Zeiss Planar

This article is about the Zeiss lens. For other uses, see Planar (disambiguation).

The Zeiss Planar is a photographic lens designed by Paul Rudolph at Carl Zeiss in 1896. Rudolph's original was a six-element symmetrical double Gauss lens design.

Zeiss Planar

Introduced in	1896
Author	Paul Rudolph
Construction	6 elements in 4 groups
Aperture	f/4.5

While very sharp, early versions of the lens suffered from flare due to its many air-to-glass surfaces. Before the introduction of lens coating technology, the four-element Tessar, with slightly inferior image quality, was preferred due to its better contrast. In the 1950s, when effective anti-reflective lens coatings became available, coated Planars were produced with much-improved flare resistance. These lenses used the Zeiss T coating system, which had been invented by Olexander Smakula in 1935. They performed very well as normal and medium-long focus lenses for small and medium format cameras. One of the most notable Planar lenses is the high-speed f/2.0/110 mm lens for the 2000- and 200-series medium format Hasselblad cameras with a similar version available for the Rolleiflex 6000 series cameras.

Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50/1.4, 50/1.7

Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50/1.4 lens

See also

• Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7
• Biotar
• Tessar
• Sonnar
• Biogon
• Distagon
• Flektogon
• Hologon
• Photographic lens design

Further reading

• Nasse, H. Hubert (July 2011). "From the series of articles on lens names: Planar" (PDF). Camera Lens Blog (CLB) (40th ed.). Carl Zeiss AG, Camera Lens Division. Retrieved 2013-06-08. (NB. German: [1]) {{cite web}}: External link in |quote= (help)

References

• Carl Zeiss lenses [2]
• Carl Zeiss SLR Lenses - Planar T* 1,4/50 [3]