Originally posted by Just1MoreDave The Zeiss might be way better but if you can't find out much information on it, buying for a fair price is hard (what should you pay?) and selling for within $20 of that price will also be hard because the buyer will not know much about it either.
Okay, I finally found some info on the Zeiss "Jenazoom" species (which the 35-70 is). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come to a definite conclusion about the quality. Possibly someone more experienced with vintage lenses can decipher it. Excerpted from
this discussion:
"Here is some history of the Carl Zeiss Jenazoom. In the late eighties and early nineties the whole East German Zeiss camera and optical industry was consolidated in one company. Carl Zeiss of East Geramany and Japan designed a new line of lenses, the lens brand was called "Carl Zeiss Jenazoom Lenses" a full blown production line and they were licensed to most likely the Sigma factory of Japan. These were CZJ manual focus zooms and primes available of every focal length imaginable (too many to list) from the Carl Zeiss Jenazoom family of lenses (see brochure/instruction manual picture above) and these manual lenses are actually fairly common."
A couple of posts later:
"The copy I own is a Carl Zeiss Jena 35 - 70mm 1:3.5 - 4.5 with Minolta AF mount.
It works perfectly on a new Sony Alpha. I found some evidence about at least tow other Carl Zeiss Jena Minolta AF- mount lenses with different zoom- range.
I heard, that these lenses were made in a join- venture- project between VEB Carl Zeiss Jena and Sigma in the period 1989-90. This project was probably ended when Carl Zeiss (West) was taking over Carl Zeiss Jena in 1990/91.
As far as I concern, a very few number of pre- production copies were made.
It seems as they where aimed as a premium line for Sigma.
On my personal tests IQ and build quality is on an equivalent level as the Minolta 35-70mm F4 (in other words very good) but with a minimum focus distance of 500mm (Minolta 1000mm in AF- mode)
I would not try to over- appreciate it’s IQ (on digital) but for a 20 year old lens that was designed for film it is very good."
There's quite a bit more that seems to swing between approval and not so impressed.