ZEISS DISTAGON ZM T* 18mm F4

Cosina/Zeiss M-mount wide-angle lens, Distagon ZM 18mm / F4 review and photo examples

Gallery

The photo examples were taken with LEICA M9

The photo examples were taken with LEICA M6 +KODAK PORTRA 160
Film was scanned using Nikon’s SUPER COOLSCAN IV.

Review

The Distagon 18mm F4 ZM is a Carl Zeiss branded lens manufactured by Cosina.

As the Distagon name suggests, the lens construction is a retrofocus type, and the lens body is large and heavy for a rangefinder lens.
The wider-angle Distagon 15mm ZM is a lens used for visual measurement that does not work with the rangefinder of Leica M-type cameras, but this lens, the Distagon 18mm ZM, works with the rangefinder.
Lens color variations are available in silver and black, just like other ZM lenses.

By including a blue sky, you can obtain a sharp, high-contrast image. Because I used it at the same time as the Leica Super Elmar, which has the same focal length, I couldn’t use this lens much because the Super Elmar 18mm had a high usage rate. My impression of the shooting results is that the Super Elmar produces soft and soft images, and I think it is a lens with a different character from the Distagon.

Since the viewfinder of a typical rangefinder camera does not have an 18mm frame, you will need to use an external viewfinder to determine the composition. Since the reference positions for distance adjustment and composition are separate, I often set the aperture to F8 and only adjust the composition by eye. This method may give the impression that the focus is not good with a digital camera, so it goes without saying that if the camera is equipped with an EVF, it is better to adjust the focus properly.

I don’t have either lens on hand anymore, but after looking at the results of shooting with the 35mm full-frame sensor Leica M9 and Leica M6 film cameras, I would like to get them again if my pockets allow.
The reason I gave up on these two lenses was that I had acquired the Ms-optics PERAR 17mm, which is large for a rangefinder lens, and this compact lens has some difficulty in depicting the periphery. However, its small size makes it extremely convenient to carry. Also, if the size was acceptable, I could have used Leica R-mount Elmarito 19mm or Super Elmar 15mm for single-lens reflex cameras.

Lens construction diagram from ZEISS History product PDF

Specification

Maker	LEICA	Carl Zeiss	LOMO	Ms-optics
Lens name	SUPER ELMAR 18mm	Distagon 18mm	ATOLL 17mm	PERAR 17mm
Max aperture	3.4	4	2.8	4.5
Min aperture	16	22
Leaf blade	9	10	8	10
Lens Construction	8elements in 7groups	10elements in 8groups	13elements in 10groups	4elements in 4groups
Min distance(m)	0.7	0.7	0.25	0.3
Lens length(mm)	58	47	79	10.2
Max diameter	61	63	73	50
Filter Size(mm)	77mm (with filter holder) IR/UV filter for M8 available	58	–	–
Weight(g)	310	350	400	60
Release date	2009.03	2007.08	2021.03	–
Price(Yen/No-tax)	315,000 yen (when first released) The price has since gone up.	¥145,950	¥44,800-¥59,800	–