This lens kept me company for the last 20 years or so: I bought it for my Yashica FX3 Super 2000 and I then adapted it to pretty much all of my digital systems, starting with the Canon EOS 300D, using that combination for shooting — among the other projects — most of the light painted nudes you see in my Nudes I section of the website. It makes me smile to think most of that series was shot on a 6 megapixel consumer dSLR with an adapted lens.
A small note about the Yashica FX3 Super 2000: what an amazing camera! Ages ago I bought a couple of them, one for shooting Fuji PRO400H and one for Ilford HP5. Focusing with its screen was a pleasure, and it was so light, responsive and fun to use. And cheap — I didn’t fear it could get stolen or ruined or even break. Good times!
As I moved from film to digital I adapted the Planar to the various Nikon cameras I used, starting with dSLR and ending with the Z mirrorless system, but this post will be about using this lens on the Micro Four Thirds (m43 from now on) system, because I am lately really enjoying to shoot the Planar with my Olympus Pen-F.
My copy was made around 1973, because serial numbers between 6.000.000 and 7.300.00 indicate a lens produced from 1972 to 1975, and my copy has serial 6514236. That makes it more or less 50 years old and it’s so great it still works perfectly.
Being this lens a 50mm, it offers an equivalent 100mm field of view when mounted on m43 cameras. This fact effectively turns it into a classic portrait lens, sitting between the popular 85mm and 135mm focal lengths and almost right on the also very popular 105mm spot.
The aperture of f1.7 gives us a depth of field comparable to f3.4 on m43, which is not too bad for such a focal length. I enjoy some subject separation when shooting portraits, but I am not a fan of the extremes. One of the features I enjoy the most with m43 is that I get more depth of field for each aperture value, so I have more stuff in focus.
For this reason I generally prefer to shoot with the Zuiko 25mm f1.8 and the Pen-F, instead of the Nikon Z6 II with the 50mm f1.8 S: with the latter I have much higher image quality, but I often must close down the aperture to f4 if I want to have enough stuff in focus. Anyway, this is the topic for another post – and I am also quite sure I already wrote about it somewhere else on the blog. Back to the Planar now.
Since the DOF at f1.7 is the same you would get at f3.4 on Full Frame, it would be reasonable to entertain the idea of shooting at f1.7 most of the times – so, how is this lens behaving at its maximum aperture?
The lens at f1.7 can easily show a bit of halo around very high contrast areas, and the micro-contrast and sharpness are not especially high. Things drastically improve starting at f2.8, when the halo is already gone and micro-contrast and sharpness become wonderful. Go to f4 and the image quality becomes stellar. But again, we are likely shooting this quite wide for portraiture, and I think the lens at f1.7 is definitely usable for producing good images.
Vignetting follows the same progression as sharpness and micro-contrast: there is quite some vignetting at f1.7, much less at f2.8, almost nothing from f4 on. I like vignetting, especially in portraiture, so I don’t really care about this.
Keep in mind that on m43 you are using the center of the lens, so you will rarely see any vignetting at all apertures.
The out of focus areas could occasionally become a bit distracting, depending on the light angle and the nature of the background, but it never becomes problematic. The bokeh is not having a unique character, like the Helios 44.
At this point I would like to say that in modern age we can often improve the out of focus renderition in a matter of minutes. Take a look at the following portrait, for instance: the first version is what I got out the camera, the second version is processed in Photoshop, where I improved the out of focus, making it slightly softer and adding a hint of swirl.
I don’t think there is something inherently bad about this kind of editing. Not everyone can afford an f0.95 Noctilux or an 85mm f1.2, so it is good there are ways for making the out of focus areas more in line with our taste.
If you are interested in this technique, I can write a post about it, it is quite easy and fast to do. Let me know in comments!
The Planar is of course a full manual lens, so both aperture and focus are operated with rings on the barrel. The aperture moves in full stops and goes from f1.7 to f16, with f2 being unmarked but still noticeable thanks to the pleasant clicks.
The focus is smooth and precise, a true joy to use. I press the zoom button on the Pen-F to push into the image when I need more precision, using the back dial on the camera to change the zoom ratio and pushing the OK button to go back to the not zoomed view. After a while this operation becomes fast enough, even if I would have loved the zoom to be engaged by the focus ring — impossible desire, since the lens is not communicating with the camera in any way.
