Carl Zeiss BIOTAR 1.5 / 75mm does anybody have this lens?

[haring]

I love the Carl Zeiss BIOTAR 75mm f/1.5 lens. I am thinking about buying one of them but I can see that there is a huge range in price for this lens. They seem the same to me. I am just wondering whether anybody can tell me which series of these lens I should buy to get the best image quality and what makes the price to range so wide...

 

[rawhead]

Well, the Exakta mount version is more ubiquitous and harder to adapt so they *tend* to be slightly cheaper. M42 versions more expensive.

The conventional thought is that the "Pre-War" version gives nicer images; they are narrower/straighter than the post-war fatties:

http://www.mflenses.com/gallery/manual-focus/Biotar

Owning both a post-war Biotar 75/1.5, and its soviet/russian copy, the Helios 40-2 85/1.5, I prefer the latter, which you can now get a new production one for $500 on Ebay.

 

[haring]

Thanks so much! The Helios is not that expensive, actually, The pre-war biotar is super expensive...

 

[EdSawyer]

I had a late-model T-coated fat biotar in M42 mount for a while. It was a nice lens, a bit of glow wide open but very sharp stopped down. Nice swirl in the bokeh. I paid $450 for it a few years ago, later sold it as I wasn't using it much. They seem to have gone up a fair bit in price since then.
-Ed

 

[Slixtiesix]

Yes the prices have become quite insane recently. I wanted this lens so bad when I was a teenager but was not able to afford. And it was only 1/3 then of what is paid now!