Carl Zeiss HFT Planar 50mm 1.4 vs Planar ZE/ZF

[GrahamR]

Hi i have a question,how similar is the Older 50mm 1.4 zeiss planar HFT/T*,to the modern Planar 50mm 1.4 ZE/ZF?
Thanks.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Same design, just updated to use modern glass types as the glasses used in the 70s are now banned, largely due to environmental regulations as they contained things like lead that are toxic to the environment. Coatings may have been updated too.

[GrahamR]

[iangreenhalgh1]

No, the Nokton is completely different. The Planar 1.4/50, if it can be said to descend from anything would be a descendant of the 1.4/55 Planar for Contarex.

[GrahamR]

Ahhhh i see thank you.

[papasito]

[iangreenhalgh1]

My understanding is that the Japanese 1.4/55s as made by several makers such as Tomioka and Mamiya use the Zeiss Planar 1.4/55 design - once the patent ran out, they were free to copy it.

[y]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Marco Cavina produced the definitive work on the Planar evolution:

http://www.marcocavina.com/articoli_fotografici/Zeiss_Planar_50mm_story/00_pag.htm



According to Marco, the Planar 1.4/50 for Rollei and C/Y are the same and the modern Z series 12.4/50 is also the same, just with minimal modifications.

[GrahamR]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Not inflated at all, the 1.4/50 was a very expensive optic to produce and was always expensive to buy.

[GrahamR]

[calvin83]

The Rollei is slightly wider than the Contax version from the various data i collected. They do perform more or less the same expect the color.

[itsfozzy]

There are two versions of the Mamiya 55mm f/1.4, the normal one was made by *Tomioka and the SX was made by Mamiya. The SX was the better lens and I've also read (probably on MFlenses) that it was based on the defunct Planar Contarex lens.

*Whenever I say Tomioka, I'm referring to a group of very closely related optical companies that shared parts and optics such as Cosina and Ricoh etc.

[GrahamR]

Ok found this while reading up on something else.

In 1972, while Zeiss was flirting around in the attempt to find a partner to get back into the camera industry, their only solid partnership was the one with Rollei. All of Zeiss production capacity for the 35mm format was thus dedicated to the SL-35. In that time a few Contarex lenses were still being released, but they should be considered as lenses for Rollei incidentally produced in very small batches in Contarex mount (mostly for pride’s sake). The extensive commitment to the design of the Planar 1.8/50 for Rollei is an indication that already in the late 60’s Zeiss managers saw the Contarex system as a “dead man walking”. A Contarex-mount Distagon 15mm f/3.5 was presented at Photokina 1972, but just for show: it was an incomplete and rushed assembling lacking aperture control and a floating system for close-focus. One year later, although Contarex cameras were still technically in production, the same lens was marketed with a new, refined construction in Rollei-mount only. Of the famous F-Distagon 16mm f/2.8 only 150 units were made in Contarex mount, whereas the Rollei version was manufactured in regular batches. Other premium lenses were directly first-presented in Rollei mount (and in some cases never released in Contarex mount), including the Distagon 4/18 HFT (1972), the Distagon 2.8/35 (1973, later purported to the Contax system), the Sonnar 2.8/85 (1970), the Tele-Tessar 4/135 and 4/200 (1970). Even the Contarex Planar 85mm f/1.4, considered the crown jewel of the Contarex system, is the object of a mass delusion: it was introduced in 1973 for the Rollei SL-35 and only in 1974 for the Contarex – as many brochures of the time testify.
In those years Rollei requested a new, faster 50mm to be offered as a premium alternative to the f/1.8 model. Again, Zeiss didn’t recycle the old (and somewhat unimpressive) Contarex Planar 1.4/55 nor the 1963 1.4/50 prototype. A new lens was designed from scratch by Karl-Heinz Behrens and Erhard Glatzel in 1972. This new 50mm f/1.4 was later purported to the Contax system (both the standard and the autofocus N-mount) and, with minor modifications, to modern DSLR: it is substantially the same Planar 1.4/50 currently marketed as ZE (Canon), ZF (Nikon) and ZK (Pentax).

Full article here http://vintage-camera-lenses.com/carl-zeiss-planar-history-part-2/

[itsfozzy]

[iangreenhalgh1]

That's the same article by Marco Cavina that I already linked to on Marco's site. There isn't anything else written on the Planars of note that i am aware of.