Planar 50mm f/2 (Contarex)

Carl Zeiss · Contarex · 1958

our own finding

Also known as: Planar 50mm f/2 Contarex · Contarex Planar 50mm F2 · Contarex Planar 50mm f/2 · Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F2 Contarex · Zeiss Contarex Planar 50mm f2 · Contarex 50mm f2 · Contarex Planar 2/50 · Contarex Planar 50/2 · Planar 2/50 Contarex · Planar 2/50mm Contarex · f. Contarex Planar 2/50mm · Planar 1:2 f=50mm · Planar 1:2 f 50mm · Planar 2/50 · Planar (Blitz) 1:2 f=50mm · Blitz Planar 50mm · Blitz-Planar 2/50 · B-Planar 50mm f/2 · B-Planar f/2 50mm · Flash Planar 2/50mm · プラナー 50mm F2 コンタレックス · コンタレックスプラナー 50/2 · Contarex Planar 50mm

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Chrome (11.2401)	Contarex	1958	2372892–2376858 (Leitz and Christie's; Leitz dates 2372892 and 2374384 to about 1960) 2616325–2616424 (Christie's, Yahoo! Auctions Japan) 3177501–3180598 (Leitz, on a Special dated 1960; Christie's)	—
Black, without flash coupling	Contarex	—	3248962 (Leitz, on black-paint Bullseyes dated 1962)	—
B-Planar / Blitz-Planar, black (11.2412)	Contarex	1965–1973	3701172 (Christie's, 'blitz') 3812214–3812989 (Leitz and Christie's: 3812460 and 3812989 'flash'; 3812214 and 3812315 black) 4500920–4803848 (Christie's, 'blitz', on Professionals K45834 and K45895 and a first-model Super) 4946079–4947100 (Leitz, 'Flash', on a Professional of about 1966; Christie's, black)	—

Construction: the Zeiss Ikon US catalogues of April 1960 and May 1961 give 6 elements, 45° and f/22, and the April 1960 catalogue draws them as 6 in 4: a positive front element, a cemented pair, the stop, a cemented pair and a positive rear element. Phillip Reeve, Kamerastore, Flashback Camera and English Wikipedia give 6/4. Pacific Rim Camera prints 4/3 and 47°, which no other source supports.
Production: 37,768 for both versions, the largest figure for any Contarex lens, from Pacific Rim (1957–1973) and Flashback Camera (sold 1958–1973). Neither splits it between chrome and black. Pacific Rim and English Wikipedia start the lens in 1957, perhaps the year production began; it was shown with the camera at Photokina 1958 (Eckman, English Wikipedia), and Zeiss Ikon's US trade bulletin of 1 April 1960 announced that the factory had begun shipping to the US. This page uses 1958.
Weight and size are dealer and reviewer figures, not factory ones: 239 g measured on a chrome lens (Flashback Camera) and 237 g (Kamerastore); 65 × 44 mm (Reeve) and 62 × 42 mm (Kamerastore). Nine blades from Reeve and Kamerastore.
Closest focus: 12 in (0.3 m) in the 1960 and 1961 catalogues, which describe the chrome lens, and 30 cm in Reeve's review. The B-Planar focuses to 0.38 m (Flashback Camera, the scale in Leitz's photographs of no. 4946079, and a reader of Reeve's review). The 1960 trade bulletin says the 35mm and 50mm lenses automatically compensate for the light lost at close distances; the 1968 list extends that to the 25–55mm lenses.
Price: $135 is the US list price of the lens alone in Zeiss Ikon's Contarex catalogue of April 1960; the camera with it was $450, the body $315. The April 1960 trade bulletin gives the dealer net for that $450 outfit as $274.65 plus $27.47 excise tax, $302.12 in all. $153 on 1 May 1961 (chrome); the B-Planar $189 on 1 March 1968 and $240 on 1 October 1971, $160 net to a dealer buying one or two in February 1971. All are list prices before local sales tax. The German figure is for the outfit, not the lens: camera-wiki gives 1450 DM as the advertised price of the Contarex with this Planar around 1962–63, and Eckman gives the same 1450 DM as the German list price.
Filters and accessories: the May 1961 list gives Bayonet 56 filters and the 56 mm bayonet hood 20.0712 shared with the 85mm and 135mm lenses, or 49 mm screw-in filters, and adapter ring 20.1639 to attach the Monocular 8×30 B to the Contarex; the March 1968 list restricts that ring to the 50mm Planar or Tessar. Pacific Rim gives B56 and S49.
Prototypes, not entered as variants: Leitz Auction 38 sold a Contarex Planar 2/50 prototype numbered '120 99 V52', with a feet scale, dated to the 1950s, for €3,600 including buyer's premium, describing it as the first Planar made for small-format cameras; Leitz Auction 29 sold a black and chrome Blitz Planar marked 'Versuchsobjektiv' (test lens), number '12099 V 56/2', for €1,020 including premium, dating it to about 1955, ten years before the production Blitz. Leitz Auction 36 also sold a 1969 Planar 50mm f/1.8 prototype for the Contarex, of which it says probably fewer than five were made, for €7,200 including premium; it is a different lens.

