Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Triotar 8.5cm f/4

Carl Zeiss · Contax RF · 1932 · Cooke triplet

Also known as: Zeiss Triotar 85mm f/4 · Triotar 8.5cm

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Carl Zeiss Jena Contax RF 1932–1945 1364483–2900000 — the 1932 to 1942 span of the company-wide Carl Zeiss year table, which is as far as any published block reaches; Jena numbers were still below 3000000 in 1946 No figure published
Postwar, for the Contax IIa and IIIa Contax RF — — No figure published
  1. No per-model serial list has been published for the 8.5cm f/4 Triotar in any source consulted online, and no published block covers Jena production from 1943 to 1945. The batch-level record exists in print: Hartmut Thiele's Fabrikationsbuch Photooptik II lists Carl Zeiss Jena photographic optics 1927–1991 by type with batch quantities and serial columns. It was not consulted for this entry.
  2. A correction, and the primary evidence for it. This entry previously gave the Triotar's life as 1932–1945 and said in prose that the lens did not survive the war, postwar Zeiss offering only the Sonnar at 85mm. Zeiss Ikon's own Contax literature contradicts that. The Contax price list of 15 February 1956 (CAM-617) lists TRIOTAR f/4, 85mm in bayonet mount for the Contax IIa and IIIa, catalogue number 543/02 K, three elements, 28°, closest distance 3½ ft, at US$106.00 against US$229.00 for the f/2 Sonnar; the price list of October 1958 and the dealer catalogue of 15 May 1960 (CAM-891-a) both repeat it as catalogue number 11.1807. The Contax IIa/IIIa sales brochure of September 1951 (CAM 339-9-51) names no Triotar, so the lens re-entered the postwar range somewhere between those two documents. The family end year is now 1960 because that is the last catalogue consulted that still sells the lens, not because production is known to have stopped then.
  3. A second, separate question that is NOT settled by the above. camera-wiki's Contax lens list carries an 85mm f/4 Triotar among the alloy-mount lenses Carl Zeiss JENA built for the Contax after 1945, which would put such examples above 3000000 in the East German sequence. The Zeiss Ikon price lists cited here are West German documents and say nothing about Jena production. Whether the eastern half of the firm also built the lens after the war is recorded here rather than resolved.
  4. What the period record does carry, and where. The lens is corroborated well beyond one source by Zeiss Ikon's own documents: the US Contax price list of May 1933 prices a reinforced round case for the 8.5cm Triotar f/4, the earliest document consulted that names the lens; the Contax lens catalogue of 1935 (C545) lists it under "Long-distance Lenses" at 28° and recommends it for portraiture, "of light build", noting that the 8.5cm Sonnar is "of speed four times that of the Triotar"; the price list of May 1939 puts it at US$93.00 against US$213.00 for that Sonnar, and the price list of October 1941 at US$102.00 against US$234.00. The cheap-portrait-lens reading in this entry is the catalogue's own.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Three elements — the simplest lens in the Contax range. Zeiss Ikon's own specification tables print the element count, and give 3 for the Triotar against 7 for the 8.5cm Sonnar
  • Two stops slower than the 8.5cm Sonnar, and a fraction of its size
  • 28° angle of view, the same as the 8.5cm Sonnar (Zeiss Ikon Contax lens catalogue, 1935)

Carl Zeiss Jena:

  • Black and nickel for the Contax I; chrome for the II and III
  • Takes the 42mm slip-on shade and filter, shared with the 13.5cm Sonnar and the 18cm Tele-Tessar — Zeiss Ikon sold one round case for all three (price lists, May 1939 and October 1941)

Postwar, for the Contax IIa and IIIa:

  • Zeiss Ikon catalogue number 543/02 K in 1956, renumbered 11.1807 by 1958
  • Takes the 40.5mm SCREW-IN filter and shade, the fitting shared with the 21, 35, 50 and 135mm lenses — not the prewar lens's 42mm slip-on

