vintage lens

Vintage lenses – some general FAQ

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Here are some questions relating to vintage lenses, things that people might like to know before they dive into the world of vintage lenses (and how to choose them).

Can any vintage lens be used on a digital camera?

Just about. Most mirrorless full-frame and crop-sensor cameras can be used with vintage lenses, but there are some lenses which don’t work, either because they have a strange lens-mount, or the lens itself projects too far beyond the mount into the camera.

Are vintage lenses affordable?

Vintage lenses were once quite inexpensive, but as more people discover them, some are increasing in price – well the popular ones are. That being said, they are still often cheaper than modern glass, especially the faster lenses. For example, the Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 50mm f/1.4 sells for around C$100-150. The 8-element version of the lens, the Super-Takumar, in good condition usually sells for C$300-500 (which is still pretty affordable). The most affordable vintage lenses, are often those mass-produced kit-lenses that don’t get a second look at. Leica lenses are nearly always expensive.

What is the best vintage lens?

There is really no such thing, because the inherent character of a lens is very subjective. Many people swear by the Carl Zeiss Jena lenses, others prefer the Asahi Pentax Takumar series, and yet others gravitate towards Nikon. There are a lot of “best vintage lenses” lists out there, but it is best to look at reviews of people who use a lot of vintage lenses. For example Zenography, Simon’s utak, or Mark Holtze all have great vintage lens reviews on their respective YouTube channels.

Is there such a thing as a perfect vintage lens?

No, even the most sought-after lenses can have limitations. For example the 8-element Takumar 50mm f/1.4 does not outperform other legacy lenses in certain situations. It can be quite soft when the lens is shot wide open in some circumstances, and is a heavy lens. Yet people are still charmed by the lens because it does a really good job with colour rendering. It produces warm colours with very little vignetting. The Takumar lenses also have good ergonomics.

What about vintage zooms?

Some people like them, others don’t. The reality is that there are many really good, well-built early zoom lenses out there, and because they are often so underrated, they are really quite inexpensive.

Aren’t newer lenses better?

Newer lenses are more technologically savvy, and the glass is likely to be near perfect (although truthfully there is no such thing as a perfect lens). Modern lenses built for digital cameras try very hard to remove abnormalities, which is the very reason most people gravitate towards vintage lenses. Modern lenses are also inherently more complex. For example the Olympus Zuiko 25mm f1.2 Pro (MFT 50mm FF equivalent) has 19 lens elements in 14 groups, including low dispersion, high-refractive, and aspherical elements. The vintage equivalent, the Olympus OM Zuiko AUTO-S 50mm f1.2 has 7 elements in 6 groups. Vintage lenses often use a very simple optical designs that have been around for a hundred years. Do you really need a lens with 15 lens elements, or will 6 do?

Are all vintage lenses manual?

Practically all vintage lenses require manual focus, and manually setting the aperture. Manual focusing is slower than autofocus, but most mirrorless cameras provide tools, e.g. focus peaking, to help with the process of manual focusing. Manual focus lenses might not be an optimal choice for activities such as travel involving fast-paced tourism, but it brings you closer to understanding the subtleties how a camera-lens combination works.

Is there a good range of focal lengths?

Brands aside, there is usually a good selection of focal lengths available. The most common focal length is 50mm, because of it’s “normal” status, and the fact that it came as the standard “kit” lens on most cameras. After that there is a good range of wide-angles (28mm, 35mm), and short telephotos (85-135mm). Ultra-wide angle lenses are rarer, yet there seems to be a wide range of telephotos (possibly because they aren’t as popular).

What about the build quality of lenses?

Many of these lenses were built tough. They featured solidly build body’s with aluminum lens barrels and stainless steel mounts. Without a bunch of electronic and motors inside to facilitate things like auto-focus, vintage lenses can often be quite compact, and light. They are robust, easy to fix, and lack the complex electronics of modern lenses (meaning they will last for decades).

How does adapting a vintage lens to a crop-sensor affect it?

