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

Sonnar T* 140mm f/2.8 (Contax 645)

Carl Zeiss · Contax 645 · 1999 · Sonnar

Also known as: Contax 645 Sonnar 140mm f/2.8 · Contax 645 140mm f2.8 · Contax 645 140mm f2.8 Sonnar · Contax 645 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 140mm F2.8 · Contax 645 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 2,8/140 · Contax 140mm f/2.8 Sonnar T* Lens for Contax 645 · Contax Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 140mm F/2.8 Objektiv für 645 · Carl Zeiss 140mm f2.8 Sonnar T* · Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 140mm f/2.8 · Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 140mm/F2.8 · CONTAX 645用 Sonnar T*140mm F2.8 · CONTAX 645用 Carl Zeiss Sonnar 2.8/140 T* · Sonnar 2.8/140 T* · Sonnar 2,8/140 · Sonnar T* 2,8/140 · Sonnar 140mm F2.8 · M-Sonnar 140mm f/2.8 · コンタックス 645 ゾナー 140mm F2.8 · ゾナー T*140mm F2.8 645用

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 2,8/140 for Contax 645 (1999–2005) Contax 645 1999–2005 8777145, 8780122 (seven digits)
15037949 (eight digits) 		—
  1. Element and group count, focal length (140.1 mm), angle of view (28° on 41.5 × 56 mm), aperture scale, closest focus, filter thread, dimensions and weight are from Carl Zeiss's data sheet, cat. no. 10 11 38, printed 9 March 1999, as reproduced in ALPA's compilation of the Contax 645 sheets and on allphotolenses.com. Japanese Wikipedia, citing プロフェッショナル中判カメラ p.129, gives the same 5 groups and 7 elements, 1.3 m and 72 mm screw-in attachment, and Shige's hobby's lens table the same 98 × 81 mm and 688 g. Kamerastore's model page gives 104 × 82 mm and 686 g.
  2. Neither Zeiss's data sheet nor Kyocera's manuals give the number of aperture blades, and the field is left empty. GL Optics lists a 16-blade iris for its cine rehousing of this lens, a figure for the rehousing rather than for the lens as Zeiss made it.
  3. Focus motor type: Japanese Wikipedia (citing プロフェッショナル中判カメラ p.36) says every Contax 645 lens but the manual-focus 120 has an ultrasonic motor, PRONEWS (2024) that the camera's autofocus is driven by one, and Outdoor Photographer's pre-launch news item of December 1998 announced 'six ultrasonic autofocus lenses'; Kyocera's US release of February 2000 presents the ultrasonic motor as a feature of the Tele-Apotessar 350mm, and the repair manual says only that the AF mechanism is driven by a motor incorporated in the lens. Focusing is internal (Zeiss).
  4. Where it was made: the barrel reads 'Lens made in Japan', and Jason Schneider (Adorama, 2006) reported the 645 lenses as designed by Zeiss in Germany and manufactured by Kyocera in Japan with on-site quality control by Zeiss technicians. German Wikipedia says Carl Zeiss AG supplied the lenses for the system, and collection-appareils that they were designed exclusively for the camera by Zeiss in Germany. No Contax 645 lens marked as made in Germany is known.
  5. Price: ¥245,000 is the maker's suggested retail price before consumption tax, case included, printed on the swing tag of a boxed copy sold on Yahoo! Auctions in 2026; the tag carries no date. Shige's hobby's lens table gives the same ¥245,000 as the list price, beside a release year of 1999. US$2,255 is a dealer's advertised price (Camera World, Outdoor Photographer, May 2000), not a Kyocera list price.
  6. Mutar 1.4x: Kyocera's release of 3 February 2000 says the converter is 'matched for use on the Sonnar T* 140mm f2.8', the Sonnar 210 and the Tele-Apotessar 350, and Zeiss's Mutar sheet (printed 22 August 2000) that it works very well with this lens; the 196 mm f/4 result is the converter's 1.4× applied to 140 mm f/2.8, as Shige's tables give it. On Fringer's GFX adapter the lens is listed among those with better autofocus alone, and among those with degraded autofocus with the Mutar fitted.
  7. One 2026 Yahoo! Auctions seller described the Kyocera NAM-1 sold with its copy as a Contax 645 to Nikon F adapter usable on Nikon F SLRs. Kyocera's NAM-1 puts Contax 645 lenses on Contax N bodies (Japanese Wikipedia), so the description is mistaken or the adapter was modified; the listing's photographs show an adapter engraved CONTAX MOUNT ADAPTER NAM-1, with its own row of contacts.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Engraved Sonnar 2,8/140 with a red T*: the only 140 mm lens and the fastest telephoto in the Contax 645 range. The Sonnar 210 and Tele-Apotessar 350 are f/4 lenses, and the Apo-Makro-Planar 120 is a manual-focus f/4 macro
  • Takes 72 mm screw-in filters (M72 × 0.75) and the GB-73 bayonet hood, engraved CONTAX METAL HOOD ø75mm GB-73 and shared with the Apo-Makro-Planar 120 (Shige's hobby). The Mutar 1.4x fits it, making a 196 mm f/4
  • Not a Hasselblad, Mamiya or Pentax lens: the nearest lenses in those systems are 150 mm (the Carl Zeiss Sonnar 150mm for the Hasselblad V, f/2.8 F and FE and f/4 C, CF and CFi; the Mamiya 645 AF 150mm f/3.5; the Pentax 645 150mm f/3.5 and FA f/2.8), and Mamiya's 140mm lenses for the RB67 and RZ67 are f/4.5 macros with leaf shutters. The Contax/Yashica Sonnar 135mm f/2.8 is a 35 mm SLR lens
  • Fits only the Contax 645 natively, and through Kyocera's NAM-1 adapter the Contax N bodies. On digital bodies it works through electronic adapters: Leica's S-Adapter C of 2013 and Fringer's C645-GFX for Fujifilm GFX

Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 2,8/140 for Contax 645 (1999–2005):

  • Front ring engraved Sonnar 2,8/140, a red T*, the serial and Carl Zeiss (Kamerastore photos of no. 8780122; Yahoo! Auctions photos of nos. 8777145 and 15037949)
  • Sonnar 2,8/140 in white on the barrel beside the distance window; the window reads in feet (orange) and metres (white), with depth-of-field marks for 16 and 32 either side of the index; a broad pyramid-knurled focusing ring ahead of the scales, a white dot on the fixed barrel, and an aperture ring 2,8–32 at the rear
  • 'Lens made in Japan' on the barrel just above the aperture ring, on the side opposite the scales; no CE mark on any of the three copies examined (nos. 8777145, 8780122 and 15037949)
  • Nine gold contacts in a curved row inside the bayonet, no AF/MF switch on the barrel and no A setting on the aperture ring: the focus mode is set on the body (Kyocera instruction manual)
  • The one boxed copy examined came in a Carl Zeiss carton printed 'Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 140mm F2.8', with a Zeiss leaflet headed 'Sonnar T* f/2.8-140mm, CONTAX 645 mount' carrying a cross-section of the lens (Yahoo! Auctions lot of no. 15037949)

Serial-range notes

8777145; 8780122; 15037949
Three numbers read from photographs of the front ring: 8780122 at Kamerastore, 8777145 and 15037949 on Yahoo! Auctions lots of 2026. The seller of 8777145 typed it as 87771145 in the description, but the engraving in the same listing has seven digits. The seven-digit form and the eight-digit form both turn up on other Contax 645 lenses too. Neither Zeiss nor Kyocera published a serial-to-year table or a production figure for this lens, so a number places a copy only relative to other numbers.

Specifications

Formula
Sonnar
Construction
7 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/2.8–f/32
Min. focus
1.3 m
Dimensions
81 × 98 mm
Weight
688 g
Filter
72 mm (0.75 mm pitch)
Years manufactured
1999–2005
Country
Japan
Coating
Zeiss T* multicoating
Original price
¥245,000 (today ¥271,000) before consumption tax, case included: the maker's suggested retail price on the undated swing tag that came with one boxed copy, and the list price in Shige's hobby's lens table, which gives 1999 as the release year. Camera World of Portland advertised it in Outdoor Photographer of May 2000 as the 'M-Sonnar 140mm f/2.8' at US$2,255, the same price as the Sonnar 210.

What reviewers say

Optical formula — Sonnar
ⓘ 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 Sonnar T* 140mm f/2.8 was one of the six Carl Zeiss lenses Kyocera launched the Contax 645 with in 1999, and the fastest of its three autofocus telephotos, beside the Sonnar 210 and the later Tele-Apotessar 350. Carl Zeiss’s data sheet, catalogue number 10 11 38 and printed on 9 March 1999, describes seven elements in five groups with internal focusing: 140.1 mm, 28° across the 41.5 × 56 mm frame, f/2.8 to f/32, focusing to 1.3 m, with a 72 mm filter thread, 81 × 98 mm and about 688 g. At twice the format diagonal, Zeiss wrote, it was the first choice for head-and-shoulders portraits and also a general-purpose telephoto for handheld travel, sports, fashion, editorial and stage work, kept small and light enough to travel on landscape assignments, and usable “with professional results even at full aperture”. Kyocera’s instruction manual pairs it with an 85 mm lens on 35 mm. The sheet’s own curves show slight pincushion distortion, about 1% at the corners, and about 60% of the centre’s light reaching the extreme corners wide open, rising to a little over 80% at f/8. 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.

