Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Apo-Saphir 50mm f/9

Boyer · Contax RF · 1950

single source, unconfirmed our own finding

Also known as: Boyer Apo-Saphir 50mm f/9 · Boyer Apo Saphir 50mm f/9 · Apo-Saphir 9/50 · Apo-Saphir 9/50mm · Apo Saphir 50mm f9 · Boyer Paris Apo-Saphir 9/50 · Apo-Saphir 1:9 F=50 · Apo-Saphir 1:9 F=50mm · Aposaphir 50mm f/9 · ボワイエ アポサフィール 50mm F9

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
No. 513641, from the René-Jacques Contax outfit Contax rangefinder bayonet (seen in the Leitz lot photograph; who fitted it is not recorded) — 513641 (Leitz Photographica Auction 49, lot 207, 'with its original metal keeper') —
  1. Dates. In Fromm and Beltrando's catalogue the 50mm Apo-Saphir appears only in the 1970s range, documented from CEDIS-Boyer data sheets; the pre-1939 range starts at 360mm. Lens no. 513641 is older than that list: Leitz dates the outfit to the 1950s, and the serial number fits that decade. The year given on this page is that decade, the earliest documented date, not a launch year. No source gives one.
  2. Aperture. The galerie-photo catalogue lists the 50 and the 75 at f/9 and the rest of the range at f/10, except 1200 and 2500 at f/12.5. Eric B. wrote in 2006 that the 50 and the 100 were the f/9 lenses. In a 2013 table Henri Gaud first gave the 50 as f/10 stopping to f/256; Dan Fromm corrected it from CEDIS-Boyer data sheets to f/9 stopping to f/45, and Gaud accepted the correction. No. 513641 is engraved 1:9, and its aperture ring, as the Leitz lot photograph shows it, stops at 32, not 45: the 1950s camera lens and the 1970s process lens of the data sheets may simply have been scaled differently.
  3. Coverage. The catalogue gives 48 degrees for every Apo-Saphir from 50 to 300mm, and the CEDIS-Boyer data quoted by Fromm gives the 50 a 45mm figure, which, read as an image circle, would just cover 24×36 (diagonal 43.3mm). Eric B. gave the range about 40 degrees at infinity, 35 for corners as sharp as the centre (2006), and in 2008 said his own 50mm covers 18×24, half-frame. The figures have not been reconciled.
  4. Use. Apo-Saphirs were sold as process lenses for reproduction work, and Rolyn also offered them in enlarger mounts and for scientific work. No source describes the 50mm as a lens for a 35mm camera; no. 513641 is the one documented in a camera mount, a Contax bayonet seen in the Leitz lot photograph. The Boyer lenses that Fromm and Beltrando document as camera lenses are other lines: pre-war f/1.4 Saphirs of 50 to 100mm 'for 35 mm', f/1.9 Saphirs (the 100mm in focusing mounts for Leica without rangefinder coupling, Kino- and VP-Exakta and the Bentzin Primarflex), and Tessar-type Saphirs fitted to French cameras. Eric B. used a 360mm Apo-Saphir on 24×36 for years (2008).
  5. Prices. No price for a 50mm Apo-Saphir on its own is documented. The longer process lenses of the same name are cheap: Leica Classic listed a 240/10, no. 813599, at €90, and Le Brech & Associés offered a 180/10 with three other Boyer lenses at €120–150 in 2017.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Named Apo-Saphir; the plain Saphir taking lenses (double Gauss and Tessar types) and the Saphir B enlarging lenses are different designs (Fromm and Beltrando)
  • Very small glass: one owner gives the front element as 5 mm across (Eric B., galerie-photo forum)
  • Apo-Saphir barrels are threaded at both ends, so the lens can be mounted either way round, and have a slot for Waterhouse stops (Fromm and Beltrando, describing the range)

No. 513641, from the René-Jacques Contax outfit:

  • Front ring engraved 'APO SAPHIR 1:9 F=50', the serial number and 'PARIS' (Leitz lot photograph)
  • Chrome barrel with a knurled aperture ring scaled 9, 11, 16, 22, 32, and a Contax rangefinder bayonet at the rear (Leitz lot photograph)
  • Original metal keeper

Serial-range notes

513641
Fromm and Beltrando date Boyer serial numbers across lens types. They say any number above 250000 must be post-war, the earliest post-war lens they had seen being a 50/3.5 Saphir no. 250787 on a 1946 Cornu; a 240/10 Apo-Saphir no. 689511 has a quality-control card dated October 1964, and no. 775003 one dated December 1967. A 50/3.5 Saphir no. 584953 is on a camera said to date from 1960. Against those points 513641 falls in the 1950s, which agrees with the decade Leitz gives for the outfit. P-H Pont places 700000 around 1958, which would make it earlier still; the 1964 card is not consistent with Pont. The same authors note that not all Boyer lenses have serial numbers.

Specifications

Formula
Heliar type, five elements in three groups (Fromm and Beltrando, for the range): cemented doublet, central singlet, cemented doublet (Fromm and Bigler, galerie-photo forum)
Construction
5 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range
f/9–f/32
Country
France

What reviewers say

No reviews aggregated yet — this family is still in the research queue. Written one? We'd love to index it.

History

The Apo-Saphir was Boyer’s process lens: a five-element, three-group Heliar-type design made for reproduction benches, with barrels threaded at both ends and a slot for Waterhouse stops. Eric B., writing on the galerie-photo forum as someone who worked with the firm, adds that an earlier version built from two three-element groups, like a Dagor, dates from before 1939 and is the weaker design. Before the war the range began at 360mm and ran to 1250mm. By the 1970s it reached down to 50 and 75mm at f/9 and up to a 2500mm f/12.5 built for the military and used to film nuclear tests. Rolyn sold the lenses in enlarger mounts and for laboratory work.

Boyer was founded in Paris in 1895 by Antoine Boyer and became Boyer Frères under his sons André and Marcel, at 25 boulevard Arago. After André’s death in 1925 Marcel sold the firm to André Lévy, and from then until Lévy’s death in 1965 his wife, the optical engineer Suzanne Lévy-Bloch, was the only person designing Boyer lenses. The firm failed around 1970 and was taken over by CEDIS under M. Kiritsis; CEDIS-Boyer did the optical calculation and final assembly, bought in most parts, and closed in 1982 after Kiritsis died. In Fromm and Beltrando’s catalogue the 50mm Apo-Saphir appears only in the 1970s range.

A 50mm f/9 is an odd lens to find in a working photographer’s camera bag. The one example documented in a camera outfit belonged to René-Jacques, a member of the Groupe des XV with Doisneau and Ronis, and comes with his two Contax IIIa bodies, his Zeiss lenses and an Elmar adapted to the Contax. Leitz dates the outfit to the 1950s, and the lens’s number fits that decade, well before the catalogue that lists it. The lot photograph shows it in a Contax rangefinder bayonet, engraved APO SAPHIR 1:9 F=50 and PARIS, with an aperture ring running from 9 to 32. Whether Boyer made it in that mount, or a process lens was fitted to the Contax by a workshop, as the Elmar in the same outfit was adapted, is not recorded. Nor is it agreed what it covers: the catalogue’s 48 degrees would fill a 35mm frame, while another 50mm’s owner says his covers only half of one.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

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Sample photo wanted — shot with a Apo-Saphir 50mm f/9? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

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Sources (10)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.