Distagon 60mm f/4 (C)

The Distagon 60mm f/4 is the least documented of the three 60mm Distagons Zeiss made for the 500-series bayonet. Hasselblad Historical’s lens list places a Distagon f/4 60 mm C between the f/5.6 and the f/3.5 in the C column, and Kamerastore’s specification page describes it as an improved design that replaced the 60mm f/5.6 C, one stop faster, with seven elements in six groups, about 497 g, a 0.55 m closest focus and the Series 63 drop-in filter of the early C lenses. No Zeiss data sheet for it has surfaced in the collection hosted by Hasselblad Historical, so every optical figure here rests on dealer databases.

The dates are contested in every direction. Kamerastore gives 1962–1963; Marco Cavina, in his article on the original 1000F-mount Distagon, dates the f/4 to 1961; Emulsive’s guide to the C lenses says it ceased production in 1960 and was replaced by the f/3.5 — which cannot be right as written, because the f/3.5 dates from 1975 (Japanese Wikipedia; Cavina says 1977). The introduction, then, falls in 1961 or 1962. The end is the harder problem. Zeiss’s own data sheet for the f/3.5, catalogue number 104852, opens by saying the new lens “surpasses its predecessor, the Distagon f/4 - 60 mm, in performance and speed”, language that reads naturally if the f/4 was still the current 60 when the f/3.5 replaced it. A dealer listing at Camera West titles an example “Hasselblad C 60mm f4 T* Distagon 5734777”: a T* mark did not exist before 1973, and a Zeiss serial in the 5.7-million block belongs to the early 1970s. If the title is accurate, the f/4 was made in black and then T* form through the decade, and the 1963 end date describes only the chrome barrel. That listing was seen only as a title, so this entry gives a start year, leaves the end open, and enters no black or T* variant.

What can be said about the glass is that it changed. The 5.6 is recorded as six elements in four groups, the f/4 as seven in six, and the f/3.5 as seven in seven (Zeiss data sheet C60), so each 60 was a new computation rather than a re-barrelling; Zeiss’s f/3.5 sheet adds that the gain in speed over the f/4 came “without an increase in optical sophistication through the use of most modern computers”, confirming that the two later lenses are of similar complexity. Who computed the f/4 is not stated by any source consulted.

No price was found in any currency: the May 1963 Popular Photography advertisement quoted in Photrio threads gives $549.50 for the 500C with the 80mm Planar but does not list the 60. Production figures do not exist in any consulted source, and the chrome f/4 is described by KEH and Kamerastore as moderately uncommon. Kamerastore’s page also calls it a “Hasselblad Special Edition” lens, a phrase no other source uses and whose meaning is unclear.

Open: the end of production and whether black or T* examples exist beyond the one dealer title; a Zeiss cross-section or prescription; the designer; a list price; and the Hasselblad product code 20044 that Kamerastore attaches to it, which would date the lens to the later numeric-code era if it appeared in a Hasselblad catalogue.