Herar 3.5cm f/3.5
Carl Zeiss Jena · Contax RF · 1938
single source, unconfirmedAlso known as: Zeiss Herar 35mm f/3.5 · Herar 3.5/3.5cm · Herar 3,5/3,5cm · Herar 3.5cm f3.5 · Herar 35mm
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carl Zeiss Jena, chrome | Contax RF | 1938–1939 | 2641xxx — every recorded example: 2641059 (offered from Austria, September 2026), 2641096 (Leitz Auction 12, dated 1939), 2641110 (Leitz Auction 47, dated 1938), 2641306 (Coeln, dated 1939) | One batch: under 500 on Pacific Rim Camera's reading of the serial numbers, about 500 on Coeln's, fewer than 1,000 on Leitz Auction's — see the table notes |
- How many. Pacific Rim Camera: "serial numbers suggest a production of less than 500 units, although it most likely was produced in numbers much smaller than that based on its scarcity today." Coeln's product page: "Only about 500 lenses were built, most in Contax mount." Leitz Auction's catalogue for lot 529 of Auction 47: "Produced in a single batch of fewer than 1,000 units between 1938 and 1939." A seller on mflenses in 2015: "Only a batch of 1000 were made at the end of summer of 1939." Four figures, one batch, and no factory-book count in print; the variant table carries the spread rather than picking one. The recorded numbers span 2641059 to 2641306, which is consistent with any of them.
- What the lens was for. Pacific Rim Camera's reading: "an attempt to produce a less expensive alternative to the 35mm Biogon", and the reason some were left uncoated is that "the relatively simple five-element design with fewer air-glass surfaces would not benefit from coating as significantly as more complex optical designs would." That makes the Herar the third of three budget 35s Zeiss tried against its own Biogon — after the Orthometar 3.5cm f/4.5 of 1937 and before the Oberkochen Planar 35mm f/3.5 of 1954 — and the only one built as a pair of cemented groups.
- The designer. US patent 2,124,301, "Photographic Objective", was granted on 19 July 1938 to Sylvester Huber of Jena, assigned to Carl Zeiss, on a German application of 15 November 1935: two members separated by air, one of them a cemented three-lens meniscus, four or five elements in all, with worked examples at f/2.8 and f/3.5. A commenter on mflenses (calvin83) first connected that patent to the Herar. The layout and the f/3.5 example fit, the name does not appear in the patent, and no Zeiss document naming the Herar's designer has been found; the credit is carried on that basis and the badge applies.
- Weight, filter and focus come from allphotolenses alone: 135 g, a 40.5mm filter thread, 0.9 m minimum focus, f/16 minimum aperture and, on its count, a five-bladed diaphragm; it dates the lens 1939–1945, which no other source supports. Pacific Rim Camera gives no dimensions.
- Where the batch went. The mflenses seller of no. 2641110 wondered "how many survived the WWII and the transportation of the Zeiss Jena factory to Krasnogorsk, USSR" and guessed at "a couple of dozen" survivors. That is a guess, and the Soviet removal of Jena's equipment in 1946 is a fact about the factory, not about this lens; nothing found says where the Herars were sold or how many survived.
- What one costs. Leitz Auction 12 sold no. 2641096 (condition B/A, caps) for €1,920 with premium against an estimate of €1,600–1,800; Leitz Auction 47 sold no. 2641110 (A/B, "near-mint", caps) for €2,400 with premium against €1,800–2,200, from a start of €1,000. The same 2641110 had been offered on mflenses in February 2015 at €1,499 and sold that May for €900 to Peter Coeln's shop in Vienna; Coeln later sold no. 2641306, graded B-, at €880. In September 2026 no. 2641059 was on offer from a dealer in Zell am See at a fixed price shown to American buyers as about $2,175. One lens every year or two, then, at a little under or a little over €2,000.
How to tell them apart
- The name. No other Zeiss lens was ever called Herar, so the engraving settles it; the barrel otherwise looks like the prewar Biogon's
- A number in the 2,641,000s. Anything else is not a Herar, or not a Jena one
Carl Zeiss Jena, chrome:
- Chrome barrel engraved Herar 1:3.5 f=3,5cm Carl Zeiss Jena, in the prewar Biogon's compact form
- Coated with a red T, or uncoated — both were sold, and an uncoated Herar is not a stripped one
- Mounts on the INTERNAL bayonet and focuses from the body's wheel, like every other Zeiss 35 for the Contax
Serial-range notes
- the whole number
- How to date one. Carl Zeiss drew every photographic lens number from a single running sequence covering all models at once, so a Zeiss lens is dated by reading its number off a serial/year table rather than by counting within its own type. camera-wiki's table, taken from Wilkinson and Glanfield's A Lens Collector's Vade Mecum, gives the prewar Jena bands; Craig Camera publishes a near-identical list.
