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New old gear – Carl Zeiss Jena DDR Sonnar 135mm f/3.5 M42

Yesterday I posted an old lens I had lying around. I said it’s new but the only thing new is that I’m using it. Well, here’s another one. This is new in the sense that it’s new to me… Other than that I ordered it from a Polish guy and it has to be at least 45 years old. Only bought it because I felt I was missing a lens that could get closer and flatten the background well. Is this one perfect? No. But it works fine. Here it is, the Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm f/3.5 M42. Proudly made in the now defunct East Germany, it’s built like a Panzer, features pristine glass and the mechanics work like a Swiss watch.

It’s practically new considering its age, and a steal for a telephoto… Not bulky at all and it has the same M42 mount as the Helios, so I can use the same adapter. With the crop factor it’s a full frame equivalent of 200mm. It’s only f3.5 but it works pretty well, as a macro it has some decent bokeh, for general use I have no complaints except I can see the dust on it if I don’t clean it. Ok, there are three small downsides / annoyances:
1. Manual focus only. Not a problem on a slow shooting day but it’s hard to turn, so if you want some nice photos you better take your time. I had no luck photographing crows with this.
2. No stabilization. I have to be quite still and shoot pretty fast because my Fuji doesn’t have IBIS either.
3. The stupid pull-out lens hood. The silliest thing to come from German engineering along with the Opel Kadett E and the 2019 Grand Prix. The lens hood has no way to be removed or fixed in place so it just slides out randomly.

Anyway, here’s some decent photos I got with this. SOOC jpegs resized to 50% from the 15MB originals. Yeah, nothing too impressive or artsy here, I’ll probably have to do a photo-walk just with this lens.