Distagon 60mm f/5.6 (1600F/1000F)

This is the first Distagon. The name now covers half a century of Zeiss retrofocus wide-angles across a dozen systems, and it begins here, on a camera that was discontinued three years after the lens appeared.

The problem it solves is specific to reflex cameras. A 60mm lens on 6×6 is wide, and a simple wide-angle of that focal length sits closer to the film than a swinging mirror allows. Günther Lange’s answer, patented in Germany on 8 July 1953, was to put a large dispersive meniscus well out in front of an otherwise conventional five-element core, pushing the rear group away from the film plane. Zeiss’s factory sheet shows the result: six elements in four groups, with that outsized negative front element standing clear of everything behind it. The true focal length is 59.5mm at f/5.59, the back focal distance 66.29mm, and the lens covers 65° and focuses to 0.5m at 280g.

Cavina counts about 2,200 made between 1954 and 1957, and notes that one element uses a thorium-bearing barium glass — normal for the period and mildly radioactive, as many lenses of these years are.

Two cautions. The mount is the M60×6 three-start thread of the 1600F and 1000F, which shares nothing with the bayonet of the 500C onward. And a Distagon 60mm f/5.6 also exists in the later C mount, sold from 1958: the same focal length and aperture, a different lens on a different camera, and the two are regularly confused in listings. Cavina reports that the C version was recomputed rather than simply remounted, and Japanese sources give it seven elements, so the two should not be treated as one design.