I don't know who is still around who is reliable for opening
and cleaning old lenses. First of all, make sure it needs
cleaning. Shine a flashlight through it and see if it appears
hazy or if there are any particles inside. If its clear leave it
alone.
You may know that the Sonnar is a remarkable lens. Ludwig
Bertele, who designed it, was mostly self taught and was an utter
genius of optics. It is a very high performer but difficult to
make. Bertele wanted to cure some of the problems with the
Triplet (also a remarkable design) but since there was no
anti-flare coating available using air spaced elements resulted
in large amounts of flare. Bertele got around this by using
elements of low index of refraction glass in place of air. He was
able to correct the aberrations up to f/1.5 without creating
severe flare. The Sonnar type fell out of popularity when
anti-reflection coatings were developed. The double Gauss lens,
as typified by the Zeiss Planar of Paul Rudolf (another genius)
and later further developed by Lee and Warmisham. Among the
highest performing of the older Planar types is the Leitz
Summicron by Walter Mandler. The Sonar will hold its own with these.
I wonder if Ken Hough, who is on this list, still does lens
servicing.
On 10/25/2021 1:20 PM, titrisol (titrisol) wrote:
I inherited an old CarlZeissJena Sonnar 5cm/1.5 that my mom found while cleaning my grandma's estate
The lens seems to be in good shape, glass is clean, and aperture is fine but I'd like to have it professionally cleaned.
Do you guys know of someone that provides such service???
As background, my grandpa had a Zeiss camera (Contax) that he used in the late 30s and 40s
He then switched to Leica in the late 40s and the camera disappeared in the mid 60s when my uncles used it.
According to my mother, he bought the Zeiss from one of the Italian-Jewish people that came to Ecuador in the 30s and were friends of the family for a long time.
The lens is a Type 1 (1932) which according to Thiele's book is 1 in 100 (aperture going to f/8 only); type 2 came very soon after with aperture to f/11
Photos here:
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