When is a Carl Zeiss lens NOT a Carl Zeiss lens?

[william_vickers1]

Richard Oleson wrote:

 

"i notice that the OP has not returned to defend any of this load of borscht....."

 

But give him credit for starting what has turned out to be a very interesting thread. ;-)

[dan_fromm2]

Folks, why have you limited your comments to lenses for 35mm cameras?

 

CZJ (DDR) made lenses for larger formats too, also microscope objectives and oculars, and lenses for cine cameras. Most of them were pretty good and not subject to the mechanical problems some of the posters complained about.

[winfried_buechsenschuetz1]

"threwing them into the self pot"... uups,should read "throwing them into the same pot".

[xbow]

Winfried- My camera is older than the "divide" between east and west. My lens is below. Could you briefly tell us the relationship between the Zeiss Companies at the time when it was one Germany (pre-war)?

 

Thanks<div></div>

[patric_dahl_n]

Here's the Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar on the Ercona II. A real Tessar and a VERY good performer.<div></div>

[alan_chin]

it's amazing, how 18 years after the fall of the berlin wall, there can still be so much antagonism against the former eastern bloc, and its products. of course the DDR in its final decade was collapsing, and its falling industrial and consumer standards reflected this. so it's no surprise if a 1986 or 1988 lens from the DDR or the USSR wasn't put together that well, or isn't equal to a far more expensive West German or Japanese equivalent.

 

Taken in context, however, which is that the DDR workers were paid FAR less than their western counterparts, and that their economy did not reflect any capitalist sense of market competition, its fair to assess that the cameras and lenses that they did make were and are bargains. Not bargains for the DDR buyers who were still paying a big percentage of their income for possibly flawed items, but for western photographers. You might get a lemon, but even after adding $50 or $100 to get it adjusted properly you would still be saving a LOT of money compared to buying new Leica or West German Zeiss or Nikon or whatever. And once adjusted, no one ever complains about the quality of the optics or the professional results you can get. Sure, it requires more effort, it requires patience, but you are getting something relatively CHEAP.

 

For a photographer on a budget or for specialty items not used every day (super-wide, fisheye, PC lenses, panoramic cameras, etc.), East German, Czech, and USSR photographic gear was and is a very good investment: minimal cost for maximum result.

 

The former workers of CZJ, Pentacon, Meopta, Zenit, etc. should be proud that, for low pay, poor working conditions, and the lack of any incentives, they still made some excellent gear. Anybody who disagrees, and only wants to celebrate what the well-paid West Germans or Japanese were doing, should remember what East Germans, Czechs, and Soviets had to live through on a daily basis.

[awahlster]

And yet no one has mentioned that a number of Carl Zeiss Jena marked lenses were made by other companies like Cosina. I know of a number of wide angles made in various 35mm SLR mounts that were made by Cosina.

[alan_chin]

i did mention that in my first response above.

[richard_oleson]

Hi John:

 

When there was only one Germany, there was only one Carl Zeiss, and its optical works was in Jena (or, I think, more precisely, in a floating structure on the lake at Jena to shield it from vibration).

 

At the end of WWII, Jena was in the Eastern sector along with Dresden which was the home of the Exakta and the Zeiss Ikon Contax works. The US assisted a number of CZ and ZI people in relocating into the Western zone, where they set up a rival optical works in Oberkochen and also a new Contax works in Stuttgart. However, the division of Germany did not automatically or instantly split the Zeiss concerns; there was considerable cooperation at first, including Jena producing lenses for the Stuttgart Contax before the Oberkochen works was ready to take the job over. Ultimately the different political and economic systems and the mutual animosity between the two Germanies made cooperation impossible. The idea, however, that Jena was not the "True" Carl Zeiss optical facility is ludicrous on its face.

 

If I am not mistaken, since the reunification of Germany, the Zeiss concern has also reunited.

 

And, not wishing to begin yet another "who is the real Zeiss" thread, but it would not surprise me terribly if the original poster's "true Zeiss Contaxes" were actually deluxe Yashicas.....

[winfried_buechsenschuetz1]

For pre-war Zeiss optics and Zeiss-Ikon cameras it is pretty easy: Zeiss-Ikon was a big camera-manufacturing conglomerate, formed in two steps in the early and late 1920s. Zeiss itself did not contribute too much, they just had the Zeiss-Palmat company, a not very significant manufacturer of cameras. Their main goal was to become the sole supplier of optics for all those camera manufacturers more or less bought by the economic power of Zeiss.