Most vintage lenses were designed for 35mm film cameras, and their equivalent is full-frame digital cameras. So a vintage lens put on a crop-sensor camera will behave the same way as any other lens on a crop sensor, i.e. its angle-of-view will be modified. For example you could choose any vintage 50mm lens, and when added to an APS-C camera it would behave like a 75mm lens in “full-frame equivalency”. Used on a camera with a MFT sensor, it would behave like a 100mm FF equivalent.

Can vintage lenses be used to create retro-looking images?

Possibly, it really all depends on the type of lens, and the type of digital camera it is used upon. There are many more variables involved with using digital cameras, as opposed to film cameras. It is possible to try and replicate the “look” of old photos, but digital cameras will not replicate film 100%.

Where is the best place to buy vintage lenses?

I have covered this in a separate post. I also maintain a list of “Where to buy what”.

Why choose a vintage lens?

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There are many reasons why people choose to use vintage lenses. Many just opt for the chance of experimenting with their photography. Some people buy a particular lens for the Bokeh it produces, or its level of sharpness, or just perhaps for its unique character. Some use vintage lenses as an alternative to expensive digital lenses.

They have character

From a technical viewpoint vintage lenses are not better than modern lenses – in fact from an optical viewpoint they are likely quite inferior – in theory anyways. What they are however, is much simpler in design. There is no auto-anything – manual focus is top dog, as is aperture adjustment. They also have qualities that modern lenses often try to avoid in their design, e.g. optical aberrations. Yet it is these imperfections that provide vintage lenses with one thing new lenses often lack – a sense of character. We’re talking contrast, distortion, chromatic aberrations, illumination (flaring), and vignetting. This gives the images created a very distinctive look (although likely not as distinctive as it would coupled with various types of film). Sometimes this is in the way they render out-of-focus regions in a image or perhaps the sharpness of the image, or colour-rendition. Some people like to use vintage lenses because they produce nice contrast, or have nice bokeh, but it is all highly subjective. One person’s “bokeh-monster” will be another nightmare.

Some people may choose to use only vintage 50mm lenses. You may question why someone needs half a dozen different 50mm lenses, but the reality is that they may all have unique, noteworthy attributes. Many manufacturers produced a number of 50mm lenses at any given time, all with differing characteristics. For example, they may have used different (i) lens formulae, (ii) optical glass, (iii) aperture system (e.g number of blades), or (iv) lens speed. A lens is the sum of all its characteristics, not just the focal length.

They are (mostly) available at a good price

One of the main reasons people like to choose vintage lenses is affordability. Most vintage lenses fall into the “reasonably priced” category, usually somewhere in the range of US$80-250. It’s hard to talk too specifically about lens prices because of the broad range of lenses. However within the scope of a particular lens it is also possible to have a wide gamut of prices usually largely dependent on the condition of the lens. There are a lot of good vintage lenses that don’t get a lot of coverage that are extremely well positioned from a price point.

There are of course some vintage lenses that are expensive, but that is usually because they are (i) rare, or (ii) too popular. For example superfast 50mm f/1.2 lenses are not cheap, but you probably don’t need a superfast lens. Others, like say the Zeiss 50mm Pancolar, is expensive because it is well known to be a good lenses. Sometimes a good lens will be talked up by someone in a video – this causes a run on them, and hence pushes up the cost. Some lenses like the Pancolar 55mm f/1.4 are so rare they are often advertised in the C$3-5K range. Vintage lenses are often chosen as an alternative to modern lenses, or perhaps to try out a lens of a certain focal length before buying a modern version. For example, an 85mm equivalent for the Fuji-X system would be the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2 R WR, which retails for about C$1300. It is possible to get an Asahi Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 55mm f/1.8 for about C$100 – slightly slower, but less than 10% of the cost.

