F-Distagon 16mm f/2.8 (Contarex)

The F-Distagon 16mm f/2.8 was the Contarex system’s only fisheye and one of the last lenses Carl Zeiss added to it; English Wikipedia’s lens table dates only the Planar 85mm f/1.4 later, to 1974. Pacific Rim Camera dates the fisheye to 1973 and gives Zeiss’s product code as 11.2442. Leitz Photographica Auction dates every example it has offered to 1973 as well. It is a full-frame, or diagonal, fisheye: the 180° field runs corner to corner across the 24 × 36 mm frame rather than drawing a circle inside it. Pacific Rim and Flashback Camera both give 8 elements in 7 groups, and Flashback weighed its lens at 475 g. The domed front element cannot take a screw-in filter, so the lens carries a turret of four filters inside it: UV, orange OR57, yellow Y50 and blue B11. Flashback describes sliding the ring up and turning it to change filters. Pacific Rim notes that the built-in shade barely rises above the front element, which is therefore largely unprotected. Like the Contarex system lenses in general it has no aperture ring, and the iris is set by the wheel on the body.

Pacific Rim gives the quantity as 150, and Leitz’s lot texts give the same “total production”; Flashback says 150 were sold in 1973, and English Wikipedia, citing Pacific Rim, calls the figure an estimate. The lens came late. English Wikipedia records that Zeiss Ikon stopped making cameras in 1972, so the fisheye went on sale for a system whose bodies were no longer being built, apart from a few assembled afterwards. Pacific Rim puts its scarcity down to that late arrival and to the limited uses of a fisheye. Every Contarex example seen has a serial between 5573353 and 5573484. Christie’s sold 5573353 inside a Super Electronic outfit with two black Contarex Electronic bodies, R56944 and R55842, as part of a single lot titled “A definitive Zeiss Ikon Contarex Collection”. The lens is black, with a knurled silver focusing ring, and the front ring of Flashback’s 5573408 reads “F-Distagon 1:2,8 f=16mm”, “Carl Zeiss” and the serial, with T* in red. Flashback says it was made by Carl Zeiss Oberkochen with T* coating. Christie’s lists its lens as an F-Distagon T*, and Leitz has titled its lots “F-Distagon 2.8/16mm T*” since its sixth auction. The lens is sometimes described as a 1960s design made before T* coating, but every dated source puts it in 1973, and Christie’s, Flashback and all but the first Leitz lot describe it as T*.

The same name and specification also appear in two other mounts, and each has its own page or its own maker’s line. The Contax/Yashica F-Distagon T* 2.8/16 of 1975 also has 8 elements in 7 groups, a 180° field and the same four built-in filters. Rollei sold an F-Distagon 2.8/16 HFT for its QBM bayonet, and Leitz has sold an HFT example for M42. Frank Mechelhoff’s QBM guide gives that lens 8/7 and 180°, and has it built 1972–1994 with HFT from 1972. If that date is right, the Rollei lens was in production no later than the Contarex one. No source here shows that the three share one computation. Mechelhoff gives a Contarex origin for the QBM 18mm and 25mm lenses, but none for the 16mm. The weights also differ: 475 g measured for the Contarex lens, 460 g on Zeiss’s C/Y data sheet and 343 g in Mechelhoff’s QBM table. So the pages stay separate.

The versions are easy to tell apart in photographs. The C/Y and Rollei lenses have aperture rings, and the C/Y lenses Leitz has sold carry 5862xxx serials, against 55733xx–55734xx for the Contarex lens. Leitz has used the same title, “Carl Zeiss F-Distagon 2.8/16mm T*”, for Contarex and C/Y lots, and the C/Y lenses have fetched a fraction of the price, so the mount has to be read from the description or the pictures. Flashback’s Contarex lens came with a Contax/Yashica F-Distagon front cap, so a C/Y cap is not evidence of a C/Y lens.

No launch price is known: the Zeiss Ikon-Voigtländer US price list of October 1971, the latest Contarex list in the sources, predates the lens. At Leitz the lens has sold for €3,600 (Auction 13), €4,320 (Auction 19), €5,280 (Auction 21) and €6,000 (Auction 28), rising with each sale. These are hammer prices including buyer’s premium, all under the margin scheme, for lenses graded A/B or A- with caps, keeper or both. Two other lots, one with its case, went unsold. In 2026 Flashback Camera in Tokyo was asking ¥380,000, reduced from ¥410,000. When buying, look first at the exposed front element for scratches and cleaning marks; Flashback’s lens had faint wiping marks on the front and slight coating deterioration or dust on the inner elements. Check that the filter turret moves through all four positions and that the filters are clean, since Flashback notes minor ageing on its lens’s filters. Check that the helicoid turns freely (Flashback found its lens’s slightly firm), and with the lens off the camera, that the diaphragm opens and closes. Leitz lots have come with caps, a keeper, a case or, once, the warranty card. On a modern camera it needs an adapter that works the lens’s own iris.