 

Since even after the merger of several companies Zeiss still manufactured optics for other manufacturers NOT merged into it, they reserved the Carl Zeiss Jena brand for their optical division (Tessar and other Zeiss-made

lenses can be found on many pre-war cameras).

[steven_moseley1]

Hi,

 

Yep...a very illuminating thread developed, unlike most here on PN! For those including Kelly who seemed to just assume I gave a 'blanket damnation'..please re-read the post, you will see I did not.

 

Perhaps in hindsight I did not make my post clear enough. I was refering soley to the Praktica range of M42 screw mount lenses, which I do still insist are certainly not in any way, shape, or form proper Zeiss lenses...and I was trying to warn potential buyers of these that they are in now way to be compared to the Contax Zeiss lenses.

 

"The East German Zeiss lenses were initially made by the same workers that made pre-war Zeiss lenses"

 

Apparently not many of them though....do you really think that many Germans were going to voluntarily hang around to be taken under russian occupation after what the Germans had spent the last 3 years doing to the russians? ...the truth is that the vast majority of the Zeiss workers fled to the west.

 

cheers Steve.

[alan c.]

it is precisely the high quality of the Praktica M42 lenses that many of the posters are addressing on this thread:

 

20mm f/2.8 + older f/4.0 Flektogon

 

35mm f/2.4 Flektogon

 

50mm f/1.8 Pancolar

 

80mm f/1.8

 

180mm f/2.8 Olympia made for Pentacon 6 but with auto-aperture adapter for M42

 

These are just a very few of the Carl Zeiss Jena lenses made in the DDR that, with proper adjustment, will continue to deliver wonderful results either on ANY M42 camera or on a Canon DSLR with an adapter. Of course you lose auto-aperture when you mount it on a Canon EOS, but many photographers don't seem to mind that.

 

Now, yes of course many of the 1945 era workers went West. But they were replaced by several generations of East Germans who continued to work at Pentacon and CZJ. While, as we have already discussed, their products may not always have been perfect, neither did they enjoy the high standards of living that their Western counterparts did. And, regardless of the quality of their output, by virtue of history, location, and (some) legality, they had as much or as equal a right to the Zeiss name as anybody else. In the same way, the Kiev cameras ARE true Contax cameras even if, by the end, they were often junk.

 

Your point is about the name. For example, Nikon and Canon at this very moment put their name on lower-end products that are not made by them, that bear no resemblance in quality to their high-end gear. But they are still Nikon and Canon, whether you like it or not.

 

It is true that prices on some of these lenses have crept up, because of their utility on digital DSLRs and perhaps because of confusion with either the West German Zeiss M42 lenses or the later Rolleiflex SL mount and Contax Yashica mount lenses under the West German Zeiss name. A 35mm f/2.4 CZJ Flektogon now goes for around $150, which is about the same price as the half-stop faster Pentax Super-Takumar SMC 35mm f/2.0. Arguably the Pentax lens is not only faster but less likely to require adjustment. However, a Contax/Yashica Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 is not only half stop slower, but costs twice as much -- around $300. And yet all three lenses will provide excellent results in the real world. So it all comes down, original lens mount aside, which "look" you prefer and what you want to pay for it.

[alan c.]

it is also forgotten that Germany had thriving socialist and communist movements before Hitler, and at the war's end the survivors emerged and thought they had a new chance. In the DDR the parties were forcibly merged into the SED (Socialist Unity Party, really the Communist Party) and as the decades passed, the discontent simmered and brewed. However, in the immediate postwar period, as in Czechoslovakia, there were many idealistic communists who honestly thought that they could create a brave new society with a bit of help from the Soviet liberators. As in any major industry, I'm sure that Zeiss Jena had its share of these workers, who, far from the caricatured apparatchiks of east-bloc stereotype, were highly educated and motivated, at least at the beginning.

 

so the "many Germans" not wanting to "voluntarily hang around" doesn't really begin to be entirely true until after the riots of 1953 and then the mass exodus of the late fifties, ending only with the construction of the wall in 1961. And even after that there were still many true believers: the DDR DID provide a comparatively high standard of living and by the '70s the dictatorship was "soft" -- people were spied upon, had low morale, and arrested -- but they also had Trabants, televisions, washer-dryers, free education and health care. The recent movie "The Lives Of Others" depicts this later period very well. The DDR should not be confused with Stalinist Siberia or even the much "harder" dictatorship of places like Romania at that time. None of this is to excuse or justify what they did, but it is important to understand the history accurately.

