For the opportunity to review Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * (Contax) many thanks to Roman Kononov, who sent I have a lens from another area.
Review of Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * (Contax)
The Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * is an excellent fast fifty lens with manual focusing. Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * visually does not stand out in any way from the huge number of fifty dollars that were reviewed by Radozhiva. True, I found one interesting point - rubber aperture control ring, this is very rare. Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * uses Contax / Yashica mount.
Clarification of the front lens Carl Zeiss Planar F 1,7 50 mm T * (Contax)
The lens has a pronounced T * enlightenment. Such a violet-lilac enlightenment not only pleases the eye of the lens owner, but also really helps to achieve a bright picture with good contrast.
Enlightenment of the rear lens and the appearance of the petals of the Carl Zeiss Planar F 1,7 50 mm T * aperture (Contax)
The lens has a blinking aperture device. Focusing is smooth, the focus ring rotates about 160 degrees. Perhaps the focus ring does not have such a large stroke, for example, like Auto mamiya / sekor 1: 1,4 f = 55mm, but the movement of the ring itself is very smooth and pleasant. The focusing ring is rubberized. But the minimum focusing distance disappointed me a little - MDF is 60 cm. Usually fifty dollars have a smaller MDF, for example Yashica Auto Yashinon-DX 1: 1,7 f = 50mm has an MDF of 50 cm. CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T * has a focus distance scale in meters and feet, and, of course, a depth of field scale. The aperture is adjustable from F / 1.7 to F / 16 (1.7, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16), between the values of F / 1.7 and F / 2.8, you can set another intermediate value equal to F / 2.0.
Lens view Carl Zeiss Planar F 1,7 50 mm T * (Contax)
It was a little disappointing that for such a price the CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T * has only 6 aperture blades forming regular hexagons. Aperture blades are matte black. The lens creates the effect of a 6-ray star when used on closed apertures, here example. My copy has serial number 7281885.
'Zeiss' Planar and 'Gel.' Arsenal :)
The lens is assembled well, on the body you can find the inscription 'Lens made in Japan'. You can read a lot of useful information about the Planars from Dmitry Evtifeev, for example, here.
MC Helios-81N 2/50 (Nikon F mount, Ukraine, Kiev, Arsenal plant) and Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * (Contax mount, Japan). My Helios 'poses' near the 'immortal'.
I used Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * using the Contax-Canon EOS adapter without a chip. The Canon CZK keeps focusing on infinity when using a conventional adapter without a lens. How to use manual focus lenses on modern Canon digital cameras here. To mount the lens on the Nikon Central Control Arm with the ability to focus on infinity, you have to sweat.
Sample photo on Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 50 T * Contax on the CZK
Sample Photos
It’s a pity, I don’t have the opportunity to drive the CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T * on a full-format camera yet. On DSLR APS-C Kf = 1.6x Canon 350D the lens is very sharp across the entire field of the frame at any aperture value. The lens has good color reproduction and contrast. The lens is practically not afraid of back and side light and flare. On open diaphragms you can still trace chromatic aberration, but this is characteristic of all fast lenses of this class.
Catalog of modern Carl Zeiss lenses can look at this link.
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Personal impressions
This is one of the sharpest fifty dollars I've ever photographed with. 'Planar Killer' Asahi OPT. CO., SMC Takumar 1: 1.4 / 50 noticeably loses to the CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T *. The CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T * fully fulfills its price tag with its image quality, though it's a shame the lens doesn't have a 'flat aperture'. For fans of manual focusing optics, the price of the CZ Planar 1.7 / 50 T * may seem too high. Usually, amateur photographers are used to the fact that mostly manual focus optics are old and cheap.
View of Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 50 T * Contax on the central locking
Conclusions
Carl Zeiss Planar 1,7 / 50 T * (for Contax) is a great fifty dollars. Carl Zeiss Planar is Carl Zeiss Planar.
Material prepared Arkady Shapoval. Training/Consultations | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Telegram
Dear Arkady!
Thank you for the article! I wanted to buy this lens. Nl lens test. I was upset about Nikon, I didn’t see the sharpness.
Colleagues who know what could be the matter.
Good morning.