How to tell them apart (expand)

No aperture ring: as on the other automatic Contarex lenses, the aperture is set by the wheel on the camera body. On any other camera it needs an adapter with its own aperture ring
Engraved Carl Zeiss Nr … Planar 1:2 f=50mm on the front ring; the bayonet lugs are on the camera, not on the lens
The focusing ring turns about 240° between 0.3 m and 1 m and a further 40° or so to infinity (Reeve)
Not the Zeiss ZM, Loxia or Makro-Planar 50mm f/2, nor the Contax/Yashica Planar 50mm f/1.4 or f/1.7, which have their own mounts; and not the Tessar 50mm f/2.8 or S-Planar 50mm f/4 for the Contarex

Chrome (11.2401):

Satin-chrome barrel and knurled chrome focusing ring; Flashback Camera calls it the white-barrel (early) version
Distance scale down to 0.3 m / 12 in, and no guide-number ring behind the focusing ring
The Bullseye's and the Special's standard lens: Leitz has sold it on Bullseyes T85939 and T93040 and on Special U25701

Black, without flash coupling:

Dark-painted barrel and focusing ring, which Leitz calls black, with a chrome front bayonet ring; front engraving Carl Zeiss Nr 3248962 Planar 1:2 f=50mm, with no flash marking
No guide-number ring, and a distance scale marked 0.35 m, closer than the B-Planar's 0.38 m limit (Leitz lot photographs)
Known only on black-paint first-model Bullseyes

B-Planar / Blitz-Planar, black (11.2412):

Black barrel with a bare-aluminium knurled focusing ring
A guide-number ring behind the focusing ring, scaled 10–80 (metres) and 32–260 (feet) with a sliding index (Leitz photographs of no. 4946079)
For normal metering the ring must sit where two yellow arrows meet; turned away from them, it couples the aperture to the focus distance for flash
Closest focus 0.38 m / 15 in, against 0.3 m for the chrome lens
Sold in the US as the B-Planar; Leitz writes 'Flash' Planar and Christie's 'blitz'

Chrome (11.2401): The lens the Contarex was launched with, catalogue number 11.2401. Zeiss Ikon's US catalogue of April 1960 lists it at $135 alone and the camera with it at $450 ($315 for the body); the US list of 1 May 1961 prices it at $153, "automatic preset". It is absent from the US list of 1 March 1968, which offers only the black B-Planar, so the chrome lens had left the US catalogue by then; no source gives the year it stopped. Leitz sold T85939 (about 1960) with chrome no. 2372892 for €720 and Special U25701 (1960) with chrome no. 3177501 for €1,440, both including buyer's premium.
Black, without flash coupling: One lens, no. 3248962, seen in three Leitz lots: twice on black-paint Bullseye Z47278 (1962), unsold at an estimate of €8,000–10,000 and then sold for €4,560 including buyer's premium, and once on black-paint Bullseye Z47236 (1962), unsold. Two bodies cannot have carried the same lens at once, so either the lens moved between them or one record is wrong. Its number falls about three years before the 1965 Blitz Planar, and the lot photographs show the chrome lens's barrel layout, without the Blitz guide-number ring. Zeiss Historica (Fall 2002), as cited by Mike Eckman, says black paint was a factory special order at a 185 DM premium, that it could be applied to cameras and lenses already sold, and that most black Contarexes are chrome ones painted over. That makes this a special-order finish rather than a catalogue model: no price list names a black Planar before the B-Planar.
B-Planar / Blitz-Planar, black (11.2412): The chrome lens's optics in a black mount with flash automation, which Pacific Rim describes as varying the aperture with the focus distance; English Wikipedia's lens table dates it to 1965 and calls it optically identical. The B-Distagon 35mm f/4 has the same coupling. It was the standard lens of the second-generation bodies alongside the Planar 55mm f/1.4 and the Tessar 50mm f/2.8: on the US list of 1 March 1968 it costs $189 alone, $634 with the Super and $504 with the Professional, and on 1 October 1971 $240. Zeiss Ikon's confidential dealer schedule of 15 February 1971 gives the same $240 list and $160 net to a dealer buying one or two. Flashback Camera gives its closest focus as 38 cm; the Leitz photographs of no. 4946079 show a scale ending at 0.38 m and 15 in, and a reader of Phillip Reeve's review reports 38 cm for the black lens against 30 cm for the older chrome one. Eckman found that with the ring set for flash he could not stop the lens down on his Bullseye, and was unsure whether his copy was faulty. Leitz sold an unnumbered Professional with no. 4946079 for €780 including buyer's premium.

