CONTAX-N VARIO SONNAR 24-85
Standard zoom lenses for the digital camera era
A review and photo examples of Contax N mount standard zoom lens Vario Sonnar 24-85mm
Table of contents
Gallery
The sample photos were taken with the SONY α7Sii
Review
1．Usage
The Vario-Sonnar 24-85mm is a high-spec version of a standard zoom lens for the CONTAX N mount. The lens I own was a lens that had been modified for EOS mount with broken aperture control (probably the ribbon cable connecting to the board had come loose) that I bought at a camera shop on the outskirts of Shinjuku.
At the time, I was using it with a LEICA M-P typ240 with a LEICA-M / EOS mount adapter, so the fact that the aperture did not move was not a problem because I could only shoot wide open because the mount adapter had no signal contacts.
Later, when I got an EOS-1Ds MKIII and started using it, it was still inconvenient that I could not narrow the aperture. I have already gotten rid of these two bodies, but I kept the lens because it was a rare item.
This lens is luxuriously made for a standard lens, and I can understand the desire to use it with other mounts, but like a typical zoom lens, it has distortion at the wide-angle end, and even though it is T* coated, it is not very resistant to backlighting, and it goes without saying that the latest zoom lenses have better performance.
An unmodified CONTAX N mount can be obtained for around 30,000 yen, so if you are a Sony mirrorless α user and own a CONTAX N mount adapter, it may be worth considering, but I don’t think it’s a wise choice to purchase an expensive α-N mount adapter just for this lens.
Also, although the lens has an aperture ring, it is not an actual aperture but is apertured by an electrical signal, so when using via a mount adapter, the aperture is controlled by the camera and the aperture ring often does not function.
2．Lens overview
The Vario-Sonnar 24-85mm is a high-spec version of the standard zoom lens for the CONTAX N mount, and is a general-purpose zoom lens that covers focal lengths from 24 to 85mm. There are also low-cost versions of the standard zoom lens with focal lengths from 28 to 80mm and maximum apertures of F3.5 to 5.6.
The original mount of this lens, the CONTAX N mount, was released as a lens for Kyocera Contax’s N system cameras, along with the film camera CONTAX N. This lens has a fully electrified mount in consideration of its use with the CONTAX N Digital, a digital camera equipped with a 35mm full-frame sensor that was released later.
Although I’m going off topic from the lens overview, the CONTAX N Digital was released with a 35mm full-frame sensor at a time when most consumer interchangeable lens digital cameras, except for professional cameras such as Kodak, were equipped with APS-C size sensors.
This sensor was made by bonding multiple small sensors together to reduce costs, and false colors that occur at the seams were avoided by image processing. This method is not a problem for normal photography, but the fact that a boundary line appears when overexposing has seriously damaged the reputation of the camera.
At the time, it was cheaper than a professional camera, but it was still a reasonably priced camera, so I was put off by the fact that users who didn’t actually use it seemed to find flaws that were not noticeable in normal photography and make a fuss about them. As for the Contax N, I can’t say much about it because I haven’t actually used it, but it’s a real shame that Kyocera/Contax, which introduced the 35mm full-frame sensor early on, went out of the camera business, and the Contax brand, which currently has a certain reputation on the used market, has disappeared.
3．Medium format digital trial
After selling a body that could use EOS lenses, I came across a second-hand TECHART TCX-01 adapter for using Canon EF mount lenses with a HASSELBLAD X camera at a map shop near Shinjuku Station, and bought it hoping that I could use this lens with the HASSELBLAD X2D.
When an AF-capable lens is attached to the X2D, autofocus (AF) can be selected in the focus mode, but when I attached this lens to the X2D via the TECHART TCX-01 (firmware 6.0.0), AF could not be selected in the X2D menu screen with this combination.
Since this lens is a lens that focuses physically, I found that it can be used in manual focus (MF) mode.
In order to check the operation of the TECHART TCX-01 and a genuine Canon lens with X2D, I tried a genuine Canon EF mount lens with the kind permission of a local camera shop. I found that lenses equipped with old lens motors and USM (lenses that focus physically) cannot select AF mode, just like the VARIO SONNAR 24-85, but can operate in MF. I found that the latest STM lenses that focus electrically cannot select AF mode, and even if you select MF and turn the focus ring, the focus position does not move, so they are completely unusable.
According to the Focus Studio announcement in June 2023, firmware V7.0.0 is compatible with “Hasselblad X2D 100C (Ver. 2.0.0) (Release date: 2023-06-13)”, so AF may work, but I disposed of the mount adapter before the firmware update. Also, the X2D firmware was updated to 3.1.0 in December 2023.
I tried this lens on X2D, even though it is manual focus, and found that at the wide end of 24mm there was vignetting in the four corners, and as it moved towards the telephoto end of 85mm the vignetting got better but was not completely eliminated.
The vignetting at 24mm is as shown below, and the purple areas are completely missing data.
When using a 44mmx33mm sensor, cropping 1:1 discards the sides but leaves almost the entire vertical area usable. When cropping 3:2, 9648 pixels remain out of the 11227 pixels wide, so about 14% is lost, and 37mm of the 44mm sensor is usable, showing that this lens is designed correctly for 35mm film and 35mm full-frame sensors.
Specification and Competitor
| Items | Value | Note |
| Focal length(mm) | 24〜85 | |
| Max aperture | 3.5〜4.5 | |
| Min aperture | 22 | |
| Lens Construction | 14elements in 12groups | |
| Min distance(m) | 0.5 | |
| Lens length(mm) | 71 | Distance from mount surface |
| Max diameter(mm) | 85 | |
| Filter Size(mm) | 82 | |
| Weight(g) | 583 | EOS mount modified product |
Reference links
Update history
- 2024.9.8
- 2024.02.12:First draft
Affiliate Link
- Amazon Affiliate link for CONTAX
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- Amazon Affiliate link for CONTAX books