[alex macphee]

This has been an interesting thread. I can't comment on the political dimension, it's not an area of expertise for me, though I'm fascinated to read the views of others, but the remarks on the M42 range from Praktica still surprise me, because these are the very lenses I have, and which I can compare with their 'real' (I use the word guardedly and in this context) Zeiss counterparts. The Fleks (which I think are Distagon designs) are very good performers, not world beating wide open, but they stand comparison with other extremely good marques in the same class. I see the F20/2.8 going for two to three times what I paid for mine, a price edged up, I think, by Canon digital users who historically at least were not spoiled for choice in the wide-angle department, and I don't think it's ignorance or confusing CZJ with the Oberkochen stable - I think people who seek these lenses out know exactly their provenance. Oddly enough, the Tessars seem comparatively under-valued. In a thoroughly unscientific test, I mounted a series of standard 50mm lenses, from Zeiss, Yashica (M42 and CY), a Takumar, and a Tessar, on a Canon digital just to see if I could print the images and tell without looking which image came from which lens. My guesses seem to be statistically indistinguishable from chance. The Tessar cost me GBP 2.50 and required no more than a re-lubricating and general clean.

 

I don't have enough lens samples to make a judgement on issues like quality control variance, but recently I was going through my old negative file books, which date back to the late '60s. I was scanning old films for some re-printing, what with my darkroom currently out of commission. One of the things that struck me was how sharp and well exposed many of these old FP4 and HP4 films were, and on checking my records, the lenses used were mainly an old 50/2.8 Domiplan which had been attached to a Praktica Nova, and a Pancolar attached to an old Exakta. That old Domiplan was an unsophisticated three-element lens, not even a Tessar, but it was darned sharp and contrasty. I'd readily believe that I'd just got a good one and that others may have been poorer, but even so, these old DDR lenses cut some mustard. There are times when I've been just as happy to attach my CZJ 135 to my Canon as attaching my CZ 135 Sonnar, and I use them on my film bodies too. On the Canon, the CZJ seems just as bright through the viewfinder as the CZ Contax, despite being nearly a stop slower. I figure they are decidedly lenses from the Zeiss stable.

[chuck_foreman1]

Steve,

 

I want to adress Alan and thank him for clarity in explaining the politics in a quite concise manner. Not only did he wrap the politics in a bundle he showed that over the course of time a real "name brand"

becomes just a marketing principle.

As so often stated from most other responses in this thread; whether

Exacta or Contax S (M42) mount CZJ still is a name I can respect and

in any "sales" situation.. I have enough experience to know what

I am buying. Caveat Empor has a bad connotion but essentially it

says you are responsible to "know" what you are buying.

If the one or the other bemoans the rising cost due to DSLR uses,

then think of how volatile other markets can be ....datz bizniss

[winfried_buechsenschuetz1]

"Perhaps in hindsight I did not make my post clear enough. I was refering soley to the Praktica range of M42 screw mount lenses, which I do still insist are certainly not in any way, shape, or form proper Zeiss lenses...and I was trying to warn potential buyers of these that they are in now way to be compared to the Contax Zeiss lenses."

 

It does not matter to which lens range you refer to, NONE of the Praktica lenses was made by "russians" in the former Zeiss plant. Also, the genuine Carl Zeiss Jena lenses coming with the Prakticas were just as good as any other CZJ lenses. The Prakticas came with CZJ lenses like the Tessar and the Pancolar. There is no use comparing them with Contax Zeiss lenses, since the latter were and are not available in M42 mount, so there is no risk of confusing Contax Zeiss lenses with Carl Zeiss Jena M42 lenses. Hence I do not quite understand what's the purpose of your "warning", and mixing with some half- or completely untrue facts does not give more sense to your "warning".

 

Probably you are somewhat confused with another range of lenses coming with lower-cost versions of the Praktica. In the late years these lenses were labeled "Prakticar" but mostly were identical to the former Meyer-Goerlitz lenses. These lenses never had anything to do with Zeiss lenses, be they east or west, and are completely different in design from Zeiss lenses with same specs.

 

BTW Zeiss-Ikon (the camera manufacturing branch of Zeiss) in West Germany did not make a more honest business when they sold lenses made in the former Voigtlaender works with Zeiss-Ikon labels... later they even bought lenses from Mamiya and sold them together with Voigtlaender SLRs, even using the old and well-reputated Voigtlaender lens designators.