Serial-range notes

the whole number: The Planar's numbers are interleaved with those of the other Contarex lenses: Christie's lists a Tessar 50mm f/2.8 as no. 3293473, and Leitz a Distagon 35mm f/4 as no. 3596354, between Planar numbers. A number therefore dates this lens only roughly and cannot be counted within the model. The dates below are auction houses' dates, usually for the camera the lens came on. Christie's names the finish only for black lenses; its unmarked Planars numbered below 3,200,000 are taken as chrome here.
2372892–2376858: The launch block, chrome: 2372892 (Leitz, on Bullseye T85939, c.1960), 2374384 (Leitz, on Bullseye T93040, 1960), 2375740 and 2376434 (Christie's, on Bullseyes) and 2376858 (Leitz, loose).
2616325–2616424, 3177501–3180598: Further chrome numbers: 2616325 (Christie's, on Special U25869), 2616424 (a Yahoo! Auctions Japan kit), 3177501 (Leitz, on Special U25701, 1960), 3180487 and 3180598 (Christie's, on Bullseyes), and 3180496 on the Gemini IV engineering model V-102 that Leitz offered in Auction 48, which it dates to about 1961.
3248962: The only black lens without the flash coupling, recorded on two different black-paint Bullseyes; see that variant.
3698597–3702248: Christie's lists 3698597 and 3702248 as plain Planars, on Bullseye G32851 and first-model Super G34518, and 3701172 in between as a 'blitz' lens on an Electronic. The Blitz version had begun by this block, so the plain descriptions may only mean the cataloguer did not note the ring.
3812214–4947100: Black and Blitz numbers: 3812214, 3812315, 3812460, 3812989, 4500920, 4802844, 4803848, 4946079 and 4947100. Every lens in this range whose finish is stated is black.

Specifications

Formula: Planar (double-Gauss): 6 elements in 4 groups, a single positive element in front, a cemented doublet either side of the stop and a single positive element at the rear
Construction: 6 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range: f/2–f/22
Diaphragm blades: 9
Min. focus: 0.3 m
Weight: 239 g
Filter: 49 mm, Bayonet 56 (B56), or 49 mm screw-in
Years manufactured: 1958–1973
Country: West Germany
Coating: All air-to-glass surfaces hard-coated (Zeiss Ikon US catalogue, May 1961); a single layer, as Phillip Reeve notes
Material: Satin chrome (11.2401); black with a bare-aluminium focusing ring (B-Planar 11.2412)
Original price: $135, the US list price of the lens alone in Zeiss Ikon's Contarex catalogue of April 1960 (11.2401, chrome); $153 on the US list of 1 May 1961. The black B-Planar (11.2412) listed at $189 on 1 March 1968 and $240 on 1 October 1971. US list prices, before local sales tax. (today $1,430)

What reviewers say

Phillip Reeve (blog) — On a Sony A7 the lens is remarkably even across the frame and very sharp by f/8, with little distortion and a very solid all-metal build, but it flares easily, vignettes strongly and renders busy bokeh at f/2; he finds it hard to recommend against cheaper or newer 50s.
Mike Eckman (blog) — Shooting it on his Bullseye with Tri-X and Fuji 400, he found it sharp from corner to corner, with excellent colour and no visible coma or vignetting; the camera, not the lens, is what he would leave on the shelf.
Erwin Puts (blog) — Zeiss's own MTF graphs for the Planar 50mm show an almost flat field with very little astigmatism; stopping down adds fine detail but not overall contrast, which explains the smooth, Hasselblad-like rendering he credits the Contarex lenses with.

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Chromatic aberration: Very slight
Vignetting: Strong wide open
Flare & ghosting: Poor
Distortion: Slight barrel

Optical formula — Planar (double-Gauss): 6 elements in 4 groups, a single positive element in front, a cemented doublet either side of the stop and a single positive element at the rear

ⓘ What these charts mean

MTF (modulation transfer function) shows how much contrast the lens keeps at a given fineness of detail, from the center of the frame to the corner — the coarse curves track punch, the fine ones resolving power, and a gap between solid and dashed lines means astigmatism. Relative illumination (falloff) shows how much darker the corners are than the center at each aperture. Manufacturers only began publishing these for modern lenses; no 1950s maker issued them, which is why older families here cite period magazine bench tests instead.

