Sonnar 85mm f/2 (Contarex)

Carl Zeiss · Contarex · 1958 · Sonnar: 7 elements in 3 groups

our own finding

Also known as: Contarex Sonnar 85mm f/2 · Contarex Sonnar 85mm F2 · Contarex Sonnar 85mm f2 · Contarex Sonnar 2/85 · Contarex 85mm f2 Sonnar · Contarex 85/2 Sonnar · Sonnar 85mm f/2 Contarex · Sonnar 2/85 Contarex · Sonnar 2/85mm · Sonnar 1:2 f=85mm · Sonnar 85mm F2 · Sonnar 85 mm f/2 · Sonnar 85/2 · Zeiss Sonnar 85mm f2 Contarex · Carl Zeiss Sonnar 85mm F2 Contarex · コンタレックスゾナー 85mm F2 · ゾナー 85mm F2 コンタレックス · Contarex 85mm f/2 · Contarex Sonnar 85mm

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Chrome	Contarex	—	3286864 — 'chrome', in a Contarex Professional outfit with body K45301 of 1966, Leitz Auction 28, lot 328 3550736 — chrome, photographed front and rear by Pacific Rim Camera	—
Black, with black focusing ring	Contarex	—	3336626 — 'black version with black focusing ring - very rare!', in a Contarex SE outfit of about 1973, Leitz Auction 7, lot 586 3646456 — all-black, photographed by Flashback Camera, whose listing says even the band of the focusing ring is black	—
Black, with bright focusing ring	Contarex	—	4914515 — black with a bare aluminium focusing-ring band, made in 1973 according to Flashback Camera	—

1958–1973 and 7,585 made are Pacific Rim Camera's figures, which cite no source; Flashback Camera repeats both. English Wikipedia's Contarex lens table gives 1958 and 7 elements in 3 groups, citing Pacific Rim and the 1960 and 1968 Zeiss Ikon catalogues. 1958 is the year camera-wiki gives for the working model of the Contarex shown at Photokina; the Carl Zeiss Inc. bulletin of 1 April 1960 announces that the Stuttgart factory is beginning to ship the camera and this lens to the US.
Seven elements, f/22 smallest aperture and a 28° angle of view are from Carl Zeiss Inc.'s US dealer price list of 1 May 1961, whose Contarex specification table gives the closest distance as 30 in. Pacific Rim gives 29°. The 0.8 m closest focus is from Flashback Camera and Kamerastore.
Nine diaphragm blades and 382 g are from Kamerastore's dealer listing alone; Flashback Camera weighed its two black lenses at about 383 g and 360 g. Kamerastore also gives the size as 68 × 57 mm without saying which figure is the length, so no dimensions are entered here.
Filters: the 1961 list offers 56 mm bayonet filters and 49 mm screw-in filters 'for 21, 35, 50, 85 and 135mm lenses'; Pacific Rim gives B56 and S49; the October 1971 list gives Bay 56mm. No source gives the screw-thread pitch. The 56 mm bayonet shade for the 50, 85 and 135 cost $4.00 in April 1960 and, as no. 20.0712, $6.50 in May 1961.
Prices: $185 is the list price printed in the April 1960 dealer bulletin, which shows the dealer's net of $112.91 and a separate excise-tax line of $11.29 for this lens. $194 is the list price against 11.2404 in the May 1961 dealer price list (whose net prices were in a separate schedule), $232 in the price catalogue of 1 March 1968, and $300 both in the confidential dealer schedule effective 15 February 1971 (dealer net $200 for one or two pieces) and in the list of 1 October 1971. None of the lists mentions sales tax. Pacific Rim says the lens 'cost $239 in 1968'; the March 1968 list prints $232 for it and $239 for the Planar 55/1.4 and the Olympia-Sonnar 135/2.8.
The finishes in the variant table rest on photographed or described examples: Pacific Rim (one chrome, one black), Leitz (chrome 3286864 in the Professional outfit of Auction 28, all-black 3336626 in the SE outfit of Auction 7) and Flashback Camera (all-black 3646456, black with bright ring 4914515).