I did set up a PLANAR50 profile in the Utility / Lens Info Settings menu, this way I can take advantage of the wonderful stabilisation of the Pen-F and also write the name of the lens in the Exif data, which proves to be useful for knowing which lens I used for which photo. You just need to remember changing the assigned profile so that it matches the mounted lens.
This is the description of the lens taken from the official Zeiss brochure:
For the Contax® owner this lens is an attractively priced alternative to the fast 50 mm f/1.4 standard lens. The relative aperture of 1:1.7 is absolutely sufficient for many photographic purposes. The image quality is excellent and can even be compared with that of the 50 mm Planar® f/1.4 lens at the corresponding f-stops. Specific mention should be made of the relatively short design and the low weight of this high-performance seven-element lens.
I love how they are so strict when stating that the aperture is absolutely sufficient for many photographic purposes. It makes me smile. It is also interesting to note how they put this lens into direct competition with its much more expensive f1.4 sister: this detail tells us about different times, when there was not a race for necessarily owning the best and brightest lens. The f1.4 had specific use cases, but the f1.7 was indeed “absolutely sufficient” for lots of applications. And it still is, 50 years later.
I am not a fan of sharpness tests, so I have no idea how the corner sharpness is. What I know is that since the sensor only uses the central part of the lens, corner sharpness is better than what it would be on Full Frame or APS-C. Another advantage of m43 system!
Flare resistance is extremely good and so is the control of chromatic aberrations: you may find some CA at f1.7 but they are basically gone from f2.8 on — which is a testament to the quality of the T* coating on the lens.
Thinking about all I mentioned, I would be tempted to say the optimal way for shooting this lens would be at f2.8 and with the subject not too close. This would give you very good micro contrast and sharpness. But this is just some general idea. I shoot it at f1.7 with no problems and I find that for some portraits the lower sharpness at f1.7 is not a problem, on the contrary, it helps giving the skin some glow and texture simplification.
The Planar is by no means a macro lens, and the details it can capture are usually less moody and unique than what the Helios can do — still, considering on m43 it behaves like a f3.4 100mm equivalent with a minimum focus distance of half meter, you can get pretty decent subject separation.
When shooting small details you need to decide if you prioritize a more blurred background or a more defined subject. In the first case you can shoot at f1.7 while for the latter I highly suggest to shoot at f2.8.
If my memory is not lying I paid this lens around 100 Euros / USD at the time and I see that today it can be found for 100-200 EUR/USD. The f1.4 version can be found around 300-500 EUR/USD and I am thinking to buy one and try it sooner or later.
I would absolutely recommend this Planar 50mm f1.7 to everyone that wants to get a good manual lens, especially if using a m43 camera and looking for a great classical length portrait lens that offers impressive image quality without being plagued by the hyper corrected and sharp look of modern lenses.
It surely is a lens that requires some efforts on your side, and I enjoy this fact very much.
The Helios 44 would be a more unique choice for portraiture, but keep in mind that it is longer (58mm so 116mm on m43), slightly less bright (f2 instead of f1.7) and much worse when it comes to flare resistance — still, the Helios 44 is a truly magical lens on its own, something that everyone should own 🙂
We are often being told that to get a “filmic look” we need to apply this or that preset, but I think the lens and sensor we use are much more important for building an authentic filmic look. Most of the photos in this post are straight out of camera, shot in jpg.
You know, I have no interest in writing (nor reading, most of the times) “proper reviews” of photo gear — the ones with tests and data etc. I bought and used lenses that had very good reviews, but I sold them after a while because they gave me no joy. I understood long ago that — unless you have some specific job need — the character and behaviour of a lens can’t be described or easily understood by simply looking at data.
So I prefer to write posts like this one, giving you some info about the lens and showing photos taken with it, trying to convey my overall point of view and experience. Yes, that’s the word I like so much — experience. What is it like to shoot with a lens or a camera? What did I do with it? Providing this kind of info seems to me more valuable than trying to compile some brochure of the lens and doing multiple lab tests.
