Category: Gear

The 180mm Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 2.8 lens isn’t a lens that I use often, but it is a joy to use when I need it. It’s a beast to hand hold and unfortunately my copy doesn’t have a tripod mount, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to use. Now when I say fun, I mean it’s a pain. The lens weighs almost 3 lbs and the focus ring (largest part of the barrel) adjusts the lenses relatively slowly when compared to newer models. If that were all I was interested in though, I would be missing out on what the real qualities of this lens are. At 2.8 the depth of field is super shallow and with the Jena’s 180mm focal length, the field compression and bokeh are outstanding. Like most Zeiss lenses, the contrast and sharpness are well balanced as all good lenses should be. I use the Canon Eg-S Super Precision Matte Focusing Screen to help me tame that shallow depth of field as easily as possible since there’s no focus confirmation (fully manual).

One other quick feature that I think is neat is the aperture stop for stop down metering. Like all manual cameras, you normally focus with the lens set to wide open (say 2.8 in this case) and then stop down the aperture until you have the depth of field you need (lets say f8). You then meter the scene and take the image. Keep the shutter speed set the same and as long as the scene stays relatively the same, focus at 2.8 and stop down to f8 for correct exposures. On a normal lens, you can memorize the click stops or have the camera mounted on a tripod so that you can look at the lens and see what f-stop you’re stopping down to. With the version I have of the 180mm Sonnar, you can actually set a separate stop ring on the front of the lens to the desired closed down aperture setting (f8 as above) and the lens will only stop down to that setting and no further! While this isn’t rocket science or brain surgery or talking to women, it just makes sense to me and I wonder why more lenses don’t have this feature and am guessing the advent of AF is to blame.

Most of the 180mm Carl Zeiss Jena lenses were designed for use on a medium format camera and then adapted to fit onto 35mm bodies straight from Zeiss (think Contax or Exakta). The mount on my version was made for a Pentacon 6 (P6), but came with an EOS conversion mount which I use on my Canon 5dII even though I wouldn’t mind using it on a Pentacon 6 should the opportunity arise. The filter thread size is 77mm so even though the one I purchased didn’t come with a hood, I bought a generic version off bay for under $10. I got lucky in that my lens came with a 77-82mm filter thread adapter and an 82mm lens cap. To mount the 77mm hood, I removed the filter thread adapter and attached the 77mm hood. It just so happened that the hood didn’t come with or list what size lens cap it needed and it turned out to be 82mm. Now isn’t that convenient.

According to the small amount of information I’ve been able to find about my lens, it was made between 1955-58 in East Germany. Many different websites call this version of the Carl Zeiss Jena 180mm (black) an Olympia Sonnar and while I don’t know how true that is, I do know the original 18cm Olympia Sonnars were made for the 1936 Olympic Games (hence Olympia). Those lenses were chrome plated and designed to work with rangefinder cameras via a Flektoskop (similar to what Leica calls their Visoflex systems which I think were introduced around the same time). Whether or not my lens is designed like an original Olympia internally doesn’t really matter to me as it won’t change how it performs now and I’m OK with that.

Now for some really random images. (As a side note, all of these images were taken hand held and the B&W images were taken from a car while riding passenger on a small road trip)

I have put off this post for way too long as I have been fixated on getting a few more images snaphots to make this a good post. I have also been wanting to attach my tilt shift rig to a tripod to do some video with the 5Dii, but could not come up with a solution that doesn’t require trusting $6 worth of wood with my $1800 camera. Therefore, I am actually getting the tilt “L” (soon to be an upside down “T”) machined out of aluminum with the addition a tripod socket. This should fix my feelings about it’s structural integrity and make the whole project look a little more professional. In the mean time, here are a few pictures from my Canon 5Dii with the “original” tilt shift attached just as it had been when I first started the project with the Nikon D700. The lens used is the same lumenized (coated) 101mm f 4.5 Kodak Ekatar. I’m still thinking about bag bellows, a way to attach different lenses easily, and using enlarger lenses that have a wider field of view but can still focus to infinity when tilted. Please feel free to e-mail me directly via the contact page or by commenting on this post; I’m always open to new ideas.

p.s. – I also fixed my lightbox plug-in as it was malfunctioning. All thumbnail images should pop up now.

p.s p.s. – On further review, there were a few new errors since my last post that have all now been corrected now.

After using my cheap Focal 135mm lens for a little macro work as I posted a while ago, I wondered how well that same type of rig would work if I were using a decent 135mm lens and that’s where the Jupiter 37A came into play. With a little research via google and the phrase “cheap sharp 135mm lenses” plus some additional ebay searches I settled on the Jupiter 135mm 3.5 37A lens. I had never used a Jupiter lens so I needed to learn a few things before I purchased anything because that’s just what I like to do. After some digging on Camerapedia, I found that true Jupiter lenses don’t actually say Jupiter in English; only in Russian. If the lens says Jupiter in English, then it was actually made in Japan and is a copy of the Russian version (which happens to be a copy of a Zeiss lens but that’s another story). From what I’ve read, the Russian version has more contrast and is sharper that the Japanese and that’s the reason I went with it.

