Zeiss Sonnar
Encyclopedia
Photographic lens
A camera lens is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically.While in principle a simple convex lens will suffice, in...
originally designed by Dr. Ludwig Bertele
Ludwig Bertele
Ludwig Jakob Bertele was a German optics constructor. His developments received universal recognition and serve as a basis for considerable part of optical designs, which are used in modern world.-Biography:...
in 1924 and patented by Zeiss Ikon. It was notable for its relatively light weight, simple design and fast aperture
Lens speed
Lens speed refers to the maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a photographic lens. A lens with a larger maximum aperture is a fast lens because it delivers more light intensity to the focal plane, allowing a faster shutter speed...
. The name "Sonnar" is derived from the German word "Sonne", meaning sun. It was given this name because its large aperture was much greater than many other lenses available at the time.
The first production Sonnar was a 1:2.0 50 mm lens with six elements in three groups created for the Zeiss Contax
Contax
Contax was a camera brand noted for its unique technical innovation and a wide range of Zeiss lenses, noted for their high optical quality. Its final incarnation was a line of 35 mm, medium format and digital cameras engineered and manufactured by Kyocera, and featuring modern Zeiss optics...
rangefinder camera in 1926. In 1932, it was reformulated with seven elements in three groups allowing a maximum aperture of .
Compared to Planar
Zeiss Planar
The Zeiss Planar is a photographic lens designed by Paul Rudolph at Carl Zeiss in 1896. Rudolph's original was a six-element symmetrical design....
designs the Sonnars had more aberrations, but with fewer glass-to-air surfaces it had better contrast and less flare. Though compared to the earlier Tessar design, its faster aperture and lower chromatic aberration
Chromatic aberration
In optics, chromatic aberration is a type of distortion in which there is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same convergence point. It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light...
was a significant improvement.
The Sonnar has proved to be incompatible in shorter focal lengths with 35mm
135 film
The term 135 was introduced by Kodak in 1934 as a designation for cartridge film wide, specifically for still photography. It quickly grew in popularity, surpassing 120 film by the late 1960s to become the most popular photographic film format...
single-lens reflex
Single-lens reflex camera
A single-lens reflex camera is a camera that typically uses a semi-automatic moving mirror system that permits the photographer to see exactly what will be captured by the film or digital imaging system, as opposed to pre-SLR cameras where the view through the viewfinder could be significantly...
(SLR) cameras due to the space taken up by an SLR's mirror. For this reason it has been used most commonly with rangefinder camera
Rangefinder camera
A rangefinder camera is a camera fitted with a rangefinder: a range-finding focusing mechanism allowing the photographer to measure the subject distance and take photographs that are in sharp focus...
s, though Sonnar lenses with longer focal lengths still appear on SLR cameras, most notably the 150 mm and 250 mm lenses for the medium format (MF) Hasselblad
Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium-format cameras and photographic equipment based in Gothenburg, Sweden.The company is best known for the medium-format cameras it has produced since World War II....
V-system. Some portrait Sonnars were also made for large format
Large format
Large format refers to any imaging format of 4×5 inches or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the 6×6 cm or 6×9 cm size of Hasselblad, Rollei, Kowa, Pentax etc cameras , and much larger than the 24×36 mm frame of 35 mm format.The main advantage...
(LF) cameras, presumably the press camera
Press camera
A press camera is a medium or large format camera suitable for use by press photographers.Press cameras were widely used from the 1900s through the early 1960s and commonly had the following features:* collapsibility into strong, compact boxes...
s - like Sonnar 1:5.6 250 mm for 9×12 cm (4×5") format. Though these lenses were quite heavy (> 2 kg) and large, they were optimised for working on a full aperture with the same sharpness and contrast as on smaller apertures. The coverage of these lenses was also not as good as many similar focal length lenses which limited the use of camera movements. although these are not generally too important for portrait work.
The Sonnar design has been extensively copied by other lens manufacturers, due to its excellent sharpness, low production cost and fast speed
Lens speed
Lens speed refers to the maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a photographic lens. A lens with a larger maximum aperture is a fast lens because it delivers more light intensity to the focal plane, allowing a faster shutter speed...
. The Soviet factory KMZ
Krasnogorskiy Zavod
Krasnogorskiy zavod im. S. A. Zvereva is a Russian factory in Krasnogorsk near Moscow which specializes in optical technology.During the Soviet period it was called Krasnogorsk Mechanical Works...
produced several lenses that used the Sonnar formula: The KMZ Jupiter-3, Jupiter-8
Jupiter-8 (lens)
The Jupiter-8 is 50mm / f:2 Russian camera lens made by KMZ during the Soviet era. It was made to fit a number of different camera makes. It was available in the M39 lens mount, or "Leica thread mount", a bayonet mount to fit early Zeiss Contax cameras...
, and Jupiter-9 are direct copies of the Zeiss Sonnar 1:1.5 50 mm, 1:2.0 50 mm and 1:2.0 85 mm respectively.
A zoom lens
Zoom lens
A zoom lens is a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length can be varied, as opposed to a fixed focal length lens...
derivative of the Sonnar, the Vario-Sonnar
Vario-Sonnar
The Vario-Sonnar is a Carl Zeiss photographic lens design. This lens type has an infinitely variable focal length which can replace a whole series of lenses for a certain picture format....
also exists, in which a number of lens groups are replaced with floating pairs of lens groups.