They are well built (but can have some flaws)

Lenses of a certain vintage are built like proverbial tanks. Many of those built prior to 1970 are predominantly made of metal and glass. It was in the 1970s that plastics started to creep into the manufacturing process. There are pros and cons to each. More recent vintage lenses likely have lens coatings and optics that are much better than older lenses whereas earlier 35mm lenses featured solidly build body’s with aluminum lens barrels and stainless steel mounts. Of course not all vintage lenses are worthy. The downside is that vintage lenses can suffer from any number of maladies, some superficial like cosmetic scratches on the barrel, some affecting the functionality such as stiff focusing ring, and others more serious affecting the optical surfaces of the lens, e.g haze, scratches, and fungus. The other thing to think about is weight. Modern lenses typically have a lot more optical elements, and hence are larger and heavier than most equivalent vintage lenses.

They provide an education

One of the issues with digital cameras is that so much is automated. That’s not a bad thing in a lot of situations because it allows you to concentrate on framing the shot. However because of this, the inner workings of the camera are sometimes lost to the photographer. Using vintage lenses means you have to gain a more intimate understanding of how apertures work, and master the art of focusing. However on the flip-side you do gain better control of the photographic process.

They are eco-friendly

Lastly, using vintage lenses is very eco-friendly. The lenses already exist, and apart from buying an adapter, which can be used for any vintage lens with the same mount, there is very little in the way of a carbon footprint (save postage if bought online). Well-built products, have a longevity that keeps them out of landfills. Vintage lenses are inherently sustainable for a number of reasons: (i) No requirement for more materials to build the lenses (plastics, electronics, glass); (ii) Little to no pollution; and (iii) Interchangeability, i.e. the same lens can be used on different cameras, and so changing systems only means acquiring a new adapter.

How a f/0.71 lens helped advance TB screening

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Charles G. Wynne (1911-1999) was a lens pioneer, but not in the traditional sense, i.e. his forte was not traditional photographic lenses. We presume sometimes that all advances in photography were made in the realm of cameras, but there are other fields that require lenses as well. Wynne began has optical career at Taylor, Taylor and Hobson Ltd. in 1936, after graduating from Oxford. Wynne worked for TT&H until 1943, when he moved to Wray Optical Works. Here he was not just an assistant, but a lens designer in his own right. His first job at Wray was improving the short focal length aerial reconnaissance lenses that the company made for the RAF.

Wynne designed a series of interchangeable lenses for Wray’s 35mm SLR, the Wrayflex camera, the only British full-frame 35mm SLR camera ever made. Around 1950, there was an opportunity for developing fast lenses for use in the photography of cathode-ray tube (CRT) images and the phosphor screens that were used in X-ray machines. Wynne developed a f/0.71 lens, which although too expensive for industrial CRT photography, was ideally suited the the mobile mass screening program of the 1950s that helped eradicate TB. Wynne likely gleaned some personal satisfaction from this lens, as he had contracted tuberculosis whilst at Oxford. The f/0.71 lens used exposure times eight times shorter than a typical modern photographic lens with an aperture of f/2.0.

The Wynne 64mm f/0.7 lens
  1. Wynne, C.G., Wray, P., “A new form of f/0.71 lens for 35 mm cine-radiography”, Journal of Scientific Instruments, 28, pp.172-173 (1951)
  2. Maxwell, J., Wormell, P.M.J.H., “Charles Gorrie Wynne“, The Royal Society, p.499-514 (2001)

Glass from the past, aka vintage lenses

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When digital cameras started to supplant analog ones, everyone likely thought that the manual focus interchangeable lenses of yore would be relegated to dark closets, attics, and the few who still used film. It became rare to find these lenses, except perhaps languishing in the “used” section of a camera store, often gathering dust. Digital cameras used digital lenses, and as such there was very little need for analog lenses. There were also few means of adapting these lenses for use on DSLR’s, largely because of the lack of mount adapters, but also because of compatibility issues with mirror-based cameras, both full frame and crop-sensor. This changed with the advent of the mirrorless camera which having a shorter distance to the sensor allowed the adoption of lens adapters.