Like every autofocus lens in the system it has no mechanical link to the body. Kyocera’s repair manual puts a focus motor and an aperture stepping motor, which moves in eighth-stop steps, inside the lens under the control of a lens CPU, and nine gold contacts in the bayonet carry the signals. Focus mode is set on the body, and the focusing ring can be turned after autofocus has locked. Whether the focus motor is ultrasonic is unsettled: Japanese Wikipedia says every autofocus lens in the system has one, PRONEWS that the camera’s autofocus uses one, and Outdoor Photographer’s pre-launch news of December 1998 promised six ultrasonic autofocus lenses, while Kyocera’s US release of February 2000 presents the ultrasonic motor as a feature of the Tele-Apotessar 350mm, and the repair manual says only that the motor is in the lens. That same release introduced the Mutar 1.4x converter, “matched for use on” this lens, the Sonnar 210 and the 350; on the 140 it makes a 196 mm f/4 and keeps autofocus. The dedicated hood is the GB-73, engraved “CONTAX METAL HOOD ø75mm GB-73”. Shige’s hobby, a collector’s site that has used most of the range on a Leica S, lists it at ¥7,000 and as shared with the Apo-Makro-Planar 120, and says the GB-B1 bellows hood fits every 72 mm lens in the system. The same site calls the 1.3 m closest focus long and suggests the manual-focus Apo-Makro-Planar 120 in its place for anyone who can do without autofocus. With Kyocera’s Auto Extension Tubes it measured the 140 focusing between about 0.9 and 1.8 m on the 13 mm tube, 0.8 and 1.1 m on the 26 mm and 0.7 and 0.8 m on the 52 mm.

It has never been the lens people buy the system for. Shige describes it as plentiful and not very popular, so often cheap. Hidekazu Tominaga, who shot the camera with this lens and the Planar 80 for a PRONEWS retrospective in December 2024, called it an excellent lens whose rendering he likes and recommended it for photographing people, while noting that it does not seem to be very popular and is quite affordable. Owners on the DPR Forum in July 2005 were warm but measured. albert4321 found it more contrasty than his other Contax lenses and had trouble holding highlights. avid called it excellent after a year’s use and still sharp with the Mutar. johnw carried it instead of the 210 in a light three-lens travel kit because the Mutar turns it into a longer lens, and noted that everyone called the 120 the gold standard. On digital bodies it keeps its autofocus. Leica’s S-Adapter C of 2013 gives it autofocus on the Leica S, as it does every Contax 645 lens but the manual-focus 120, and Fringer lists the 140 among the lenses that focus well on its Fujifilm GFX adapter, though autofocus degrades with the Mutar fitted. GL Optics rehouses it as a T2.8 cine lens with a 16-blade iris.

Its list price in Japan was ¥245,000 before consumption tax, case included. That figure is printed on the undated maker’s swing tag that came with one boxed copy, and Shige’s lens table gives the same, against ¥250,000 for the Sonnar 210 and ¥270,000 for the Apo-Makro-Planar 120. Camera World of Portland advertised it in May 2000 as the “M-Sonnar 140mm f/2.8” at $2,255, the same as the 210. By July 2005 albert4321 reported plenty of like-new copies on eBay asking about $850, where a year earlier none could be found under $1,100. In 2026 a copy with clear glass and a NAM-1 adapter, its autofocus untested, sold on Yahoo! Auctions for ¥53,222 after eight bids in May. A boxed copy with its GB-73 hood, price tag and Zeiss leaflet, sold untested as junk with dust inside, made ¥90,810 in August, and Kamerastore offered one with minor internal haze at US$748 in October. Check any copy on a working Contax 645 body, since its diaphragm and focus move only under their own motors, and look for haze and dust inside and for clean contacts. Kyocera stopped accepting Contax repairs on 30 April 2015 and now refers owners to Repair Service Suwa.

There is one version. No optical revision, finish or edition has turned up. Serials come in a seven-digit form (8777145, 8780122) and an eight-digit one (15037949), with no table to date either, and none of those three copies carries a CE mark. The nearest lenses in the other medium-format systems are 150 mm: Zeiss’s Sonnar 150mm for the Hasselblad V, f/2.8 (the shutterless F and FE) and f/4 (C, CF and CFi), Mamiya’s 645 AF 150mm f/3.5, and Pentax’s 645 150mm f/3.5 and FA 150mm f/2.8. Mamiya’s 140mm lenses for the RB67 and RZ67 are f/4.5 macros with leaf shutters, and the Contax/Yashica Sonnar 135mm f/2.8 is a 35 mm SLR lens. A Sonnar engraved 2,8/140 with gold contacts can only be this one.

Still open: any production figure or serial table, which Kyocera plant made the lens, the number of aperture blades, the date of the yen price tag, and whether the focus motor is ultrasonic.

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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 wanted — shot with a Sonnar T* 140mm f/2.8 (Contax 645)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-10-30. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Apo-Makro-Planar T* 120mm f/4 (Contax 645) · Sonnar T* 210mm f/4 (Contax 645)

Sources (25)

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.