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Archive 2015 · Origins of Milvus / Z series designs

  
 
Lee Saxon
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Origins of Milvus / Z series designs


So I'm working on an article about the new Milvus lenses and their origins and speculative future.

I've been doing a lot of Googling to refresh (and supplement) my memory, and I'd love to see if people here can corroborate or correct my conclusions.

It seems that the first two Z lenses, the 50/1.4 and 85/1.4, were basically rehoused versions of the C/Y 50/1.4 and 85/1.4. But in this piece, Zeiss claims that "Future ZF lenses have no counterpart in existing Contax lens ranges." This seems to be partially true in that no other lenses were carried over unchanged, but the 21/2.8 and 28/2 Z appear to be mild revisions of the C/Y 21/2.8 and 28/2. This review claims the 35/2 was also a revised C/Y 35/1.4, but the block diagrams do not appear to support this (and Zeiss calls this lens "completely new" and Luminous Landscape calls it "newly designed"). Finally, I've heard forum rumblings that the 25/2.8 is a revised C/Y 25/2.8 and the 18/3.5 is a revised C/Y 18/4, but the block diagrams do not appear to support this (and I can find no corroborating source for these claims).

Anyone have anything to add or correct? Did I miss anything?

Edited on Sep 17, 2015 at 09:38 PM · View previous versions



Sep 17, 2015 at 08:24 PM
Steve Spencer
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Origins of Milvus / Z series designs


I agree that the 21 f/2.8 and 28 f/2 are quite similar to the Contax/Yashica mount versions, but I think they had to change them a bit because of restrictions on what glass types could be used. I have also heard talk that the 100 MP was based on the C/Y 100P, but the MP is 9 elements in 8 groups and the 100P is 6 elements in 5 groups, so that is a fairly big change not to mention the huge reduction in MFD that allows the 100 MP to be a 1:2 magnification macro.

I don't think it makes much sense to talk of the 35 f/2 and based on the C/Y 35 f/1.4 and the ZE/ZF 35 f/1.4 seems quite different from the C/Y version too. The 25 and 18 also seem quite different from the C/Y versions as well.



Sep 17, 2015 at 08:55 PM
Sam_W
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Origins of Milvus / Z series designs


Well, it really depends on how you define "new" in this case.

A lot, if not most or all, of the old C/Y designs used glass that's no longer permitted under RoHS guidelines and so forth. That meant that the C/Y designs could no longer be built, regardless of how good they were. Thing is, with the computer-aided lens design, you can take a pre-existing set of glasses and lens shapes and tweak around to see what you can do with changing a few of the elements. Hence the D21 looking similar, though slightly different. You replace an element or two, and then tweak a few others to compensate for the changed properties and light dispersion and so forth.



Sep 17, 2015 at 08:57 PM





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