Wartime lenses

[molinari]

There is something in my camera bag that is much older than me: a Zeiss Sonnar 1.5/50 in LTM. It's not a fake, it's real, had been used on a german submarine in WWII. Zeiss confirmed the serial number, it was made in 1943. I just had it cleaned and adjusted, some stain stays on the front lens, caused by sea water, the rest is quite fine for such an old lens.

What's your opinion about such a lens? Is this a collector's item? Trying to collect money for an M8 I am willing to sell it, and I try to find out which is the best way - an online auction, a collector's auction, a camera show? What's your experience with such channels?

[luigi bertolotti]

The Sonnar 50 1,5 was one of the lenses that were announced in the first '30 for the Contax, the well known competitor of Leica; there was also an f2 version. In its original mount for Contax is not such a rare lens : I have seen one can find a good Contax body with Sonnar 1,5 for 6-700 Euros; I have also seen that prices for the Sonnar f2 alone are low (range 100-140 Euro) : things can be different for the LTM version that I think has not been produced in big numbers... but have no sure evidence on this. I think that the right collector would pay something in the range of 200-250 Euro for a good item; and there is an important question regarding collectors : You say your Sonnar was used in an U-Boot: does it have some military engraving that gives evidence on this ? If so, there are collectors that are specialized in photo equipment with ORIGINAL (beware of fakes...) miltary engravings: if would be so for your lens, my advice is to Net search some specific info on this topic: price can increase significantly (the "Luftwaffen-Eigentum" or "Kriegsmarine" Leica items are evaluated a lot... personally, I am not interested, but is clear that a market exists)

[stephanvdz]

some say that zeiss lenses in LTM under 3000000 are almost all of military origin... (why would canon build a lens for nikon ? except if asked politely by a military contract ?) indeed they are wartime production and quite evoluting with this war industryn, from nice zeiss heavy chrome barrels to bad quality zamac barrels ... but the optics remains high grade. The conversion were supposedly made at the factory from stock contax mount lenses (a 50mm contax mount is a direct mount... ). there are some other focal length Zeiss lenses in LTM mount from that time but they are scarce... to say the least and relatively unknown. Other point that leads to the "military" connection is that all those zeiss LTM lenses are T coated and marked as such... the T coating mark was under military embargo until 1940...
at that time the sonnar 1,5 was the best fast lens on the market...

[someonenameddavid]

But Nikon did make lenses for Canon... Canon Hansa had a Nikkor lens...
Mamiya made cameras for Nikon, Nikon made cameras for Zeiss (tricky one that... microscope camera for Zeiss was a Nikon. Minolta made cameras for Leitz... and so on
David

[stephanvdz]

ok I'll reformulate...
why would Zeiss make lenses in the format of their main concurrent... Leitz ? at that time.. by the way the military contract is almost certain. and Leitz didn't have a good fast 50mm at that time (the schneider xenon is known as quite soft...) nor have coated lenses..

[L39UK]

my posting on "Zeiss 50mm f1.5 thread" thread

Originally Posted by stephanvdz View Post

key serial numbers... about T coated zeiss lens (any mount) with the Carl Zeiss Jena name

-between 2200000 and 2600000, preproduction models and embargo period... rare, rarest... and more
-between 2600000 and 3000000 wartime production (rare in 50mm, very rare in other focal length)..


Unfortunately it is not possible to divide production between 2200000 - 2600000 and 2600000 - 3000000 into just these two catagories.
Post war the Soviet reparation lens production used Carl Zeiss Jena lens serial number batches that had not been allocated before and during the period of the Second World War.
Genuine Carl Zeiss Sonnars/Biogons etc. in LTM can be ascertained from the factory production lists in Hartmut Thieles publication of the Carl Zeiss Jena Factory records of lens production.Most of the genuine Carl Zeiss lenses were delivered to the German Military no later than 1943 and these are rare.
Many Soviet produced reparation lenses, which were produced post 1945, were given previously unused serial nos.in the 2600000/2700000/2800000 and these can be identified using Thieles publication, and these batches are clearly indicated in the factory records as post- May 1945 production and these are the lenses that are very easy to mistake for genuine Carl Zeiss Jena wartime production.