History

The Planar 50mm f/2 was the standard lens of the Contarex and, by the usual count of 37,768, the most numerous lens Carl Zeiss Oberkochen made for it. It was one of the six lenses announced with the camera at Photokina 1958, and Flashback Camera calls it the Bullseye’s standard lens. Zeiss Ikon’s US catalogue of April 1960 priced it at $135 alone and the camera with it at $450. The same catalogue praised it for “an exceptionally flat image with uniform and needle-sharp resolution over the entire field” and for focusing to 12 inches, close for a 50mm of the day. Optically it is a six-element, four-group double-Gauss Planar, drawn in that catalogue with a single element at each end and a cemented pair either side of the stop. Pacific Rim Camera prints 4 elements in 3 groups, which no other source supports. Like every automatic Contarex lens it has no aperture ring. The body sets the diaphragm, and the lens compensates automatically for the light lost at close range. On any other camera it needs an adapter with its own aperture ring.

There are two catalogue versions with the same optics. The chrome lens, 11.2401, came with the Bullseye and the Special and is the version on the 1960 and 1961 US lists. The black B-Planar, 11.2412, dated to 1965, adds the flash automation it shares with the B-Distagon 35mm f/4. A ring behind the focusing ring carries guide numbers, and once a guide number is set the aperture follows the focus distance. For ordinary metering the ring must sit where two yellow arrows meet. Mike Eckman found that with it moved he could not stop his lens down, though he was not sure whether his copy was at fault. The B-Planar focuses only to 0.38 m against the chrome lens’s 0.3 m, and by 1968 it was the only 50mm f/2 on the US list: $189 alone, $634 with the Super and $504 with the Professional, rising to $240 by 1971. A third finish rests on a single lens: black Planar no. 3248962, without the guide-number ring, on black-paint Bullseyes of 1962. According to Zeiss Historica, as cited by Eckman, the factory painted cameras and lenses black to special order, so it is best read as a special-order finish rather than a model. The same number appears in Leitz lots for two different black bodies, so either the lens moved from one to the other between sales or one record is wrong. Prototypes have also sold at Leitz, prices including buyer’s premium: a feet-scaled Planar 2/50 that Leitz calls the first Planar made for small-format cameras (€3,600), a Blitz test lens (€1,020), and a different lens altogether, a 1969 Planar 1.8/50 prototype of which Leitz says probably fewer than five were made.

Reviewers agree on the lens’s character more than its merit. Phillip Reeve, using one on a Sony A7 in 2015, found it unusually even from centre to corner and very sharp at f/8. Against that it flares easily, being single-coated, vignettes strongly and renders busy bokeh at f/2, and he found it hard to recommend against later 50s. Eckman, shooting it on film in his Bullseye, saw sharp corners and no coma or vignetting. Erwin Puts, publishing Zeiss’s own MTF graphs, reads them as a lens corrected for a flat field and low astigmatism at the expense of high contrast, much like Hasselblad’s lenses. It is a different lens from the Zeiss ZM, Loxia and Makro-Planar 50mm f/2s and from the Contax/Yashica Planars. On the Contarex its siblings are the cheaper Tessar 50mm f/2.8, the faster Planar 55mm f/1.4 and the S-Planar 50mm f/4 reproduction lens.

Being common, it is the cheapest way into Contarex glass. On Yahoo! Auctions Japan between June and October 2026 lenses alone made ¥27,988–33,075 at auction, black copies included (the two shop sales among them include 10% consumption tax), and a seller’s black lens graded AB sold at its ¥65,900 starting and buy-it-now price. Kamerastore, a dealer, gives €289 as its average price for a lens in its Certified grade. Reeve gave $200–500 on eBay in 2015. At Leitz, where results include buyer’s premium, a Bullseye with the lens and a Distagon 35mm made €408. When buying, check the front element for coating wear and spots, which Flashback Camera notes on its black copy, and check that the diaphragm closes when worked by an adapter or body. On a B-Planar, also check that the flash ring turns and returns to its yellow-arrow setting. Reeve found a cheap adapter made the aperture feel sluggish, so the adapter matters as much as the lens.

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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

Sample photo taken with the Planar 50mm f/2 (Contarex) — Chrome Planar 50mm f/2 (right) beside the Contarex Sonnar 85mm f/2, Distagon 25mm f/2.8 and Sonnar 135mm f/2.8 — JamesNZguy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

More sample photos elsewhere

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Sample photo wanted — shot with a Planar 50mm f/2 (Contarex)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

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