So what is a vintage lens? This is somewhat of a loaded question because there is no definitive answer. One of the defining characteristics of a vintage lens is that it is manual, i.e. it relies on both manual focus, and aperture setting. But there are a lot of manual lenses available. There are lenses available from the 1930’s, 40’s and even the 19th century. But many of these suffer from not being easy to adapt to digital cameras. In all likelihood, anything pre-digital could be construed as vintage, however I hesitate to include the pre-digital lenses with electronic components in them, e.g. auto-focus, because most cannot be easily converted for use on a digital camera. But in the end, vintage really means interchangeable lenses made for cameras that used film, and specifically 35mm film cameras, either SLR or rangefinders.

There are millions of vintage lenses in the world today, the majority of these interchangeable lenses hail from the period 1950-1985, predominantly made in Japan and Europe. Some brands have a large ubiquity in the world of vintage lenses, such as Asahi Takumar, while others such as Minolta’s Rokkor have a more subdued presence, e.g. the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens an example of a star performer. Vintage lenses come in various focal lengths, but many are in the “normal” range 45-58mm. They can be fast, i.e. have a large aperture, aesthetically pleasing, e.g. made of chrome, or just come from a company with an exceptional optical reputation. All vintage lenses have their own character, from optical anomalies and aberrations, to colour rendering, and boken, and the out-of-focus qualities. Many of the Carl Zeiss Jena lenses such as the Flektogon 35mm f/2.4 is renowned for how it renders out-of-focus regions. At the opposite end of the spectrum, is the Jupiter 9, an 85mm f/2 lens made in the USSR – it has a wonderful 15 blade aperture, and what some people call “dreamy bokeh”.

In some cases a particular lens may have been made for only a couple of years, in limited quantities, and in other cases a lens may have evolved over a dozen or more years, with slight changes in lens formulae, glass composition, and mounts. For example Asahi Pentax produced a huge number of Takumar branded lenses in the 1960s. Some like the 8-bladed Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4, a Planar-type lens, almost have legendary status, the optics are that good. The lens evolved over the years from the legendary 8-element Super-Takumar (1964-65) to the thoriated 7-element Super-Takumar (1965-71), Super-Multi-Coated Takumar (1971-72) and SMC Takumar (1972-75). At more than 50 years old, many of these lenses still pass muster. So why choose a vintage lens?

This series will focus on vintage lenses. Over the course of the next few months we will explore various aspects of vintage lenses, from questioning why they are of interest to digging down into the intricacies of choosing a lens, adapters, and how to examine a lens prior to purchase. This won’t be a review of specific lenses (that may come later), but more of a broad overview, providing links to extra information that might be of interest.

The origins of Asahi’s Takumar

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In the days of film cameras, every company had it’s own way of “naming” cameras and lenses. This made it very easy to identify a lens. Asahi Pentax had the ubiquitous Takumar (TA-KOO-MA) name associated with its 35mm SLR and 6×7 lenses. The name would adorn the lenses from the period of the Asahiflex cameras with their M37 mount, through the M42 mount until 1975 when the switch to K-mount came with a change to the lens branding.

Asahi was founded by in 1919 by Kumao Kajiwara as Asahi Optical Joint Stock Co. Asahi began making film projection lenses in 1923, and by the early 1930s was producing camera lenses for the likes of future companies Minolta (1932), and Konica (1933). In 1937 with the installation of a military government in Japan, Asahi’s operations came under government control. By this time Kajiwara had passed away (it is not clear exactly when), and the business passed to his nephew Saburo Matsumoto (possibly 1936?). It was Matsumoto who had the vision of producing a compact reflex camera. In 1938 he bought a small factory in Tokyo and renamed it as Asahi Optical Co. Ltd.

It seems as though the lens series was named in honour of one of the founders brother, Takuma Kajiwara. There might have been the analogy that photography was a means of painting with light, and lenses were like an artists brushes. On a side note, the name Takuma in Japanese is an amalgam of “taku” meaning “expand, open, support”, and “ma” meaning “real, genuine”.

A photograph by Takuma titled “Domestic Life in Japan”, published in the September 1905 issue of Brush and Pencil (“St. Louis Art at the Portland Exposition” XVI(3), p.75).

