Archiver
Mentor
And there I thought I was getting into Contax via the cheap back door with Yashica, hahaha. Contax C/Y has long been on my radar, so I guess it's just a matter of time and budget. Does your Dad have a favourable opinion about the Contax 25mm f2.8? There's one at my local for a fairly reasonable price, and I love my (completely different lens design) Zeiss Biogon 25mm f2.8 ZM.
santino
FSU gear head
If you can get the 25 at a good price go for it. Rumor has it that it is actually a 27. People prefer the 28 because it is cheaper but the 25 is definitely not worse.
Freakscene
Obscure member
My father is responsible for my Contaxaholism. Other kids had their first beer. I got my first Distagon. Terrible.
Honestly, he is of the view that all the Zeiss C-Y lenses apart from the non-apo long lenses are great. I tend to agree, with the serious tendency to split them into the very highly corrected ones like the 21, 50/1.7 and 100/2 and 100 Makro and the character lenses like the 25, 50/1.4 the 85s and 135.
I have a feeling that the 25 is a 26 and the 28 is a 29 or 30. Some thing like that. The 28/2 is a 28.8mm focal length. That is my favourite of those lenses.
Just get one of any, then use it. A lot.
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santino
FSU gear head
seany65
Well-known
Taken using the lens the sticker is on...I would love to see a photo of the sticker
seany65
Well-known
Hmmm, in that case, would it not be a good idea to slightly decentre all lenses if it apparently gives the image a bit of 3d "pop"?
On the other hand would it not be a good idea to deliberately make lenses specifically for "surveillance" to have this "pop" so that they would help the err, "surveillers" with their spying because they would have a slightly better idea of what they were seeing?
Or something.
Freakscene
Obscure member
No, because these lenses will be less critically sharp at the edges than properly centred lenses, and what photographers want is “sharpness”. Or that’s the impression manufacturers seem to have, anyway.
They were just marked for surveillance because the types of sensors used at the time 60s-80s were substantially lower resolution than 35mm film.
As an aside, despite having access to whatever cameras and lenses he wanted, my father bought a Zeiss Contaflex III in 1957 and has used it ever since. Günther Leitz, with whom dad was a friend, gave him a beautiful Leica IIIg and collapsible Summicron when my parents got married in 1959, but it’s still in the box at their house. My father’s view is that the Tessar in the Contaflex is soft-sharp, with good resolution but moderate contrast. It also had enough edge falloff and change in performance between wide open and stopped down, that he could use it how he liked. A lot of his people pictures were shot wide open, but scenes were usually shot at f5.6-8. He was an engineer who understood what the things he worked with were for, and how to get what he wanted out of them. He has a modest but good record of our family life, but if I learned anything from looking at his photos it was to shoot more Irrespective of what camera I had.
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Archiver
Mentor
Your Dad sounds like a cool guy, wielding his Contaflex over the decades and keeping an original IIIg from Gunther Leitz in a box!
As an aside regarding shooting more: I've said this before, I regret not having a decent photographic record of my teenage and young adult years. There are the occasional snapshots, and a time when I took a Kodak disc camera to school when I was 13, but hardly anything else. I don't even have photos of my first girlfriend. It wasn't until I was 30 that i started digital photography, then it became an all consuming passion that eventually became my profession, too. I make up for the lack of teenage and early adulthood photos by documenting everything now, from prosaic breakfasts and the sky on any given day, to trips and visits with family and friends. I also keep detailed journals with daily entries, and often illustrate the entries with images of note.
We're so blessed now, having all manner of gear available to us, even the obscure things like a surveillance only Yashica lens, or being able to round out my Dad's Minolta MD and Pentax K lens collection for not much money at all.
I'm gonna do it
Newbie
This article may shed some light on this discussion: ◎ YASHICA (ヤシカ) YASHICA LENS ML 35mm/f2.8《後期型》（C/Y）
I have the ML 35mm and ML 50mm f1.7 lenses. They are both superbly sharp with a lovely fall off in sharpness away from the plane of focus. The 35mm is a "security lens" as described in the article. The difference between my two ML lenses is the coating. The 35 is clearly uncoated or minimally coated, in my opinion. It's serial number suggests that it was made at the Tomioka factory.
Manufacturers sell new decentred lenses to this day!
I have the ML 35mm and ML 50mm f1.7 lenses. They are both superbly sharp with a lovely fall off in sharpness away from the plane of focus. The 35mm is a "security lens" as described in the article. The difference between my two ML lenses is the coating. The 35 is clearly uncoated or minimally coated, in my opinion. It's serial number suggests that it was made at the Tomioka factory.
Manufacturers sell new decentred lenses to this day!
Freakscene
Obscure member
The Leica ‘Italian flag’ problem caused when some early 6-bit codes were activated can only have been caused by the correction data for the codes being generated using a decentred lens or lenses. Leica have probably the best QA/QC of any consumer lens manufacturer. When my son was about two, if he dropped something or it broke, he would say ‘happened!’ I think that is fitting here.
Archiver
Mentor
Okay, thank you so much for this! I would never have found that article otherwise. Happy new year!