Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135mm F3.5 mad in JENA DDR

The classic SONNAR lens design stands for excellent sharpness a good contrast and low chromatic aberrations.

My first impression of my 135mm the lens was full of respect to the great build quality, the smooth focusing and after the first test shoots a complete "yes" to all the mentioned characteristics of the SONNAR.

For 135mm the minimum focus distance of 100cm is outstanding. Other 135mm lenses like the Minolta MD Rokkor are in this discipline with 150cm far away form the Sonnar. This gives you some more close up capabilities even wide open at 3.5 with good contrast and great color reproduction with this MC (muliti coated) lens.

The integrated lens hood works as well as on the first day. The feeling to work with such an old manual focus lens is something special. The click of every aperture is exact and well defined. The well damped smooth focus is on par with my finest manual focus lenses like the TAKUMAR or the "tank-like"  TAMRON SP 90mm 2.5 MACRO 52B (early full metall version). 

For my way of working with manual lenses, adapted on a FUJI X or Olympus Pen together with the focus peaking and 10x zoom of the focus point is essential for the joy of use and the result, that the focus way is long enough and with no variable resistance. I have a copy of a Russian Biotar copy the Helios 44/2; a great optic but with a bad manual focus feeling. Thus no joy to use! Iam shure the SONNAR will be with me not only for the test shooting.

The next two shots how smooth the bokeh of this lens is and with a very low level chromatic aberrations. The micro contrast gives you a lot of opportunities for monochrome Lightroom work.

All shots here are wide open at F 3.5.

to be continued...