Takuma Kajiwara (1876-1960) was a Japanese-American photographic artist and painter who specialize d in portraits. Born in Kyushi, Japan he was the third of five brothers in a Samurai family. Emigrating to America at the age of 17, he settled in Seattle, and became a photographer. He later moved to St.Louis and opened a portrait studio, turning from photography to painting. In 1935 he moved to New York. In 1951 he won the gold medal of honour for oils from the Allied Artists of America for his expressionist painting of the Garden of Eden titled “It All Happened in Six Days”. Takuma himself had an interest in cameras, patenting a camera in 1915 (Patent No. US1193392).

Note that it is really hard to determine the exact story due to the lack of accessible information.

Are all 50mm lenses equivalent?

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So a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens, is a 50mm lens, right? Well that’s not exactly true. The focal length of a 50mm lens is always 50mm, regardless of the system it is associated with. The focal length of a lens is independent of the camera system. So a 50mm lens on an SLR will have the same focal length as a 50mm lens on a DSLR, which is the same as one on an APS-C sensor, or a medium-format sensor. What is different is how they behave in terms of angle-of-view (AOV), with respect to a particular sensor size.

Fig.1: 50mm lenses all have the same focal length

Table 1 shows the behavioural differences of 50mm lenses on various systems. For example a 50mm lens from a 35mm rangefinder camera has a (horizontal) AOV of 39.6°, whereas the AOV of an APS-C camera, is 26.6°. This is because due to crop-factors, a 50mm lens on an APS-C sensor is equivalent to a 75mm on a full-frame camera (from an AOV perspective). To get a 39.6° equivalent AOV on an APS-C camera, you need roughly a 33mm lens – but the closest lens to this is a 35mm APS-C lens (35mm×1.5≈52mm).

SystemAOV (diag)AOV (hor)Crop-factorFF equiv.
16mm cine14.5°11.7°×3.4170mm
1″ sensor18.2°14.6°×2.7135mm
Micro-Four Thirds24.5°19.6°×2.0100mm
APS-C31.7°26.6°×1.575mm
film SLR46.8°39.6°×1.050mm
film rangefinder 46.8°39.6°×1.050mm
digital SLR (full-frame)46.8°39.6°×1.050mm
digital Medium (44×33mm)57.4°47.5°×0.840mm
6×7 (72×56mm)84°67.6°×0.525mm
4×5”117°104°×0.2713.5mm
Table 1: Differences in 50mm lenses used on different systems

Note that because a 50mm lens on a Micro-Four-Thirds camera behaves like a 100mm FF lens, most manufacturers won’t sell a native 50mm MFT lens, opting instead for the 50mm FF equivalent – the 25mm. That’s because a 25mm MFT lens provides the “normal” angle-of-view, just like a 35mm APS-C lens, or a 100mm 6×7 lens. A vintage 50mm SLR lens used on an APS-C camera will behave like it was designed for APS-C, i.e. it will have a horizontal AOV of around 26.6°. The remaining 6.5° either side is just cut off because of the smaller sensor (as shown in Figure 2).

Fig.2: A visualization of what a 50mm lens sees on different sensors.

Invariably, all focal lengths are treated similarly. A 35mm is always 35mm, an 85mm is always 85mm. It’s just their behaviour, or rather their “view on life”, that changes.

Ultrafast lenses – the Noctilux 50mm f/1

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After Canon and Nikon gave up on their sub-f/1.1 lenses, there was a lull for a while. In all possibility it was likely considered that film would just get so fast there would be little need for these light behemoths. But high ISO film was only introduced in the mid to late 1970s – Fujicolor 400 (1976), Kodakcolor 400 (1977). Indeed faster films begat faster lenses.

The Leitz 50mm Noctilux f/1 for Leica M cameras appeared in 1976, designed by Walter Mandler (1922-2005) and produced by Ernst Leitz Canada. It was a successor to the earlier Noctilux f/1.2. Bob Schwalberg reviewed the lens in 1976 [1]. His observation was that it had a high optical contrast and almost no flare at f/1, “outimaging” its compatriots the Noctilux f/1.2 and the Summilux f/1.4.

