Vario-Sonnar T* 45-90mm f/4.5 (Contax 645)

The Vario-Sonnar T* 45-90mm f/4.5 was the only zoom Carl Zeiss designed for Kyocera’s Contax 645, the autofocus 6×4.5 SLR of 1999, and the last lens added to the system. Kyocera Optics announced it in the United States on 1 August 2002, five months after the Distagon 55mm, at a street price of $2,900 with a three-year Contax warranty, and Japanese Wikipedia gives 2 August 2002 as its release date in Japan. Zeiss’s data sheet, catalogue number 10 47 71 and printed on 9 September 2002, describes twelve elements in ten groups: 45.9 to 87.5 mm, 74° to 43° across the 41.5 × 56 mm frame, f/4.5 at every focal length and down to f/32, focusing to 0.5 m throughout, with a 95 mm filter thread, 102 × 115 mm and 1,140 g. Kyocera’s release gives the same figures but about 1,200 g, compares the range to 28–55 mm on 35 mm, and aims it at wedding photographers and photojournalists working where there is no room to step back. Zeiss claimed imaging on the level of fixed-focal-length lenses and offered it for photojournalism, weddings, travel, street, industrial and forensic work. Its own curves show the compromises. At 45 mm distortion runs to about 2.5% barrel towards the corners, and wide open the extreme corner gets about a quarter of the centre’s light, about 45% at f/8. At 70 mm distortion is close to nil, and at 90 mm there is a little pincushion. Zeiss designed it and it was built in Japan: the barrel reads “Lens made in Japan”. Jason Schneider wrote in 2006 that the 645 lenses were made by Kyocera with Zeiss technicians checking quality on site. Japanese Wikipedia’s list gives it as an f/3.5–4.5 lens, but the maker documents and the lens itself are clear that the aperture is constant.

It handles like the primes with an extra ring. The distance window sits at the very front of the barrel, followed towards the mount by the focusing ring, the zoom ring and the aperture ring. Focusing is internal, so the front does not turn and a polariser stays where it is set. Shige’s hobby, an enthusiast’s site whose author uses most of the range on a Leica S, notes that the lens is not internally zoomed. It is shortest at 55–60 mm and grows about 5 mm at 45 mm and 9 mm at 90 mm. Like every autofocus lens in the system it is electronic: this one has nine contacts in the bayonet and no AF/MF switch, the focus mode being set on the camera. Kyocera’s Dual Focus Mechanism combines autofocus with manual focusing, and Shige finds that turning the ring during autofocus takes over at once. The aperture ring works only on a Contax 645 body; on an adapter the camera sets the aperture. The hood is the GB-104, a petal-shaped bayonet hood engraved CONTAX METAL HOOD ø100mm GB-104, an optional extra that Shige lists at ¥11,200. Shige calls the hood scarce and often dear secondhand, and says the Distagon 35’s GB-101 also fits but may not shade enough. A seller in 2026 warned that Contax 645 hoods fit only one way round, engraving uppermost for use and turned over to reverse for storage, and may not come off again if fitted wrongly. The Auto Extension Tubes fit, giving close-ups well beyond the lens’s own 1:4.2 at 90 mm by Shige’s estimates. The Mutar 1.4x does not: Zeiss restricts it to the three telephotos.

Shige’s review on the Leica S, through Leica’s S-Adapter C of 2013, is the fullest account of it in use. He finds it sharp with good resolution even wide open, ranking among the better lenses of the system and comparable to some primes. The background blur is smooth, and vignetting is barely visible on the S’s sensor, which is smaller than the film frame. He sees barrel distortion at 45 mm when photographing brickwork from about a metre, simple enough to correct by hand. Its autofocus is among the slower in the system on the S and now and then overshoots before settling, and it struggles behind wire fences or against foliage. On the S the focal length is recorded in the image file. He calls it a lens that changed the way he thinks about zooms: one lens doing the work of the Distagon 45 and 55 and the Planar 80 at the cost of f/4.5. Fringer lists it, with all the system’s autofocus primes, among the lenses with “better AF performance” on its Fujifilm GFX adapter, and ALPA’s 2017 lens module controls its aperture and focus motor without autofocus. GL Optics, which rehouses six of the Contax 645 primes as cine lenses, does not include the zoom.

Shige thinks it was made in relatively small numbers, its production period cut short when Kyocera left the camera business in 2005; the 645 system’s production ended that April, under three years after the lens appeared. He gives ¥379,000 before tax as its yen list price and finds it only occasionally on the used market, and expensive. Four copies sold on Yahoo! Auctions in Japan in 2026 show how far condition moves the price. A working copy with dust and fungus inside but no haze, sold with a GB-104 and a Contax 95 mm filter, made ¥237,050 after 44 bids in August. A copy serviced before sale, with deteriorated parts around its internal cable replaced, went for ¥200,000 in September, and a dealer’s copy for ¥129,800 in May. A boxed copy sold as-is in May made ¥35,473. It had fungus, haze and separation, a catching zoom ring, and an internal electronics cover that had worked loose, sliding out when zoomed and catching at 45 mm, with a ribbon cable showing inside the rear of the lens in the photographs. Test any copy on a working Contax 645 body or an electronic adapter. Zoom through the whole range and watch the rear of the lens as you do, then check the autofocus and diaphragm, which move only under their own motors, and look for fungus and haze. Kyocera stopped accepting Contax repairs on 30 April 2015 and in 2024 referred owners to Repair Service Suwa.

There is one version. No optical revision, finish or edition has turned up. The three serials legible in 2026 sale photographs have eight digits and begin 1516 (15162792, 15163630, 15163914), and all four copies photographed carry a CE mark. It is the only Contax 645 lens with a zoom ring and one of three with a 95 mm filter thread. The other Vario-Sonnars sold under the Contax name, such as the Contax G 35–70mm, belong to other systems and none is a 45–90 mm.

Still open: any production figure or serial table, which Kyocera plant made the lens, the number of aperture blades, and a Kyocera list price in yen.