[alan c.]

the only possible direct confusion is between the CZJ M42 and the West German M42 made for the Icarex TM camera, as an earlier poster has already pointed out.

 

however it is true that unscrupulous eBay sellers put up tags like "ZEISS LENS FOR CANON EOS" without specifying that such lens is originally not meant for Canon, mounts only with a 3rd-party adapter, will lose auto-aperture (an all important issue, IMHO) and is in no way whatsoever designed for Canon DSLRs. So this lens advertised as such may be a C/Y Zeiss lens or a CZJ M42 lens, either way, the appropriate adapter is slapped onto the back of it and the seller is acting like it's a Canon lens. (to protect himself from a fraud accusation, a seller may explain the truth in tiny print inside the description, but certainly not in the headline.)

 

btw the meyer lenses, though not famous like the zeiss, aren't all bad, are they? praktica's 28mm lens was for many years the meyer or pentacon branded "29mm" f/2.8. and i had a humble 50mm f/2.8 Domiplan on an Exa that decent enough.

 

frankly the optical problems photographers have are usually with zooms, at maximum fast apertures, very long lenses, and most of all, operator error. it's really hard to actually make a bad 35mm or 50mm prime lens, isn't it?

[tony_lockerbie]

Shhhhhh guys! I'm trying to flog my old crappy M42 Praktica lenses on Ebay.

Cheers, Tony

[winfried_buechsenschuetz1]

Alan, from what I have read about the former DDR, heard from some people who had lived there and from some own experience (I had visited this beautiful country for a week in the 80s) I would say that your posting depicts the situation quite well.

 

Just one issue: only the SPD (social-democratic party) was merged into the SED. There are different opinions about how much pressure was used by the communists but ALL members of the SPD received a questionaire about the merger with the KPD (communist party of Germany) into the SED and the majority of them agreed. Other parties DID exist in former DDR, and the SED always had less than 50 p.c. of their parliament. Anyhow, all parties were united concerning their election campaigns and parliament activities into the "Nationale Front" (national front) and had to follow the same general outlines in politics, i.e. they were more or less meaningless compared to the all-mighty SED.

 

But noone can deny the fact that elections held in former DDR did not comply with usual democratic standards and at least during the last election held (when they had to admit independent supervisors) the results were obviously faked by the government.

[steven_moseley1]

Hi all,

 

I am pleased that whatever the rights, wrongs, or disagreements, that this has provided an excellent thread.

 

Alan.." A 35mm f/2.4 CZJ Flektogon now goes for around $150"

 

Over here in the UK, that lens has been fetching as much as 100 GBP (200 USD) and at times even more! in mint condition. Bearing in mind that you can buy the Contax 35mm f2.8 lens, which is superior in every way, for exactly the same amount of money, it was these type of 'bargain deals' which were concerning me.

 

Indeed there is one evilbay seller who sells many Jena lenses who even puts the current blue Zeiss company logo on the top of his listings...now that IS misleading.

 

But I do certainly take everyones points about the better lenses in the range..(I did make passing reference to them in the first post).

 

cheers Steve.

[alex macphee]

"Over here in the UK, that lens has been fetching as much as 100 GBP (200 USD) and at times even more! in mint condition. Bearing in mind that you can buy the Contax 35mm f2.8 lens, which is superior in every way, for exactly the same amount of money, it was these type of 'bargain deals' which were concerning me."

 

Steve, I have both lenses. The Flektogon is excellent, but if I'd to choose between them, I'd choose the Distagon. I took it on a trip to Slovenia recently, intending it just to be a 'might possibly need' filler in the camera bag, and it turned out to be the lens I most used. I paid about GBP 35 for the Flek, and GBP 86 for the Distagon, which was very cheap at the time. One advantage of the Flektagon is that it can be used on a CY camera as well as an M42, whereas the converse isn't true for the Distagon.

 

Ebayspeak is just one of those things you have to learn to get fluent in. As already noted, words like 'Canon' and 'EOS' get stuffed into item descriptions, presumably to ensure that the advertised lens gets picked up by searches. I see a similar trick used where an item is described as 'not Nikon, Leica, Olympus', and so on, presumably for the keywords to be picked up again for an unrelated item. That device irrirates me more than is probably rational, so my searches always include the exclusion filter '-not'.

[winfried_buechsenschuetz1]

Steve, I agree that it is close to a crime putting the current Zeiss logo in an ad or ebay offer concerning a lens made by a different company, although the manufacturer has the same name.