- 2641xxx
- Every Herar so far recorded carries a number in one block of the 2,641,000s, which sits at the very top of camera-wiki's 1939 band (2,527,999–2,651,211) and just under the 1940 boundary at 2,652,000. Pacific Rim Camera dates the lens to 1938, Leitz Auction to "a single batch ... between 1938 and 1939", and one seller to "the end of summer of 1939". Blocks were allotted to production in sequence but not always finished in block order, so a 1938 design assembled through 1939 with numbers from the 1939 band is what all three descriptions amount to. Leitz Auction itself dated no. 2641096 to 1939 and no. 2641110 to 1938 in two different sales.
- any Herar in Leica thread
- Pacific Rim Camera records "examples in Leica thread" without saying whether they left Jena that way, and allphotolenses lists the lens in both mounts. No Leica-thread number has been found. A Herar in 39mm thread is carried here as a possibility and not as a variant until one is documented with its number and coupling.
Specifications
- Formula
- Herar — five elements cemented into two groups, so only four air-to-glass surfaces
- Designed by
- Sylvester Huber — optical design — US patent 2,124,301 (Carl Zeiss Jena, German priority 15 November 1935), a two-group objective with a cemented three-lens meniscus, worked at f/2.8 and f/3.5; the attribution rests on that patent matching the lens's layout, see the table notes
- Construction
- 5 elements / 2 groups
- Aperture range
- f/3.5–f/16
- Min. focus
- 0.9 m
- Weight
- 135 g
- Filter
- 40.5 mm
- Years manufactured
- 1938–1939
- Country
- Germany
What reviewers say
No reviews aggregated yet — this family is still in the research queue. Written one? We'd love to index it.
History
The Herar is the Zeiss 35 nobody has heard of, and Zeiss made sure of that by building it once. Its only companions in the Contax catalogue at 35mm were the Biogon, Bertele’s f/2.8 of 1936 with its six elements and its price, and the Orthometar, the f/4.5 of 1937 that shared the Biogon’s barrel and undercut it. The Herar of 1938 was the third attempt at the same idea from a different direction: five elements cemented into just two groups, four air-to-glass surfaces in all, f/3.5 in a barrel the size of the Biogon’s. Pacific Rim Camera calls it “an attempt to produce a less expensive alternative to the 35mm Biogon”, and the design is the cheapness. Two cemented blocks are cheaper to make and mount than four, and with so few surfaces the lens hardly needed the coating Zeiss had just begun to apply, which is why it was sold both with the red T and without.
The design that fits it is Sylvester Huber’s, patented for Carl Zeiss on a German application of November 1935 and granted in the United States in July 1938: two members separated by air, one a cemented three-lens meniscus, worked out at f/2.8 and at f/3.5. The patent does not say Herar and Zeiss never said who drew the lens, so the credit is an inference from the layout and carries the badge for it. What the patent does explain is why the Herar is so slow for a five-element lens: the correction is bought with glass of unusual refractive index inside the cemented groups rather than with air spaces, and the recipe ran out of speed at f/3.5.
Then the war, and the numbers. Every Herar anyone has recorded carries a number in the 2,641,000s, one block at the top of the 1939 band, and the block is short: Pacific Rim Camera reads the serials as fewer than 500 and the scarcity as fewer still, Coeln says about 500, Leitz Auction says fewer than a thousand. Zeiss had no reason to make more. By 1939 the Biogon had the speed, the Orthometar had the price, and a lens sold on the argument that it did not need coating was answering a question the T coating had just closed. It was gone before it was launched, and it stayed a Contax II and III lens: an internal-bayonet 35 focused from the body’s wheel, uncoupled to nothing, needing the same 35mm finder as the Biogon.
What survives trades about once every year or two, at Leitz Auction in Vienna for a little under or a little over €2,000 with premium, and the same lens has been through three hands in a decade: no. 2641110 was offered on a forum in 2015 for €1,499, sold to Peter Coeln for €900, and hammered at €2,400 in 2025. As a picture-maker it is a coated or uncoated prewar Tessar-class 35 with more field curvature and softer edges than the Biogon, which is what a lens with no air spaces to correct with could be expected to give; no one has published a proper test, and this page will carry one when someone does.
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 Herar 3.5cm f/3.5? We'd love to feature it (with credit).
Live listings
Listings updated 2026-09-18. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.