I think the problem of mb is how it was redone)
Good people, help with the comparison, which is better to choose as a portrait for sharpness:
1) this lens
2) Carl Zeiss Planar T * 50mm f / 1.4 (C / Y)
Evtifeev has a comparison of these lenses. There is a link on the previous comment page.
In conjunction with the A7 II small album https://www.flickr.com/photos/148622404@N05/albums/72157690880431253
I became a happy owner of this lens after several weeks of studying various fifty dollars. Initially, there was no idea to buy, although it was not stellar, but quite good 50 1.8 stm from Canon. But I wanted something more for a long time. The price for Canon 50 1.2 was biting, 50 1.4 is rather flimsy, although overall glass is not bad either.
I remembered about the experience with the GDRovsky CZ Jena Flektogonom 35 2.4, a rather interesting lens
And when I started reading about planar I realized that this was what I was looking for. It remained to choose, new versions with a ready-made canon ef mount are still quite expensive as for manual lenses, although of course it sounds funny against the background of new zeiss.
Lenses with a contax / yashica mount are probably an interesting solution, though there were questions regarding my Canon 6d, in particular, the potential risk of a mirror catching on focal lenses over 5 m. I decided to choose 50 from two versions 1.4 50 and 1.7 1.7 based on comparisons Dmitry Evtifeev and here on Radozhive. I also read a review from Philipp Reeve
Looked at the reviews ... I found the desired lens on the olkh. Alas, the mirror still clings to the focal points closer to infinity, even more precisely, then completely beyond 10 m and at infinity, but what is interesting - it hooked once from 2-3 attempts, as it seems to me it says that the gap there is tiny and it is quite possible that even another (not my Chinese) adapter would solve the issue without surgical intervention. There was another option to remake the bayonet using an adapter from Leitax, but the price ... 61 €. And most importantly, it would not quite clearly help probably such a manipulation ... There was only one option - to grind off the edging of the lens unit to that very fraction of a millimeter. In the workshop where I turned, they looked at me as a person proposing to make a horse out of a cow, calling it all handicraft, but the steadfastness of my intentions still allowed this not such a complex operation
Everything went well, the lens didn’t hurt, still the work was carried out by qualified guys and now I’m a happy owner of a decent manual lens with the highest German quality, preserved over time. A leisurely creative mission and, I hope, long cooperation with the greatest German brand are ahead. this lens will be tantamount to crime.
I hope someone might find this information useful as it would be useful to me a few days earlier, who had broken everything in search of solutions to problems with the mirror ...
Thank you for the interesting information.
Hello Artyom! Do you have any information: will this lens cling to a 5dm4 mirror? Thank you.
Please tell me, what is its resolution, is there information somewhere?
On the manufacturer's website.
https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/consumer-products/downloads/historical-products/photography/contax-yashica/en/datasheet-zeiss-planar-1750-en.pdf
Second page - MTF charts.
Bonjour, je suppose que pour cette référence il ne s'agit que d'un objectif pour argentique. Je l'ai acheté avec un boîtier Contax M167 qui ne fonctionne malheureusement pas. Je voudrais savoir avec quels autres boitiers il est compatible car je suis surprise de voir une photo avec un boitier Canon alors qu'il est fait pour Contax/Yashica (je débute en photo – surtout argentique). Mercy!
Cet objectif est compatible avec n'importe quel appareil photo numérique via l'adaptateur approprié, à l'exception des appareils photo reflex Nikon.
For some reason, everyone is only interested in sharpness. She is not the main thing with this lens. This Planar has a very interesting pattern. Both portraits and landscapes work well. Zeiss could not guarantee the preservation of a high-quality image at a distance of less than 60 cm. That is why such an MDF. I saw a similar magnificent picture at fifty dollars only in SMC Pentax-M 1.4 / 50 (and SMC Pentax-FA 1.4 / 50) and the Soviet Wave 1.8 / 50 (modification of the Planar scheme). There are many fifty dollars sharper than this Planar. For example, Micro-Nikkor 2.8/55 Ai-S. In the photo of female models, all the plaster on the face is visible. Optics from Carl Zeizz fell in love with photographers precisely for their pattern, and not for the highest sharpness. Plasticity and sharpness at the same time. Beautiful bokeh and airiness, lightness of the image. This is what they shoot on Planars for.