Serial-range notes

the whole Carl Zeiss sequence
THE RULE. Carl Zeiss numbered every lens it made in one continuous sequence, whatever the type, so a Triotar is dated from the company-wide serial/year table and not from a list for this model. Read the bezel number against the table: 1932 = 1364483–1389279, 1933 = 1436671–1456003, 1934 = 1500474–1590000, 1935 = 1615764–1752303, 1936 = 1674882–1942806, 1937 = 1930150–2219775, 1938 = 2267991–2527984, 1939 = 2527999–2651211, 1940 = 2652000–2678000, 1941 = 2678326–2790346, 1942 = 2800000–2900000 (camera-wiki, after Wilkinson and Glanfield; craigcamera.com carries the same figures). Blocks were allocated ahead of use and worked through out of order, so the brackets overlap and a number falling in two years cannot be resolved by the table alone.
2140934
A dated example. Early Photography records an 8.5cm f/4 Triotar numbered 2140934 as part of a Contax II outfit whose body reads B21882, a 1936 camera; the lens number sits inside the 1937 block of the year table. Lens and body were numbered in unrelated sequences and are not expected to agree.
2999000–2999500
The nearest thing to a published block for a Triotar, though for the 13.5cm f/4.5 rather than this lens: camera-wiki records a batch of 500, serials 2999000–2999500, dated to 1946. It fixes the ceiling of the old Jena sequence — Carl Zeiss Jena was still numbering below 3000000 the year after the war, and only crossed it when the postwar series began.
above 3000000
An 85mm f/4 Triotar numbered above 3000000 is postwar Carl Zeiss Jena, in the East German sequence that resumed at 3000000 and ran 3000000–3200000 for 1945–49 and 3200000–3470000 for 1949–52. Pacific Rim Camera gives the same starting point for postwar Jena optics. Camera-wiki lists an 85mm f/4 Triotar among the alloy-mount Contax lenses the eastern half of Carl Zeiss made after the war; see the table note below.
a letter followed by five digits
Not a lens number. Zeiss Ikon numbered CAMERAS in a separate sequence of one letter and five digits, a new letter every 99,999, so the number on the Contax body and the number on the Triotar belong to two unconnected series.

Specifications

Formula
Cooke triplet
Construction
3 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range
f/4
Min. focus
1 m
Filter
40.5 mm
Years manufactured
1932–1960
Country
Germany
Original price
US$93.00 (Zeiss Ikon Contax price list, May 1939) (today $2,100)

What reviewers say

History

The Triotar is three pieces of glass — a Cooke triplet, the simplest design that can be corrected at all — at 85mm and f/4. It sat in the Contax catalogue below the f/2 Sonnar as the affordable portrait lens, and the price lists say by how much: US$93.00 against US$213.00 in May 1939, US$102.00 against US$234.00 in October 1941.

Zeiss Ikon’s 1935 lens catalogue puts it in the portrait section itself — a lens “of light build”, recommended for children and animals at a distance, with the f/2 Sonnar introduced immediately afterwards as being “of speed four times that of the Triotar”. Two stops slower and a great deal smaller. In good light at moderate apertures a triplet gives away less than its reputation suggests, which is why the design outlived far more complicated contemporaries in cheap cameras.

The war interrupted the lens; it did not end it. There is no Triotar in the Contax IIa/IIIa brochure of September 1951; by February 1956 the Contax price list carries an 85mm f/4 Triotar in bayonet mount again, still three elements, still half the price of the Sonnar, and it is still there in the dealer catalogue of May 1960. See the table notes: this entry used to say the lens did not survive the war, and Zeiss Ikon’s own price lists say otherwise.

That is the western half of the firm. What Carl Zeiss Jena did with the design after 1945 is a separate question and an open one — camera-wiki lists an 85mm f/4 Triotar among the alloy-mount Contax lenses built in the east, and the West German price lists cited here have nothing to say about it either way. The two halves of this lens’s postwar history are not the same story and are not settled by the same documents.

Expand Collapse

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 Triotar 8.5cm f/4? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $280 across 12 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $250–$380). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $280.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$280$250–$38012
2026-09-06$280$250–$38012

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Sonnar 8.5cm f/2

Sources (15)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.