![]() The first Zeiss “objectives of extreme rapidity” were 4cm F1.4 Biotars, brought to market in the late 1920s in various Cine camera mounts. Zeiss designers placed more importance on producing a bright image with high contrast. The modern APO-Summicron demonstrates the commitment to this original Leitz design philosophy. I have near-perfect examples of each of these lenses, and can attest to their optical qualities. The Summar, Xenon, and Summitar of the 1930s were well-corrected for distortion, highly color-corrected, and had a reputation for fine resolution. In the 1920s it was found that introducing a small amount of asymmetry into the symmetric Planar formula lens allowed for much wider apertures. The optical pairs are “highly symmetric”, not “completely symmetric”. Think of two prisms placed back-to-back: the first splits white light into a rainbow, the second prism combines the rainbow back to white light. Pairs of similar image-forming optics, placed back-to-back, will cancel out aberrations. Their designs made use of double-Gauss optics, lenses with highly symmetric designs. Leitz designers believed that lenses should be highly corrected with small amounts of residual aberration. The design philosophies of the two companies were very different. ![]() Both companies brought out full lines of lenses, and dominated the market for 35mm format. Interchangeable lens 35mm rangefinder cameras became popular almost 90 years ago when Leitz introduced the Leica II and Zeiss debuted the Contax I.
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