Zeiss C SONNAR ZM T* 50mm

Cosina/Zeiss M-mount standard lens, C Sonar ZM 50mm review and photo examples

Gallery

LEICA M6 +KODAK E100VS reversal film
Film scanning was done with Minolta’s DiMAGE Scan Multi PRO and VueScan.

Review

C SONNAR 50mm is a standard lens released by Kocina under the Zeiss brand.
The first Kocina Zeiss standard lens with a focal length of 50mm was the Planar ZM 50mm F2 from the ZM lens series, and this lens was released in 2006. The “C” at the beginning of the lens name is thought to stand for “Classic,” as in past Kocina/Zeiss brand lenses.
The lens is a classic series lens with a maximum aperture of F1.5 and the back three elements are laminated lenses.
The CANON L39 mount 50mm F1.5, NIKON L39 mount 50mm F1.4, and Jupiter3 50mm F1.5 lenses also use the same Zonar format. This format was often seen in past rangefinder lenses.

Although the film used was KODAK E100VS, a film that emphasizes color saturation, the images are not classic, but rather modern lenses with a crisp and crisp look, with little peripheral distortion and no suspicious atmosphere like older lenses.

In the era of SLR cameras, standard lenses with a focal length of 50mm were widely used with the double-Gaussian Planar format, which was easy to back-focus, and the Sonar format was used for long focal length lenses such as 135mm.
Until the release of this lens, the Sonnar format in modern standard lenses was developed by Ms. Miyazaki of Ms-optics, who released the MS-Mode Dual 50mm F1.3 and the SONNETAR 50mm F1.1, among others. These lenses were developed from the Sonnar format.

Lens construction diagram from ZEISS History product PDF

Specification

Lens name	C BIOGON	DISTAGON	C BIOGON	C SONNAR	TELE-TESSAR
Focal length	21	35	35	50	85
Max aperture	4.5	1.4	2.8	1.5	4
Min aperture	22	16	22	16	22
Leaf blade	10	←	←	←	←
Lens Construction	8elements in 6groups	10elements in 7groups	7elements in 5groups	6elements in 4groups	5elements in 3groups
Min distance(m)	0.5	0.61	0.7	0.9	0.9
Lens length(mm)	31	65	55	45	70
Max diameter	53	63	52	56	54
Filter Size(mm)	46	49	43	46	43
Weight(g)	190	381	200	250	310
Release date	2007.6	2015.8	2008.5	2006.8	2009.5
Price(Yen/No-tax)	¥106,500-	¥218,000-	¥78,000-	¥105,000-	¥74,800-