I hope you also appreciate this kind of posts! I have a couple of lenses I would like to review like that, starting — probably — with the already mentioned Helios 44, and very likely still using the Pen-F for this.
Thanks for reading, be safe.
Please keep the posts coming, they are different and more interesting than the standard technical charts and pixel peeping reviews. Great content and interesting reads. Thank you
Thank you very much Leon! The next post is almost ready, I just need to shoot a couple more photos for it. Have a good time!
Andrea,
Thank you for your wonderful review and pictures from a great lens. I bought it a few weeks ago. I also have the Yashica F-X3 2000.
I look forward to your review on the Helios 44. I have that lens too but never used it on my M43 system.
Thanks for you comment, Eric! I am quite busy with job but I hope I can publish the Helios 44 review soon. Congrats about the FX-3, it’s such a wonderful camera. Have a good day!
I do not own this specific lens but I do own some other 50mm f1.7 lenses of this era. An acquaintance of mine who is in the camera trade told me that all of the 50mm f1.7 lenses from Japan in the 1980s were essentially made by Yashica under license from Zeiss using Zeiss’ Planar design. i.e. they are copies of this lens. And some of them at least look very similar externally as well. I have no absolute confirmation of the above and there is little about it on the internet, but I think it is likely given Zeiss’ relationship with Yashica back then. I own a Ricoh, Pentax and Konica lens each with this spec and all are all excellent with quite distinctive rendering.
There is one issue that I wish to take with your article though. You say “…..DOF at f1.7 is the same you would get at f3.4 on Full Frame………”. I cannot see the reasoning for this and with respect think it not to be so. Nothing about this lens changes just because it is mounted on an M4/3 camera instead of a full frame one. It is after all the same lens as before – the optics are the same, the geometry of the lens and its relation to the sensor (when properly mounted in an adapter) are the same, the aperture size at each f stop is the same as it originally was, so the light rays passing through the lens must be the same. The light rays do not “know” that the lens is now mounted on a different format camera when they leave the lens so its optical characteristics must be the same. It stands to reason I believe, that DOF cannot change – all that changes when mounting this lens on an M4/3 camera is the cropping of the image due to the smaller sensor on the M4/3. To be sure if this were a 50mm equivalent lens with a 1.7 max aperture designed specifically for an M4/3 camera its DOF at f1.7 would be different to that of an actual 50mm f1.7 designed for a full frame camera (i.e. what you say would be correct) but this is attributable to it having different optical and physical layout to allow it to mount focus and work correctly on an m4/3. (e.g. the aperture size at f1.7 would be physically smaller than on a full frame lens due to it being closer to the sensor plane.)
Hello Peter, you are absolutely right when you say that a 50mm f1.7 remains a 50mm f1.7 no matter where you mount it. The optical formula of the lens does not change and all you said is correct. But in practice, since we must increase the distance from our subject if we want to keep the same framing, we also change the DOF associated with the lens, and the DOF we get in the end is not that one of the 50mm at f1.7 anymore, and it becomes that equivalent to a 50mm at f3.4. This is what I meant. Of course, as we move away from the subject we also change the compression and so on, but for all practical purposes, it is enough to remember that the DOF follows this simplified rule.
I shot a fast test to illustrate what I said. It is not perfect (I shot the 70-200 at 102mm instead of 100, and I the focal plane was not 100% aligned between the two cameras), but I think it’s good enough:
I use and love m43 since many years and I never was interested in equivalency and its never ending debate. I only care about practical aspects that help me make choices when shooting or acquiring gear 🙂
Thanks again for reading and commenting!
I agree with you about the genesis of this lens. Yashica (Tomioka) and Carl Zeiss lenses were likely made almost the same way in the same factory from the same optical glass designs. The T* coatings may be the only real tangible difference. I own the Yashica f1.7 50mm lens (mounted on my Contax RTS), and the filter size is 52mm. The Planer 1.7 uses a 57mm cap and 55mm screw-in filters, so there are some noticeable design differences, at least externally. https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/consumer-products/downloads/historical-products/photography/contax-yashica/en/datasheet-zeiss-planar-1750-en.pdf
Full disclosure – I’d love to own the Zeiss lens, but my Yashica heart (and budget) says no. – Chris
Excellent post! Count me as a new subscriber. – Chris
I am glad you like it, Chris! Welcome to the blog.
