Zeiss Planar and Zeiss Planar

[Pancolart]

It took me a while to get myself a Carl Zeiss Planar 1.7/50mm C/Y T*. There seem to be many similarities (regarding lens body style and material) with Singapore made late version HFT Rollei Planar (Voigtländer COLOR-ULTRON) 1.8/50mm QBM. This might be answered somewhere already but...

[fuzzywuzzy]

There's a discussion here:

http://forum.mflenses.com/voigtlaender-color-ultron-50-1-8-on-ebay-t22816.html

[iangreenhalgh1]

Two different lenses, the Planar 1.7/50 is the descendent of the Contarex Planar 2/50 and is therefore a 'true' Planar.

The 1.8/50 is the descendent of the Voigtlander Ultron and therefore not a 'true' Planar at all.

I had the 1.8/50 and while I thought it was a very sharp lens with excellent CA control, I didn't think it was anything special, I preferred the Topcon RE Auto Topcor 1.8/58, Minolta MD 1.7/50 and Konica Hexanon 1.7/50 so sold it for a nice profit.

[shapencolour]

Zeiss Planar 50/1.7 C/Y and Rollei Planar HFT 50/1.8 are both the same planar 7/6 desing,though not identical.The HFT's first three lenses are more convex.HFT coatings were aimed to emulate T* coatings,but since the HFT were economical,some compromises must have been taken into account.In the real life experience,C/Y is a better lens overall but not by much.

50/1.8 has little less CA between f1.8 and 2,8 and slightly more muted colours.

f1.8/NEX5N




f5.6/NEX5N



whereas the C/Y is contrastier and crisper with more vivid colour rendition overall


f5.6/NEX3



F4/NEX5N

[Yann E.]

[iangreenhalgh1]

Merci Yann for the info, very useful. Thanks for the correction on the Contarex Planar.

Taunusreiter provides good info on all three generations of the Ultron design:

http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Bessa_RF_histo_dt.html

This is the original for Prominent, Bessamatic, Ultramatic, Vitessa etc:



This is the second version, for Icarex:



This is the third version, better known as the Planar 1.8/50 for Rollei:



For comparison, here is the C/Y Planar 1.7/50:

[Yann E.]

Ian,
You're welcome, it's just that I'm a bit of an optical scheme geek...
Still, although you're correct about the Vitessa, the Bessamatix & ultramatic never used the ultron, as its original 6/5 version was not compatible with their register, and the 7/6 ultron was too large for their leaf shutter.
Istead they were fitted with the 2/50 Septon, a 7/5 avatar of the leaf-shutter 2.8/80 Planar and 5.6/135 S-Planar for the Hasselblad 6x6 system :

[iangreenhalgh1]

Of course, yes, silly mistake, cheers for the correction.

[ForenSeil]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I think something wrong with your copy as CA correction is one of the strengths of that lens.

HFT is supposedly T* modified for application on large scale by machine. T* isn't suited to large scale production apparently.

[Yann E.]

Well, I personally doubt it considering that
- Contax Zeiss production figures were actually at least as high if not largely higher than Rollei Zeiss production figures
- all current (read : for the last 25-30 years) zeiss productions including Hasselblad lenses, Zeiss binoculars and all Sony
Zeiss (including compact & bridge cameras) are T* coated

I read somewhere (can't remember the "where") that HFT was co-engineered by Zeiss & Rollei shortly after Rollei acquired Voigtländer from Zeiss, as Rollei wanted a high-end multicoating along with a full-fledged production licence for Zeiss lenses but Zeiss would not issue a licence for T* at the time. It makes sense, but not all things that make sense are true so don't take my word for it...

Forenseil :
I have noticed the same with 3 different copies of the 1.8/50, only wide open and along with some sherical aberration (a known problem on both 7/6 SLR versions of the Ultron, absent from the 6/5 RF version), so it may be a constant with that lens. CA almost disappears at f2.8 though, so it's not a major issue IMO.

As for the differences between the two coatings, I've used quite a lot of Zeiss glass in the past both in HFT & T* and I find HFT to be slightly less resistant to flare. The color rendition is quite different too, with T* producing extremely dense & saturated colors while HFT colors are less saturated, more "transparent" if you see what I mean.
Aside from the flare issue which can be greatly reduced by a good shade, deciding which is better is largely a matter of personnal taste IMO.

[danfromm]

Why do you folks take trade names so seriously? I mean, the original Planar was a symmetrical 6/4 double Gauss type, f/3.3 and slower, depending on focal length. The first lens of that type to succeed commercially was TTH's Series 0 and derivatives, all f/2 or faster asymmetrical 6/4 double Gauss types covered by more patents than I can believe.

Post-WW II f/2.8 5/4 Planars didn't conform at all to Rudolph's original Planar patent. The faster more complex types whose cross-sections are shown above have the trade name, also don't conform to the original patent. Trade name doesn't map cleanly to layout.

This discussion brings to mind an acrimonious one here about what "Biogon" means, also discussions of how many angels, if they exist, can dance on the head of a pin.

[iangreenhalgh1]

This is the info I was trying to remember (emphasis added by me):

[Yann E.]

[Yann E.]

[danfromm]