it is not just to maximze your possible selling results... Wink


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, great links. Many thanks Klaus. These are really helpfull.

I know there have been quite many fakes from Russia, and they useally made many of them. Trying to get as close as possible.
Verry interesting sites. Have to go in details there.

Still mine amuses me, as the barrel is so strange.
If it is a fake, this guy must have been pretty creative or if it as a demo or prototype I wonder which design it was supposed to match.

I got this whith a lot of other nice, extremly rare stuff all driving me nuts....

I hoped at least this one was to solve.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/Opema.htm

The fact Meopta used 1.5/60 Sonnars left over from wartime production shows there must have been plenty of them produced.This page also mentions their use in x-ray systems.

This page explains the origins of the 1.5/60 Sonnar:

http://ussrphoto.com/forum/pop_printer_friendly.asp?TOPIC_ID=2308

In 1954-55 I bought a Kiev-camera and this lens in a then still private shop for photo-articles in Halle Saale (East-Germany) Kiev-cameras were then assembled illegally by employees of Zeiss-Jena in the Saalfeld-facctory from left-over parts from the years 1947-48 and sold on the black market or to some private shops with Sonnars 2,0 of original production smuggled out. The 1,5 lens I additional bought then was made of left-over wartimes-production of Sonnar 6cm lens blocks, made for bomb-sights originally, f-stops mechanics and blades added later. Black market only, too. It was a quite big, illegal "enterprise", later with real good mechanical parts and engraving, some with coated front lenses. Ended in the mid-fifties with many prison-sentences.

So they were made for bomb sights. That would mean pretty large volume production during the war and as a consequence, lots of them being available postwar.


Last edited by iangreenhalgh1 on Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:59 pm; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would be nice if you could show the lens mount and the lens front ideally with serial#.

Other exotic stuff? You make me interested.... Wink


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 2:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@iangreenhalgh1 many thanks, cool links. Didnt know Meopta was involved too.

By the way who knows something about this novacon site ? Is this a collector? He mentions some rare stuff I might get hold of.


@kds315* I dont have the mount yet. The collector I got the lens from hasnt found it yet. But he hopefully will.
These collectors that have so much, they cant find stuff iritate me..


The number is of a much later Biotar. We checked that it was as well about end 50 beginning 60. Dont have it here right now.
An other collecter told me that they actually did this at CZJ. When a lens droped out of production for some reason, they kept the number an recycled it for some other lens later. Dont know if that was so.

The stuff wont dissapear in my cupboards. I am not collecting too old lenses. But I will keep those yummy S-Planars Wink


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/Opema.htm

This page explains the origins of the 1.5/60 Sonnar:

http://ussrphoto.com/forum/pop_printer_friendly.asp?TOPIC_ID=2308

The 1,5 lens I additional bought then was made of left-over wartimes-production of Sonnar 6cm lens blocks, made for bomb-sights originally, f-stops mechanics and blades added later. Black market only, too. It was a quite big, illegal "enterprise", later with real good mechanical parts and engraving, some with coated front lenses. Ended in the mid-fifties with many prison-sentences.

So they were made for bomb sights. That would mean pretty large volume production during the war and as a consequence, lots of them being available postwar.


I'm more than a little puzzled to understand what purpose a 6cm f1.5 photographic lens might actually have in a bomb sight. To the best of my knowledge, even the mechanically complex American Norden sight employed a relatively simple prism and telescope arrangement as its optical system. The device derived from the Norden by German designers was of much simpler overall construction and - at least in theory - therefore still less likely to need such a component. But, possibly there might have been a German requirement for an associated camera to record bomb-bursts at night. If so, then after 1941 such a need would have been sharply diminished as the nature of the air war changed and the lenses made for it would probably have been unused . . . I think we need an expert on WWII German aviation optical munitions to help us understand better Smile


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The key to the Norden sight was it's analogue computer and autopilot system, not it's optics. The German 'copy' was actually much smaller and simpler - the Lotfernrohr 7 made by Carl Zeiss.



There's a page about it here:

http://www.deutscheluftwaffe.de/instrumente/katalog/revi/Lotfernrohr%207C.htm

'Bomb sight' isn't specific enough to give us much to work on. All German aircraft, fighters and bombers, had to have the ability to dive bomb, so perhaps that is a clue - dive bombing would require very different sights to level bombing from high altitude.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 3:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks Ian, but I already knew (and said) that its optical component was relatively unsophisticated. As for other sorts of bombsight - or indeed any aiming sight - I cannot really imagine where a photographic lens might fit into their design. I'm not actually trying to start a discussion on optical munitions but rather to test the veracity of the suggested source of those lenses in the report you cited earlier.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 5:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lensfan1 wrote:
@iangreenhalgh1 many thanks, cool links. Didnt know Meopta was involved too.

By the way who knows something about this novacon site ? Is this a collector? He mentions some rare stuff I might get hold of.


@kds315* I dont have the mount yet. The collector I got the lens from hasnt found it yet. But he hopefully will.
These collectors that have so much, they cant find stuff iritate me..


The number is of a much later Biotar. We checked that it was as well about end 50 beginning 60. Dont have it here right now.
An other collecter told me that they actually did this at CZJ. When a lens droped out of production for some reason, they kept the number an recycled it for some other lens later. Dont know if that was so.

The stuff wont dissapear in my cupboards. I am not collecting too old lenses. But I will keep those yummy S-Planars Wink


I assume you mean the heavy and large S-Planars which were made for chipmaking years ago? Good as paperweight or even better doorstop, nothing else Twisted Evil


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@kds315* well thats a cutie. Too bad you are no semiconductor maker, you would have saved 20 K $.

No, now I only go for usable lenses. Collecting is a bit weird since ebay took over control of the whole market. This might change again and all collectors might get in big trouble.

Its gotten pretty hard to get a nice lens for a realistic price these days. My new 120 S-planar is pretty cool, but it looks like it wont beat the reference.


PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scsambrook wrote:
Thanks Ian, but I already knew (and said) that its optical component was relatively unsophisticated. As for other sorts of bombsight - or indeed any aiming sight - I cannot really imagine where a photographic lens might fit into their design. I'm not actually trying to start a discussion on optical munitions but rather to test the veracity of the suggested source of those lenses in the report you cited earlier.


I agree, the difficulty we have is in the lack of specific info, he merely said 'bomb sight' and that covers a lot of ground.

I wonder if anyone (Klaus?) has ever tested the IR transmittance of the 1.5/60 Sonnar?

I ask because the Germans developed a number of IR sights and I could see them employing the 1.5/60 in that role, just as the Russians later used a slightly modified Biotar 1.5/75 in some of their Night Vision gear.

There was the ZG 1229 Vampir (Vampire) infrared night-vision device fitted to the StG 44 assault rifle, but Marco Cavina has written about that and it used a Leitz f1.0/90mm objective:

http://www.marcocavina.com/articoli_fotografici/ZG_1229/00_pag.htm