Piesker Picon 135mm f/3.5 (1600F/1000F mount)
Piesker & Co. · Hasselblad 1600F · 1955 · Cooke triplet
single source, unconfirmedAlso known as: Piesker Picon 135mm f/3.5 · Pikon 135mm f/3.5 · Picon 3.5/135
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1600F/1000F thread mount | Hasselblad 1600F (M60×6 three-start thread) | — | — | — |
- No serial list has been published for this lens. Where the existence of a 135mm Picon in the Hasselblad mount is itself unconfirmed, no serial block can be stated for it, and a number quoted in support of one should be read as a number on a lens rather than as a date.
How to tell them apart
- A third-party lens that never appeared in a Hasselblad catalogue, and does not appear on Hasselblad Historical's list of pre-1957 lenses
1600F/1000F thread mount:
- Engraved Picon, and Piesker & Co. Berlin — the name is often transcribed as Pikon, which is why the lens is hard to search for
- Preset diaphragm
- 1600F/1000F thread mount: Whether this lens exists in the Hasselblad mount is not settled. What is documented is a Piesker 180mm f/5.5 Tele-Picon in the 1000F screw mount, serial 15886, photographed on a collector forum; a poster in the same thread cites the Vade Mecum for a 135mm Picon f/3.5 in the same mount; and a dealer listing has carried the title "Piesker Berlin 135mm f/3.5 for Hasselblad 1000F". That is the whole of the evidence.
Serial-range notes
- no scheme — nothing published
- There is no way to date a Picon from its serial number. Piesker & Co. published no serial list, no collector has compiled one from surviving lenses, and the maker was too small and too short-lived to have attracted the kind of factory-record research that produced the Zeiss and Schneider tables. A Picon's number establishes that the lens exists and nothing else.
- 15886
- The only Piesker serial recorded on a lens in a Hasselblad mount: the 180mm f/5.5 Tele-Picon in the 1000F screw mount photographed on the mflenses forum. It is a different lens and a single number rather than a series, so it dates nothing — it establishes only that Piesker did fit lenses to this camera.
Specifications
- Formula
- Cooke triplet
- Construction
- 3 elements / 3 groups
- Aperture range
- f/3.5–f/22
- Country
- Germany
- Coating
- Not established
What reviewers say
No reviews aggregated yet — this family is still in the research queue. Written one? We'd love to index it.
Optical formula — Cooke triplet
No cross-section has surfaced, and the three-elements-in-three-groups reading comes from the Picon's identity as a Cooke triplet in its commoner mounts rather than from a drawing or a teardown of a Hasselblad-mount example. Given that the lens's existence in this mount is itself unconfirmed, nothing is drawn.
History
This page exists to record how thin the evidence is, because the lens is periodically offered and a buyer should know what is and is not established.
Piesker & Co. of Berlin made a preset triplet called the Picon in 135mm f/3.5, sold in the ordinary amateur mounts of the 1950s — Exakta, M42 and the rest. The question is whether it was also made for the Hasselblad 1600F and 1000F, and the answer is a maybe assembled from three fragments. A Piesker 180mm f/5.5 Tele-Picon in the 1000F screw mount has been photographed on a collector forum, serial 15886, which establishes that Piesker did fit lenses to this camera. A poster in the same thread cites the Vade Mecum — the collectors’ reference of last resort — for a 135mm Picon in that mount. And a dealer has listed a lens under a title naming both the focal length and the camera.
Against that: the lens appears nowhere in Hasselblad’s own literature, and it is absent from Hasselblad Historical’s list of pre-1957 lenses, which is otherwise thorough enough to include a Kodak prototype that was never sold.
The name is a further obstacle. It is Picon, from Piesker, and it is transcribed as Pikon often enough that searching for either finds only half of what exists. A related lens, the Tele-Picon, is a different focal length and should not be conflated with this one.
If a Hasselblad-mount example were photographed with its mount visible, this page would improve considerably. Until then, treat a listing that offers one as a claim rather than a fact, and read the mount rather than the title — the same advice that applies to the Soligor 3.5cm elsewhere in this catalogue, for the same reason.
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 Piesker Picon 135mm f/3.5 (1600F/1000F mount)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).
Live listings
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