The lens came with an M42 mount, but my Topcon macro bellows was designed to work with an Exacta mount camera. The cool thing I found out about the Jupiter lens is that it has a removable mount which is the same size inner diameter as many common T-mounts (with the “T” threads removed). After a little ebay sourcing, the Jupiter lens now sports an Exacta mount and you can’t tell that it’s not how it was originally designed. With the mount in place, all I needed to do was put it on the camera and test it out which is what I did for the iMac pics in the last post.

Here’s a few pictures on the Jupiter 135mm 3.5 37A if you’re interested. I can’t recommend it high enough for a lens that only costs about $60.

This is a macro rig I put together while playing around with ideas for the tilt shift. The lens is a Focal 135mm T2-mount with an Exakta bayonet so that it will fit on the Topcon macro rail. The Topcon rail then has a custom adapter so that I can mount a Pentax (M42) t-mount to it. From there I used an M42 to EOS EF mount so that it could all be neatly mounted on the camera. I occasionally threw in a 3x APS Auto telephoto adapter just to see how much magnification was possible. All of the shots here were taken hand held with mostly available light or light from a nearby lamp. I know the images would\ could have been sharper if I had used a tripod, but that’s not how I’d normally shoot macro anyway so I figured I’d try it exactly how I would be using it in the field (literally). I honestly didn’t expect some of the decent results that this cobbled together rig was able to produce. I mean, I bought a camera off Craigslist with the 135mm, 3x, and 55mm 1.4 for $35 and thought the Focal 135mm t-mount to M42 lens was a piece of junk that I’d never use. After playing with it on the macro rig I thought it was a piece of junk I might actually use! Go figure.

Does it look like the same topcon tilt macro rig as I had before? Well yeah, but there are some key differences. My last rig required a grip to get the clearance necessary for the lens to tilt, but this “new” version doesn’t. It also fits my Canon 5d ii and will fit any camera you can mount an M42 (Pentax Asahi) lens to (which means almost all slr cameras on the market). There is a problem with flare though and I haven’t gotten the chance to narrow it down to see exactly what the problem is, but some of the problem is that I switched to a non coated (non “lumenized”) Kodak Ektar 101mm f4.5. So far, I don’t think this lens is as sharp as the previous coated 101mm lens I used and the lack of coating may also have a small hand in the flare problems as well, but I wanted to post up my findings either way.

This is a project I’ve been working on for a while now. After finding an old (and when I say old, I mean the 40’s) Kodak Ektar 101mm f4.5 lens for a Graflex camera at work, I decided to try it on my D700. I very simply just held it up to the camera and free lens’d it to see if the flange focal distance was short enough to use on an SLR and sure enough, it was. The lens only needed an inch or so to focus at infinity. That little 10 sec trial made me want more as I have always had a thing for tilt-shift lenses which this lens would make possible for very little cashola. I decided I needed some way to mount the lens to where I could easily focus it and get repeatable results instead of the common plunger cam idea most people use. That led me to an old (when I say old this time I mean the 70’s) macro bellows set-up from topcon (another piece scavenged from work). I found that the bellows rail set-up could be easily modified and the bellows themselves could be used as well. That still left me with mounting the lens to the macro rail, mounting the bellows to the camera, mounting the bellows to the lens, mounting the lens to a lens board, finding a lens board, and then making it all work together to get the tilt, swing, and shift movements. After a lot of head scratching and measuring; I got what you see above and it actually worked! A few random (no, really) sample pictures I have taken with this hand held set-up are below and there will no doubt be more to come. I also realize that I’m not currently using the lens to it’s full potential, but It’s kind of hard to find the time when you have an 6 month old you actually want to be with at all times.

*Update* Since I sold my D700 and don’t yet have a grip for the 5D ii, I haven’t used this rig in a while. I do plan on getting a grip soon though (no pun intended)(well maybe a little bit) and am excited about doing some tilt video!

To see the absolutely boring text filled full write up, Click Here!

I’ve always had an interest in old cameras and the history of photography even though I’ve never used a camera older than the early 90’s (with the exception being a few p+s 110 film cameras in the 80’s). Almost all of the photo-history books I have read have a section on pinhole cameras and how they work. The idea is simple and if you’ve never heard of one read that wiki entry because you’ll be amazed at how old the idea is. As for the little diy I have going on here, I used the lens cap pictured in my last post with a little aluminum foil, masking tape, a needle, and a drill. I marked the center of the lens cap and proceeded to drill the hole off center (which I don’t advise), laid the aluminum foil on a piece of cardboard, and then poked only the very tip of the needle through. A few pieces of tape later and I got the results below. Without aperture control, you can only use the shutter and ISO to control exposure. The pictures of the trees were hand held with the ISO Ramped all the way in RAW with no noise reduction and the one of the living room and dinner plates were taken with the camera sitting on the table at a much lower ISO and slower shutter speed. If I had used a thicker material (like a piece of aluminum can) I could have sanded the edges of the hole down and probably would have gotten a little better results; but.. eh; I’ll leave that for next time. All in all, it was a reasonably fun way to spend a small part of a Saturday.