Planar T* 80mm f/2 (Contax 645)

The Planar T* 80mm f/2 was the standard lens of the Contax 645, Kyocera’s autofocus 6×4.5 SLR, and the lens it was sold with from the start: kakaku.com lists the body kit with it at ¥598,000 from January 1999, and camera-wiki dates the Japanese launch to 20 February 1999. Carl Zeiss’s data sheet, catalogue number 10 22 19, gives a six-element, five-group Planar of 80.0 mm covering 47° on the 41.5 × 56 mm frame, f/2 to f/22, focusing to 0.7 m, with a 72 mm filter thread, 80 × 67 mm and about 524 g. Zeiss calls it the fastest optic in the system, says no Planar in medium format is faster, and likens its perspective to a fast 50 mm on 35 mm, the pairing the camera’s own angle-of-view table also makes. Zeiss’s sheet for it is dated 12 July 2001, while those for the other five launch lenses are dated 9 March 1999. Zeiss designed it and it was built in Japan: the barrel reads “Lens made in Japan”, and Jason Schneider wrote in 2006 that the 645 lenses were made by Kyocera with Zeiss technicians checking quality on site. German Wikipedia says Zeiss supplied the lenses and collection-appareils that Zeiss designed them in Germany; neither describes German manufacture.

It is an electronic lens. Kyocera’s repair manual says there is no mechanical coupling between body, lens and back: a CPU in the lens reads the aperture ring and drives both focus and diaphragm, the aperture moving in eighth-stop steps on a stepping motor and focus on a motor of its own. Nine gold contacts in the bayonet, visible in dealers’ photographs, carry the connection to the body. A dual focusing mechanism lets the focusing ring be turned after autofocus has locked, which American Photo praised in 2000 as manual focus at any time without switching modes. Whether the focus motor is ultrasonic is unsettled: Outdoor Photographer’s preview of December 1998 promised six ultrasonic autofocus lenses, PRONEWS says the AF drive is ultrasonic and Japanese Wikipedia puts such a motor in every autofocus lens of the system, while Kyocera’s US release for the Tele-Apotessar 350mm presents its ultrasonic motor as a feature of that lens, and the repair manual says only that the motor is in the lens. Zeiss’s sheet credits the camera’s autofocus with quick and accurate focusing where manual focusing “would have been too slow or not accurate enough for f/2”. Users are less sure. Jen Golay tells readers not to rely on it wide open and to finish by hand on the nearer eye, and Hidekazu Tominaga found the soft full-aperture image hard to judge in the finder, though he rated the autofocus accurate at close range.

Reviewers agree on what the lens is for and disagree on how sharp it is. American Photo’s testers used it mostly wide open, “a full stop faster than the competition’s normal lenses”. Popular Photography’s November 1999 test, which Mamiya America reprinted in 2001 to set its own AF 80mm f/2.8 against it, rated the centre excellent at every stop, 53 lines/mm at f/2 and f/2.8 rising to 84 at f/5.6, but the corners only acceptable through f/4 and excellent only at f/11 and f/16; at f/2.8 the Mamiya measured 70 in the centre and 35 in the corners against the Planar’s 53 and 21. Tominaga finds it a little soft wide open, settled at f/2.8 and crisp to the edges from about f/4, and likes it best between f/2.4 and f/3.5. Golay calls it exquisite wide open and less remarkable past f/5.6; a reader who shot landscapes on digital backs answered that his copy is very sharp from f/5.6 to f/11, and she replied that she had meant unremarkable rather than unsharp. Matt Osborne called it probably one of the sharpest lenses he has owned. Golay’s own summary is that without this lens few people would put up with the camera, and PRONEWS calls it the camera’s signature lens.

New, it cost less than any other lens on Camera World’s list: the Portland dealer advertised it at $1,565 in May 2000, against $2,249 to $2,395 for the other five Contax 645 lenses, and B&H in the same issue sold the outfit of body, this lens, back and AE finder for $3,999. Used prices have since climbed. In March 2006 Jason Schneider noted a pristine used outfit with this lens at Adorama for about $1,500, roughly a third of its original price. Shige’s hobby site recalls used copies at about ¥100,000 at their cheapest and says over ¥300,000 is now normal; on Yahoo! Auctions a boxed working copy sold alone made ¥432,300 with tax after 42 bids on 4 October 2026, and a copy graded as flawed, whose contacts no longer answered a Contax 645 body so that autofocus failed, sold for ¥200,000 four days earlier. The lens also has a life on digital cameras. Leica’s S-Adapter C of June 2013 gives autofocus on the Leica S with every 645 lens except the 120mm macro, Fringer’s C645-GFX adapters give it autofocus on Fujifilm GFX bodies, and GL Optics rehouses it as a T2 cine lens. Because the diaphragm is motor-driven, a mount conversion without electronics cannot stop it down: Golay reports that The Bokeh Factory in Poland converted it for the Pentax 645N, fixed at f/2.

There is one version. No optical revision, finish or edition has turned up, and serials come in two forms, a seven-digit 8777023 and eight-digit numbers around 10863390, with no table to date them. When buying, check on a working Contax 645 body that the lens autofocuses and stops down, since its diaphragm is worked only by its own motor. The Yahoo! seller of the ¥432,300 copy graded its glass for dust, fungus, haze, scratches and balsam separation and stated that the diaphragm and autofocus worked, which are the questions to ask of any copy; Kamerastore’s October 2026 copy at US$2,578 carried a minor front-element scratch and minor internal haze. Kyocera stopped accepting Contax repairs on 30 April 2015 and, as of June 2024, refers owners of its film cameras to Repair Service Suwa in Japan. One Yahoo! seller in 2026 had a body, this lens and the 45mm inspected and repaired there before sale, and left the 210mm out because the work would have cost more than the lens was worth. It takes 72 mm filters, like most of the system, and shares the GB-72 bayonet hood with the Distagon 55mm. Hasselblad’s Planar 80mm is an f/2.8 lens on another bayonet and Mamiya’s 645 AF standard lens is an 80mm f/2.8, so the 2/80 engraving, the gold contacts and the absence of a shutter in the lens together mark this one.