[interested_observer]

I read the photography thread over at Reddit from time to time. Yesterday, a gentleman posted that his grandfather was a well known optical engineer at Zeiss. His Grandfather turned out to be Dr. Erhard Glatzel, Chief Optical Designer for Carl Zeiss, called one of great lens designers of the twentieth century.

• My grandfather was a well known optical designer for Carl Zeiss. : photography

Interesting story in and of itself. The gentleman also posted a few pictures of his Grandfather's camera bag that was handed down to him, after his Grandfather passed away.

• imgur: the simple image sharer
• imgur: the simple image sharer
• imgur: the simple image sharer

Some of the folks, much more knowledgeable than me, noticed that among the lenses (that you would expect to be the best available), were two that were unknown to anyone. One was speculated to have had one prototype made, that was probably tucked away in Zeiss' lens library (25/f1.4), however - it was sitting right there in his Grandfather's kit. Then there is yet another one - a 18/f2.8, where Zeiss only produced the 18/f4. He was invited over to the Manual Focus Lens website to post some more, where he started uploading some additional shots of the lenses.

• Distagon 25/1,4 and a Distagon 18/2,8
• Lenses - Imgur

Anyway, I found it an interesting read. Where a gentleman posts about his Grandfather, knowing that he was a wonderful engineer, then finding that he was extremely famous, and the lenses bequeathed to him, some appear to be one of a kind - perhaps prototyped, that are sitting in his lens bag.

[Eulogy]

Wow. Wonder if production was ceased on them due to insane costs?(Then again, when has that ever stopped Zeiss?)

[hcc]

Very interesting story. Thank you to share the link.

[interested_observer]

One interesting aspect of this is some comparisons. The 25/1.4 is about twice the size of the 25/2.8 that was produced. On the other hand, the 18/2.8 appears to be either about the same size or a tad smaller than the production 18/4.

[Reliant K1000]

Thanks for sharing that.

Maybe some of the development he did went towards the medical field - I supported computers in government medical labs at one time, and they had Zeiss lenses in most of their instruments. Some were glorified cameras, really but with, say a mass photospectrometer and a computer interface added on to it. Some microscopes were worth tens of thousands of dollars and had nothing but the best optics.

Kinda why I frequent government auctions - you sometimes get a real gem of a lens available and it goes for maybe $100. And around here a lot of Pentax stuff was bought - I think they had a good government contract in the 70's by the look of what has come up for bid.