The lens was manufactured for a long time, from 1976-2007. The name Noctilux, was designated for three lenses with differing apertures:

  • Leitz Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 aspherical (1966-1976).
  • Leitz/Leica Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.0 (1976-2007).
  • Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95/50mm ASPH (2008- )

The lens was constructed using only spherical curvatures, as opposed to the f/1.2 which used two aspherical surfaces with a 6/4 design. The earlier design was likely changed because the aspherical lenses were too expensive to manufacture. The f/1 uses a modified Gauss design of seven elements in six groups with an “air-lens” between the second and third elements. The second and fifth elements were made using Noctilux 900403 glass. The 1st, 6th, and 7th elements were made with Lanthanum glass (LaK12, LaF21). The 900403 glass, developed at the Leitz Glass Laboratory had a higher zirconium oxide content giving it a refractive index of 1.9005 and a dispersion value of 40. (This glass had a melting point of 1600°C, and had to be cooled in a controlled manner over 10-12 days).

But it was no light lens. It was 63mm in diameter, and weighed about 600g. It still suffered from the one thing all ultrafast lenses suffer from – a narrow DOF (2” at 5 feet). When released it sold for US$855. They now routinely sell for C$8,000-11,000.

References:

  1. Bob Schwalberg, “50-mm Noctilux f/1: Sharpest superspeed lens yet?”, Popular Photography, 78(2), pp. 80,81,105 (1976) Dominique Guebey Jungle, “Leitz Noctilux 50mm f:1.0”

Further reading:

Superfast lenses – the original Noctilux 50mm f/1.2

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When it was released in 1966, the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 was an altogether different animal. It was great at shooting in low light, expensive and difficult to make. That’s probably why less than 2000 were made. By the mid 1960s, there were a number of players in the sub-f/1.4 field, primarily for shooting in low light. Nikon, Canon, and Minolta all had f/1.2 lenses. Work on the use of aspherical elements in lenses began in the late 1950s.

The Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 was produced from 1966 until 1975, and was the worlds first lens to feature aspherical elements. The name Noctilux is a combination of Nocti, which is derived from the word nocturnal, while Lux is Latin for light.

“Even at f/1.2 the NOCTILUX produces so very little flare that strong light-sources are imaged with only minimum halo surround. Brightly back-lighted subjects, anathema to poorly corrected high-aperture lenses, have clear, accurate outlines.” [2]

This was supposedly the first Leitz lens to sacrifice some resolution in order to gain contrast. Bill Pierce who wrote a brief article on the new lens in 1967 remarked: “To the best of my knowledge, rather extensive in this tiny field, none previous to the Noctilux could deliver a clean, biting journalistic image at maximum aperture.” [1]

“Superior optical contrast due to high correction for coma and all other critical aberrations and due to freedom from internal reflections, make the NOCTILUX the ·ideal high-aperture lens for use with high-speed available-light films.” [2]

The first prototypes were made in April of 1964 Designed by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel (Helmut Marx was Professor Max Berek’s successor as head of the photographic lens design in Wetzlar, and creator of the first Summicron 50 in 1953). The Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 was released in 1966. The Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 is a 6-element Gauss variant with 4 members. It has two aspherical elements (front and rear) which were made on a specially built grinding machine that had to be operated manually. There was only one machine, and only one person capable of operating it (Gerd Bergmann), so many elements had to be discarded as rubbish.

It was sometimes claimed to be the fastest production lens in the world, because other manufacturers lenses often proved to be slower than indicated. After the release in 1966 there was much research to produce an f/1 version of the lens with 3 Aspherical elements, but in 1970 the project was abandoned because the aspherical technology was in its infancy, and the production costs were immense. The f/1.2 lens remained in production until only 1975 with 1757 units produced. A new version of the lens, the Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.2 ASPH was released in 2021, with the construction only minimally changed. The new lens sells at US$7900, which is a bargain considering the old lens can sell for upwards of $US70,000.