How to tell them apart (expand)

Catalogue number 11.2404 on the US lists of 1961, 1968 and 1971; front ring engraved Sonnar 1:2 f=85mm, with Carl Zeiss Nr and the lens number
No aperture ring: the aperture is set with the wheel on the Contarex body (Kamerastore), or from an adapter with its own aperture control. Distance and depth-of-field scales only on the barrel
Takes the system's 56 mm bayonet filters and shade 20.0712, or 49 mm screw-in filters
Not the Contax rangefinder Sonnar 8.5cm f/2, which mounts on the Contax's outer bayonet and has its own aperture ring; not the Contarex Planar 85mm f/1.4 T* of 1974; not the Contax/Yashica Sonnar 85mm f/2.8

Chrome:

Barrel, knurled focusing ring, scale ring and front ring all chrome; the front ring is engraved Carl Zeiss Nr and the lens number (Pacific Rim Camera's photographs of no. 3550736), with Sonnar 1:2 f=85mm on the opposite side as on the black lenses
'Lens made in Germany' engraved on the rear barrel beside the bayonet, with a red mounting dot; on the example photographed, a distance scale in feet down to 3 ft and a depth-of-field scale reading 22-11-5,6 either side of the red index

Black, with black focusing ring:

Black barrel, black scale ring and a black knurled focusing ring; only the front ring, the bayonet and the rear barrel are left bright metal (Flashback Camera's photographs of no. 3646456; Pacific Rim Camera's photograph of its black lens looks the same)
Front ring engraved Sonnar 1:2 f=85mm and Carl Zeiss Nr with the number in white; distance scale with metres in white and feet in red

Black, with bright focusing ring:

Black barrel and scale ring with a bright, bare-aluminium knurled band on the focusing ring; front ring, bayonet and rear barrel bright (Flashback Camera's photographs of no. 4914515). The look is close to the black Contarex Sonnar 135/4 that Leitz describes as 'black with chrome focusing- and front ring'
Distance scale with feet in red and metres in white

Chrome: Chrome is the lowest-numbered finish recorded (no. 3286864), and probably the finish of the first lenses, though no source describes the finish of the earliest numbers or says that chrome came first. Pacific Rim Camera says only that the lens was made "black or chrome", and Kamerastore "black and silver"; neither gives a split of the 7,585 lenses. Chrome may have been made alongside black for a time: Pacific Rim's chrome no. 3550736 is numbered above the black lens of the 3336xxx block that Leitz dates to 1965 (see the serial notes), though number order need not be date order.
Black, with black focusing ring: Leitz calls this version "very rare", but it is the version Pacific Rim Camera chose to photograph as "the 85/2 Sonnar in black finish", and Flashback Camera has listed one too, so the rarity is Leitz's judgement rather than an established count. Both numbered examples fall in the 333xxxx–364xxxx range, which suggests the all-black lens is the earlier of the two black versions. Flashback weighed its example at about 383 g.
Black, with bright focusing ring: Flashback Camera describes its no. 4914515 as having the focusing-ring band in bare aluminium and dates it to 1973, "the last year of manufacture". It weighed about 360 g, against 383 g for the all-black lens it sold, a difference no other source explains. Leitz sold a black lens of the same block, no. 4914571, which it also dates to 1973, without describing its focusing ring.

Serial-range notes

2624810: The lowest number found, finish not stated, in the Christie's "definitive Zeiss Ikon Contarex Collection" lot. On the Carl Zeiss Oberkochen serial-to-year table that camera-wiki publishes (and that the Contax rangefinder Sonnar 8.5cm page on this site sets out), 2,600,000–3,000,000 is 1959–61, which would fit a lens of the first US shipments of April 1960.
3286864 (chrome); 3336626, 3337405, '33367300' (black): Leitz dates its black lens printed '33367300' to 1965. The number has eight digits and is probably 3336730 with a digit repeated; it sits beside the all-black no. 3336626 and Christie's black no. 3337405, which was fitted to a black second-model Contarex Super, P53628. This is the earliest dated black Sonnar 85 found. 1965 is also the year English Wikipedia gives for the black Blitz Planar 50, and camera-wiki's table puts 3,000,000–4,000,000 at 1961–65.
3550519, 3550736 (chrome); 3646456 (all-black); 3647212: Pacific Rim's chrome lens in the 355xxxx block, numbered above the 1965 black lens, suggests that chrome production went on after black appeared, if numbers were used in date order. Christie's no. 3550519 has no stated finish; Pacific Rim's no. 3550736 is chrome. No. 3646456 is Flashback Camera's all-black lens; Christie's no. 3647212, a few hundred numbers on, has no stated finish.
4914515, 4914571: The last block found, both lenses black and both dated 1973 by their sellers (Flashback Camera and Leitz), the year Pacific Rim gives as the end of production. No. 4914515 has the bright focusing-ring band; Leitz does not describe the ring of no. 4914571. The sellers' date conflicts with camera-wiki's Oberkochen table, which puts 4,000,000–5,000,000 at 1965–69; both are recorded here.