While I understand what you call ‘practical’ reasoning in your response to Peter, Peter is absolutely correct. If you Make a large print from a full frame camera and crop it to 50% of the area, the illumination and depth of field on the part of the print you keep do not change. And this is the comparison Zeiss uses in its blog.
You yourself do not use this as a 50mm normal lens. On a Micro4/3 camera, you say you are using it as a 100mm portrait lens. So you do not need to back away to get the same framing. You are therefore losing nothing in f-stop terms.
Now you can see an actual benefit. You are effectively getting a 100mm f/1.7 lens with the same depth of field and the same ability to blur the background, but at a 50mm price point. Compare this with the f/4 or f/4.5 you would get on most M4/3 zoom kit lenses. And now compare it to the size, weight and cost of top brand 85mm or 105mm lenses of f/1.7 or f/1.8 aperture.
You said:
“My copy was made around 1973, because serial numbers between 6.000.000 and 7.300.00 indicate a lens produced from 1972 to 1975, and my copy has serial 6514236.”
I shared your misunderstanding – my serial # is in the same range – but something didn’t add up. So I ploughed through the rough and ready “Lens Vade Mecum”. I finally realized that the serial number list we both had used was for West German lenses. My lens and yours were made in Japan – it’s marked on the lens barrel.
My search today led to a good resource for Cine shooters at https://reduser.net/threads/contax-zeiss-survival-guide.94346/
It’s the “Contax Zeiss Survival Guide” – Quotes:
“AE lenses were made between 1975 and 1984. MM’s from 1984 to 2005.”
“Lenses like your 35/2.8 and 50/1.4 with the last (largest) number on the aperture ring in green are MM lenses.”
“In my experience, the MMs generally start in the 66X-XXX serial range. This isn’t a science, but an approximation.”
“Hey K. . ., just from the serial number (64X-XXX) that looks like an AE. MM’s usually start later, at about 66 at the earliest.”
[So our lenses are late AE models in the 6,5xx,xxx range.]
_________________
From the “Lens Vade Mecum”:
“As to dates, note the following:
An advert in B.J.P. 14/03/1980 shows 6,127,128.”
“A leaflet, ‘Gli Objettivi’ from 04/1987 shows a very complete set at Serial Nos about 6.56-6.72 million”
“The Contax 139 was reviewed in Popular Photo 08/1980 p115. . . . Serial numbers were then: Planar f1.7/50mm No 6,255,597. . . .”
____________________
Since the MM version replaced the AE version in 1984, this puts the date of our AE copies ca. 1983
I hope this helps.
Hi Peter, I found this: https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-carl-zeiss-planar-17-50-t-c-y/ where it says this:
There are two versions of the Zeiss Planar 1.7/50 T*.
The older AE version introduced in the mid 70’s. It will not allow program and shutter-priority with film cameras. It was made in Japan from the beginning while other C/Y lenses were manufactured in Germany before production was moved to in Japan (als called AEJ). Unlike with the 1.4 version ninja-star-bokeh is not an issue with the 1.7/50.
The younger MM version was sold from 1984 to 2005. It can be identified by the green color of the f/16 marking. Some people report improved coatings with the MM version but I have so far not seen a test to support that.
If you want to leitax your lens to Nikon F-mount or Sony A-mount you need to buy the MM version.
Some comments in that page are also interesting. From most of the info I found online, I gather my copy is an AE and is done in the 70s.
I have compared my copy with the Yashica 1.7 and Yashica 2.0 that I also own, in colour the Zeiss is lovely, but in b&w I found the Yashica 2.0 both sharper and offering better contrast than the Zeiss. The Yashica 1.7 was hard worked on my fx3 and is a bit loose from dust erosion so comparison is a bit unfair
Hi Robert! I should have a Yashica 50mm somehwere, also coming from my FX3 gear, I will take a look and probably upade the review with this, thank you for the input!
The FX3 was such a good camera, absolutely lovely.
Hello Andrea
I also use Nikons and mft cameras for different purposes and enjoy your refreshing different reviews. I would like to know how you edited the bokeh.
Hello Vidar! I will post about that, it is very simple! Thanks for reading and commenting the blog.