CZJ lenses, anything special?

E. von Hoegh said:

I think we're saying the same thing from different angles. A post WWII lens marked Carl Zeiss Jena was made in Jena, but the true Zeiss mangement - such as survived WWII - was located in Oberkochen. Different companies, different management, probably different glasses.
My point was that to compare pre-war CZJ to post-war CZJ is unrealistic. Designs may have been the same, and some production may have been identical, but it was not the same company.

I remember there was a problem with lenses being sold in the west marked CZJ; they were changed to "Aus Jena".
I did not know of the co-operation between CZJ and the western version.

Edit - I know about Saalfeld. Since Jena was in East Germany, an Eastern bloc nation, it is convenient to refer to the stuff coming from Jena. Just like Goerz Berlin lenses were made in Zehlendorf, a suburb of Berlin.

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Hi

The opinions you are expressing about Carl Zeiss lenses are commonly held by a lot of people. I get on my soap box about it a bit - but it is the dodgy history that is out there that I am critical of, nothing personal.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm on your case!

Whoa I lot of history here. Not sure what to make of it.

So do the lenses make good pictures?

Hahaha, I guess I got to try and find out.

Some years ago I did some printing for afriend, I'd slready been printing commercially for quite a few years by then. The negativs were some of the best I've come across in terms of sharpness and tonality, all his lenses were CZJ - a 35mm Flektago, 50mm Pancolor and a 135mm Sonnar. Maybe he was lucky but I'd put his lenses on a par with the best available at that time.

Ian

Since a pictures is said to say more than a thousand words, here a few examples (not from me). Please do not be scared since most of these sites are in Russian ;-) The names of the lenses however are given in latin letters ;-) (Sorry if I´m incorrect for assuming that you can´t read Russian, but from experience I know that most people outside the former Eastern Bloc cannot)

http://club.foto.ru/forum/20/385643 (There is a good amount of Rollei, Hasselblad and Mamiya in here too)

Dead Link Removed

http://club.foto.ru/forum/view_post.php?p_id=5683241

http://35photo.ru/items/Carl+Zeiss+Sonnar+2.8++180mm_i4006/

http://nevzoroff.livejournal.com/tag/шляпка девушка море соннар

After these it should be obvious that the bokeh of the 180/2,8 is outstanding ;-)
However, then there is the problem of chosing a camera. Though I know the East German 35mm cameras quite well, I do not have any real experience with the Eastern Bloc MF cameras. There is Pentacon Six, Kiev 6, Kiev 88 CM(!) (Only the CM version will take the P6 lenses!).
These lenses were also available for Mamiya 645 and Rolleiflex SL66 in very small numbers. One needs a good amount of luck to find them nowadays.

To come back to Vegeottos original question: Yes, these lenses are very good optically, but they are not better than their Rollei/Hasselblad counterparts. They are not worse either + they are usually one stop faster, and I think it is the last point that sets them apart, more than any other optical property.

steven_e007 said:

Hi

The opinions you are expressing about Carl Zeiss lenses are commonly held by a lot of people. I get on my soap box about it a bit - but it is the dodgy history that is out there that I am critical of, nothing personal.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm on your case!

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That's not a problem. I have limited experience with post war CZJ lenses, and that experience was hit-and-miss.
If you have better information than I do, I appreciate your sharing it, and thank you.

The prewar CZJ lenses, which I actually have a fair amount of experience with - from early Protars to the 75mm uncoated Tessar on my Rollei Std, with quite a few between, and including a really excellent pair of CZJ 10x25 binoculars made in 1896, have been much more consistently high quality.

Vegeotto, if you enjoy lens tests, you may have a look on this. There you may find an answer to your question:

http://www.rickdenney.com/mother_lens_test.htm

steven_e007 said:

I think to characterize it as a budget maker of dodgy camera lenses is wide of the mark.

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Unfortunately, from the consumer standpoint, I don't think it is wide of the mark. CZJ was a respectable lens maker until the '60. Then, the innovation stopped, the quality went down and they were somewhat competitive only because of their low price tag. At the same time, CZ West and japanese makers were able to adapt to the market and the consumer demand, offering an large range of lenses from fisheye to tele-lens, including zooms and catadioptric lenses I am not sure this diversity was part of CZJ business plan...

Take care.

Dali said:

CZJ was a respectable lens maker until the '60. Then, the innovation stopped, the quality went down and they were somewhat competitive only because of their low price tag... At the same time, CZ West and japanese makers were able to adapt to the market and the consumer demand, offering an large range of lenses from fisheye to tele-lens, including zooms and catadioptric lenses I am not sure this diversity was part of CZJ business plan...

Take care.

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Yep, that's pretty much what we've been saying. Thinks did go a little downhill later on, but I don't think the decline in quality was so severe as to take them from respectable to 'dodgy', though, IMHO. The optics were still very good, just the designs were getting a bit dated and the quality control was sometimes a bit lacking. Lack of development certainly, but if you were happy with the traditional prime lens designs then you were still getting good optics for little money. I wouldn't describe them as 'dodgy' (even though I think it was me who used that expression ;-)
I don't doubt a Hassleblad mount Zeiss CF lens would knock spots of an East German lens for build quality, but comes in at maybe ten times the price of a CZJ Biometar. Personally I don't own any modern West German Carl Zeiss camera lenses because I can't afford them.

I think to characterize it as a budget maker of dodgy camera lenses is wide of the mark.

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I said that in relation to the idea that the Carl Zeiss factory in Jena was making poor quality camera optics. Most (maybe all) of the camera lenses were made at the Carl Zeiss plant in Saalfeld. The Jena factory was about as high tech and modern as anything you would find on the 'wrong' side of the iron curtain - but they didn't produce the camera lenses, That is what I meant by wide of the mark.