Specifications

Formula: Sonnar: 7 elements in 3 groups
Construction: 7 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range: f/2–f/22
Diaphragm blades: 9
Min. focus: 0.8 m
Weight: 382 g
Filter: 49 mm, Bayonet 56 (B56), or 49 mm screw-in
Years manufactured: 1958–1973
Country: Germany
Original price: $185 US list price, April 1960, lens alone (Zeiss Ikon Trade News No. 25, the Carl Zeiss Inc. dealer bulletin announcing the first US shipments; dealer net $112.91 plus $11.29 excise tax, $124.20 to the dealer). Later US list prices for catalogue number 11.2404: $194 (May 1961), $232 (March 1968), $300 (February and October 1971, when the confidential dealer schedule put the dealer's net at $200). The excise tax is part of the dealer's cost; none of the lists mentions sales tax. (today $1,960)

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History

The Sonnar 85mm f/2 was one of the six Contarex lenses, 21mm to 250mm, in Carl Zeiss Inc.’s dealer bulletin of 1 April 1960, which announced that the Stuttgart factory was beginning to ship the camera to the US. The bulletin listed it at $185, below only the Sonnar 250 and the Biogon 21. Carl Zeiss Inc.’s dealer price list of May 1961 puts it at $194 list, describes it as a lens for “sports, stage and press photography” and for portraits, and gives 28°, seven elements, f/22 and a closest distance of 30 in; the dealers who sell it today give 0.8 m. Catalogue number 11.2404 was still on the US lists in 1971, at $232 in March 1968 and $300 in 1971. Pacific Rim Camera counts 7,585 made between 1958 and 1973, about half the 15,365 it gives for the cheaper Sonnar 135/4, and calls it “fairly popular” for its price. The lens has no aperture ring. Kamerastore notes that the aperture is set with the wheel on the camera, and the 1960 bulletin describes an automatic preset diaphragm that couples to the camera controls as soon as the lens is mounted.

The optics come from the Contax rangefinder lens, but sources disagree on which version. Pacific Rim says it is “basically the same successful design introduced for the Contax I in the 1930’s”. The Contarex lens has seven elements in three groups, though, and the Jena Sonnar 8.5cm of 1932 had six. Seven in three is the count of the postwar Oberkochen redesign for the Contax IIa, described on this site’s Sonnar 8.5cm f/2 page, and Carl Zeiss Inc.’s May 1961 list gives the Contax IIa/IIIa Sonnar f/2 85mm the same seven elements and 28° as the Contarex lens. Orio, writing on the MFLenses forum, says that Oberkochen lens was “ported over the Contarex system with the optical scheme intact”, because the large back focus of the rangefinder lens let it be adapted to the SLR without changes. No Zeiss publication cited here states that the two are one computation, and the lenses differ in everything around the glass: the mount, the barrel, the diaphragm and the close focus (30 in for the Contarex lens against 3½ ft for the Contax lens in the 1961 list). The pages are kept separate.

Three finishes are known. Chrome is the lowest-numbered finish recorded and probably the original. Black lenses appear by 1965, the date Leitz gives a black lens of the 3336xxx block, and the earliest black lens whose focusing ring is described is black all over, ring included. Leitz calls one of these, no. 3336626, “very rare”. Pacific Rim’s only photograph of a black lens shows the same finish, though, and Flashback Camera listed another, no. 3646456, so the rarity is Leitz’s judgement rather than a count. The last lenses found, nos. 4914515 and 4914571, both dated 1973 by their sellers, are black. Flashback’s 4914515 has a bare-aluminium band on the focusing ring, close to the black Sonnar 135/4 with chrome focusing and front rings that Leitz sold in the same SE outfit as no. 3336626. Chrome may not have stopped when black arrived: Pacific Rim’s chrome no. 3550736 is numbered above the 1965 black lens. No source gives the split of the 7,585 between the finishes or dates either change. The sequence above is read from eight numbered examples of known finish, and assumes that numbers were used in date order.

On the market the Sonnar 85 costs a small fraction of the rare Planar 85/1.4 of 1974, which made €7,200 at Leitz. Leitz sold black Sonnars for €672 (the 1965 lens, with filter and hood) and €600 (no. 4914571, with VAT on top for EU buyers), both hammer prices including buyer’s premium, and the lens appears in outfits such as the Professional K45301 set sold for €2,880. Kamerastore gives €499 as its average price for a “Certified” example, a dealer retail figure, and a lens its seller graded near-mint sold on Yahoo! Auctions Japan in September 2026 at its ¥61,980 buy-it-now price. When buying, look at the front element. Flashback’s two lenses both had coating wear and fine cleaning marks, and the black lens in Leitz’s Auction 32 had “some cleaning marks on front element”. Look into the lens for haze between the elements, and check that the preset diaphragm closes fully when worked from a body or adapter. The focusing ring is broad and the helicoid carries a lot of glass, so feel for stiffness. Flashback describes one helicoid as slightly heavy and had the other overhauled. On anything but a Contarex the lens needs an adapter with its own aperture control, such as the Kipon CRX-NEX one Japanese seller offered with it. It fits the interchangeable-lens Contarex bodies: the Bullseye, Special, Professional, Super and Super Electronic.

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