Can I test and judge 35 year old Carl Zeiss lenses? Spoiler alert, No. But I can judge and compare them with the modern day Canon lenses and grow my new found love for the lenses.

These are photo lenses and I compare them with photo lenses. Because I shoot video for work I will throw a focus pull on the lenses too. They are cheap for a highend brand and top class lenses from 30+ years ago. From 100 dollar and up, depending on focal length, speed and production year and country. Cheap for prime lenses if you ask me. One of the cheaper ways to build a prime set. For video, the lenses can be declicked.

I do not own all the fastest lenses, mainly from 2.8 and up.

My set consists of all Carl Zeiss primes Yashica Contax mount:
25mm f2.8 Distagon AEG
35mm f2.8 Distagon MMJ
50mm f1.4 Planar AEJ
50mm f1.7 Planar AEJ
85mm f2.8 Sonnar MMJ and AEG
100mm f3.5 Sonnar AEJ
135mm f2.8 Sonnar AEJ
180mm f2.8 Sonnar MMJ
200mm f3.5 TeleTessar AEG

Media Division Germany made a great video and they compare them specifically with cine lenses; The Legendary ‘Carl Zeiss super speeds’ They also explain the difference between the MMJ and AEG lenses.    • Legendary cine lenses on a budget – Z...  

Overview of all the available options: http://camerawiki.org/wiki/Contax/Ya...

I simply adapt all the lenses to a 10 dollar adapter from ebay on my full frame Canon. All of them fit and work except 1. On the MMJ 180 lens the adapter didn’t fit and when i gently tried is without the adapter fully locked on the lens, the mirror slammed into the lens and the camera quit on me with an ERROR message on the display.

There are too many variables to judge the lenses with only a few tests, bokeh, color fringing, aberration, contrast, sharpness, vignetting. And every lens behaves different on different focal length, focus distance and aperture. The combination of options makes the list endless and impossible to reproduce with just a few photos in an uncontrolled environment.

Even though I didn’t even complete my own test, I love the lenses and wil save for some of the faster options, especially on 35 and 85.

Hope this is useful and leave a comment if you have questions regarding these lenses.

All the lenses are adaptable to modern mirrorless and dslr’s. There are some exceptions but I’m afraid you have to try this before you know, as far as I understood (on https://www.pebbleplace.com/databases...) Of my 11 lenses only 1 did not fit: 9% chance on bad luck :(

These video’s show my process of finding the perfect set of analog cameras and lenses. The series consist of trying a wide variety of film cameras, lenses and film.