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Carl Zeiss Jena MC 28mm f/2.8 - fake or not?
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:16 pm    Post subject: Carl Zeiss Jena MC 28mm f/2.8 - fake or not? Reply with quote
Hi,

This lens came up in a conversation on flickr: it appears to be a Carl Zeiss Jena MC 28mm f/2.8 lens, but I've never heard of it before nor does it seem to appear any catalogues. I'm inclined to think it's a fake, what do you guys say?





PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
The letter font does not look like CZJ, and neither does the serial number.
However in it's final days Carl Zeiss Jena has licensed it's name to a Japanese company, to produce lenses in Japan with the Zeiss Jena name on them. It is possible therefore that the lens is not a fake, but a Japanese pseudo-jena.


PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:

However in it's final days Carl Zeiss Jena has licensed it's name to a Japanese company, to produce lenses in Japan with the Zeiss Jena name on them. It is possible therefore that the lens is not a fake, but a Japanese pseudo-jena.


Ah, I'd forgotten entirely about those. I believe you are right, I found a picture of another Japanese “Jena” lens and it, too, had a serial number beginning with MD.


PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Is there any possibility that it could be an M42 version of the pb mount prakticar lens?


PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
The letter font does not look like CZJ, and neither does the serial number.
However in it's final days Carl Zeiss Jena has licensed it's name to a Japanese company,


Did that branding ever appear on SLRs and lenses? I only know of compacts and accessories. In any case, the early nineties were well in the plastics age, past the time when Japanese bottom feeders were marketing all-metal primes of modest speed and focal length - that lens should be from an earlier period.

Almost twenty years earlier, Pentacon had already re-labelled Japanese made lenses - the makers being Cosina and probably Tamron and others. Initially only to have quality zooms to go with their modernized B series, but in later stages they had quite a few primes that don't match any earlier or parallel Pentacon/Zeiss formula, so they must have bought in primes as well. The ones I have are branded "Pentacon" and/or "Prakticar", but in Germany and the EU the branding agreements with Zeiss Oberkochen did not allow them to use "Zeiss" - they may have used "Zeiss Jena" in other markets.

Sevo

Last edited by Sevo on Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Bears great resemblance to this:

http://www.mflenses.com/carl-zeiss-jena-ii-28mm-f28-macro-japanse-version.html


PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Sevo wrote:
Did that branding ever appear on SLRs and lenses?

The CZJ name was licensed to some Japanese lens manufacturers, and a number of cheap (and reputedly shoddy) zoom lenses appeared under the CZJ marque, with little in common with Carl Zeiss Jena beyond the lettering on the rim.

VEB Pentacon did produce a range of SLRs, which I think were Praktica bayonet fit, under the badge Jenaflex, but these were DDR cameras, not Japanese.
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