Poor old Zeiss Tessar 40/4.5 Exakta

[luisalegria]

This lens was in a batch of old Exakta lenses I picked up a couple of months ago.



At the time this was made (early 1950's) this was about the limit of non-retrofocus wide-angles for 35mm SLR's.

This was in the worst condition of all of the lenses in that batch, and I still haven't got it into decent shape. There is still dirt in the lens, fungus, and it doesn't focus to infinity as I haven't figured out how to reassemble the focusing mount properly. And of course it still has those huge dents.

I ran a roll of film through it on the Exakta VX. It does a fair job, but even on the camera-store scan it is soft and it flares quite a lot.