References:

  1. Bill Pierce, “Because it was possible”, Popular Photography, 60(1), p.135-156 (1967)
  2. Leica brochure, “50mm NOCTILUX f/1.2”

Further reading:

The other NASA lens – the Angenieux f/0.95

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Before the Zeiss f/0.7 there were other lenses used in the space race. The Ranger program was a series of unmanned missions to space launched by NASA in the early 1960s, primarily to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the moon. Ranger 1, launched in August 1961 failed to launch. It was not until Ranger 7, launched in July 1964, that the first high-resolution images of the lunar surface were obtained.

The mission carried six lenses, two wide-angle, and four narrow-angle that transmitted on two channels. The F (for full) system had one wide-angle and one narrow-angle camera. The P (for partial) channel had 4 cameras: two wide-angle and 2 narrow-angle. The images provided better resolution than was available from Earth based views by a factor of 1000. All 6 cameras were RCA-Vidicon slow scan TV cameras using C-mount optics.

Three of the cameras (A,P3,P4) had a 25mm f/l lens and three had a 76mm f/2 lens [1]. The wide-angle lenses used were made by French optical company Angenieux and were 25mm M1 lenses with an adapter attached to mount them to the Vidicon cameras. Strangely enough the NASA documentation specs [1] these lenses out with f/1.0 apertures, but these lenses seem to actually be f/0.95.

The P.Angenieux Paris 25mm f0.95 Type M1 was developed in 1953. The patent for the lens, was issued in 1955 [2]. It is a 8 element lens in 6 groups. It is derived from the Gauss-type, from which is differs by the fact that each of the front lens, and the rear lens is subdivided into two lenses. This allows for the increase in relative aperture while retaining good correction for spherical aberrations.

You can still pick up one of these lenses today for circa US$500.

Further reading

  1. Ranger VII Photographs of the Moon Part I: Camera “A” Series, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (August 27, 1964)
  2. Pierre Angenieux, “Large Aperture Six Component Optical Objective”, US Patent #2,701,982 (Feb.15, 1955)
  3. Adorable 25s – 25mm F0.95 Speed Lens Comparison on Lumix GH3, 3D-KRAFT! (Feb. 2013)

Was this the fastest lens ever?

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In the May 1975 issue of Popular Photography, Norman Rothschild talked about this lens [1] – the Zeiss 40mm Super-Q-Gigantar f/0.33 for Contarex cameras. A truly remarkable fast lens. Or was it?

The lens was a complete gag. It was first shown at a press dinner at Photokina 1968, but the lens is nothing more than an aspheric condenser lens, “capable of little else but woozy images” [1]. Rothschild actually carried the lens, mounted on a Contarex, around with him for a number of days at Photokina, with lots of people admiring it. He recalls people whispering excitedly that “It must be some new kind of fisheye lens!”, or a newly designed superspeed lens. But few asked what it was, and fewer still asked to look through the viewfinder.

It was the brainchild of Zeiss Ikon’s manager of Public Relations, Wolf Wehran. At Photokina 1966, many of Zeiss’s competitors had displayed their new light gathering heavyweights with apertures of f/1.2 or faster. Wehran, together with a friend in the lens making department then created a lens so unorthdox it could not be ignored. His point was to illustrate that lens speed was not the most important feature of a lens. The lens was always a physical impossibility – it had a diameter of 125mm, and was a 2-element, 1 group lens. The images produced were similar to that of a normal lens with a Softar soft-focus/diffusion filter attached.

The “Q” stands for “Quatsch,” which translates to “nonsense” in German (derived from quatschen – to talk nonsense). The lens itself went up for auction in 2011 at the famous WestLicht Photographica Auction where it sold for €60,000. Not bad for a lens that does nothing!

  1. Norman Rothschild, “The Super-Q-Gigantar lens – it’s a gag, but some people took it rather seriously”, Popular Photography, 72(5), pp.58,62 (1975)