For Sale Zeiss Mark 2 Set

[Fred Salaff]

For Sale: Very clean set of Zeiss Mark 2 lenses: 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm T1.3. Super price: USD$31,500.
Photos and more information can be seen on website: www.fjsinternational.com/lenses.

The lenses are marked "OPTON" Oberkochen. A little explanation:
Towards the end of WWII, Zeiss (Jena) was taken over by the Soviets,
whereas a second branch was set up in the Western Zone of occupation
to become the "Zeiss-Opton Optische Werkstaette Oberkochen GmbH."
OPTON = (OPTische Werke OberkocheN).

In other words, the lenses were made in Oberkochen.

 

[Yoji San]

That's interesting, same story happen with Neumann Microphone, the company got split and in the west you had Neumann and in the east you had Gefell. Once the wall went down in '89 Gefell mic where accessible to the western world and turns out that Gefell, because being "unaffected" by the western mentality of profit made the same mic as before WWII. A lot of musician prefer the sound of the new Gefell (which sound like an old Neumann) over the new Neumann mic.
History...
How would you compare the regular Zeiss and the Zeiss OPTON?

 

[Fred Salaff]

I don't think there is a difference, like the microphones. The "Opton" designation came to mean export to the Eastern bloc, I believe.

 

[Yoji San]

Thanks for the answering

 

[Markus Rave]

I don't think there is a difference, like the microphones. The "Opton" designation came to mean export to the Eastern bloc, I believe.

It is exactly as you say. Zeiss GFR (Oberkochen) could not sell to the GDR because they had Zeiss as a brand name as well, called Zeiss Jena. So Zeiss, Oberkochen renamed the Mark I primes to Opton, Oberkochen. That did not leave enough space for the product name like Planar which became Pl for instance. The Optons were sold over neutral Sweden and then imported into the GDR. The lens is identical to the Mark I.

 

[Steve Gal]

These are not Mk1 but Mk2 Optons. Don't think I ever seen a set of these before.

Markus, planar does not mean PL. PL means Positive lock. Planar has to do with how many elements & groups which make up a lens. A planar has 6 elements in 6 groups which although produced a sharp image, suffered from flare more over a 4 element design since there was more air to glass surface. Introduction of the anti-reflective coating corrected this problem.

Unless you are trying to say that they shortened Planar to PL as in abbreviation.

 

[Fred Salaff]

Discount for user of this forum

Discount for user of this forum

Still for sale.
Reduser Forum discount of $1,000.

 

[Fred Salaff]

bump

 

[Fred Salaff]

Lowering the price to $27,500

 

[Fred Salaff]

Still for sale.
open to offers!