 

Anyhow, prices on ebay are what the buyers are willing to sell if the seller does not ask a very high reserve price.

 

BTW I see french Kinoptik lenses appear on ebay which obviously have been crudely converted to LTM lenses. These lenses are made to cover cine (18x24mm) format and I wonder if any of the buyers is happy using a Kinoptik f/2 40mm lens on his Leica. I know a german seller who has seen the lens he just sold re-appear on ebay - with same s/n but different (probably LTM) mount.

 

Claiming these lenses were LTM lenses definitively is everything but honest. Claiming a Carl Zeiss Jena postwar lens was made by "Zeiss" is misleading - but any buyer probably can clearly read on the lens that it was NOT made in Oberkochen.

[steven_moseley1]

Hi,

 

"Claiming a Carl Zeiss Jena postwar lens was made by "Zeiss" is misleading - but any buyer probably can clearly read on the lens that it was NOT made in Oberkochen"

 

Hi Winfried..the 'dodgy' sellers are too clever for that..they make sure the photos do not show the lens barrels showing anything they do not want the bidders to see. I have been buying & selling Contax items for years on the auction site and I know ALL the little tricks.

 

When about 3-4 years ago the Contax /Zeiss c/y lenses were at the peak of their prices and the German made ones were fetching quite a lot more then the Japan made ones, many sellers of the Japan made ones were making sure they did NOT show the reverse of the barrels which showed the country of manufacture...and late bidders who left it too late to ask would just bid and hope is was German made.

 

cheers Steve.

[kelly_flanigan1]

With power tools many great Ameerican brands are now made in China. One may ask if they are not "proper" based in country of origin; whether union made or just base it on quality. In Leica folks debate Canadian versus German. In Wild survey equipment folks debate Swiss versus Singapore. Here we used a "non-proper" Eastern Bloc Carl Zeiss process lens with much sucess for over a decade. For all practical purposes it is a proper Carl Zeiss lens; a fine German lens made in the old Eastern sector.

[patrick j dempsey]

Meh, Sony puts the Zeiss name on their digital offerings today. Some people seem to be impressed with that. Right now Panasonic manufacturers lenses labeled Leica. People are impressed with that and are willing to pay out the cash despite a cheaper price on the same product labelled Panasonic. So right now people think its fun to put old lenses to good use by putting them on their dSLRs... I think thats awesome to keep those great lenses still running. As far as people knowing or even CARING what these lenses orginally cost, I dont think it matters one bit. On another thread someone mentioned paying $80 for a Holga. We live in a day and age of product recognition... people pay a premium for brands they recognize, defying the logic that not EVERY lens or camera made by a recognizible brand is good. Ive noticed lately that old Kodak cameras in particular are getting very expensive despite the original low price of Kodak products. People recognize the name and drive up the price. For $80 someone could buy a 1970s SLR capable of making some great images but the name recoginition of Holga continues to push it as a "must have" product despite it being generally agreed (even amoung people who LIKE the camera) that its a low quality product with unpredictable results. Canon has left their users high-and-dry by offering some truly terrible lenses in the "under $300" range, so many users are looking to pick up vintage glass for a bargain price. Even if the eastern Zeiss lenses are lower quality then the western Zeiss lenses, they are bound to be better than Canons range of cheaper zoom lenses.

 

To me it sounded like the original poster is a collector and is scared of his west german collection loosing value due to the rising popularity of Jena glass. Up until about 10 years ago I think camera collecting was pretty much a set game. But as cultures change, the things the culture values also changes. If M42 mounts for dSLRs raises the value of glass because its being USED, I think that is far more valid than saying something has value because it is in a glass case wrapped in velvet NOT BEING USED! Just look at Polaroid roll-film cameras. Polaroid discontinued rollfilm sometime in the 1980s, since that time the cameras associated with that film became basically worthless, because they also used to be so common. But ever since people began converting them into large-format cameras, they have steadily raised in value. The cameras may be common which makes them have a low collectors value, but they are USEFUL which gives them a high value for USERS! A Kodak Instamatic camera appears in an opening scene in the movie "Amelie" and since then, there has been a growing interest in these cameras, with an online source for the film supporting the discontinued technology. Every time a camera appears in a popular movie or on an album cover, it temporarily raises in value due to popular culture recognition. Its an unpredictable, fickle and illogical system, but inst that the collecting game? Personally, I find some satisfaction in knowing that something is expensive because it is useful and not just for some elusive "collectible" reason.