Ask for the development history of telephoto lenses

Let’s talk about Leica first. Before the Leica brand was established, in 1849, the 23-year-old German mathematician Karl. Carl Kellner founded the "Optical Society" in Wetzlar and began the development of lenses and microscopes. This was the previous life of Leica. In 1869 Ernst Leitz took over the company and became sole manager, naming the company after himself. This is the famous Leitz company. Specifically speaking of the birth of the Leica brand, we have to first talk about the birth of the 135 camera.

Oskar Barnack, a talented German mechanic, is also a persistent sex lover like us. At the beginning of the last century, when the Industrial Revolution was booming, the status of mechanical engineers at that time was equivalent to that of IT engineers before the collapse of Nasdaq, and they were the pride of intellectuals. The history of Leica cameras began when Oskar Barnack served as Research Director of Leitz AG.

Among the German optics heroes, Leica takes a different approach and pursues compactness. Schneider emphasizes that tolerance means bigness and internal strength. Rodents is best known for his darkroom tools (magnifying lenses) and Chase is an all-around master. The 135 format Carl Zeiss T* lens is the only brand that can compete with Leica. 120 medium format Hasselblad also relies on the Zeiss T* lens group to dominate the professional field. Even in large format, Carl Zeiss also has a small image field Planar T* 135mm/3.5, which is known as the maximum aperture of large format lenses.

The ancient town of Jeona in Germany is the hometown of the famous Carl Zeiss optics. Perhaps no one thought at that time that Carl Zeiss (Carl Zeiss, 1816-1888), an apprentice who graduated from high school, would create a world optical giant here.

With many years of interest in optics and chemistry, Karl spent a long time auditing at the local University of Jena after completing his apprenticeship. In 1846, when Carl Zeiss was just 30 years old, he founded a studio with 20 employees. The early products were magnifying lenses and simple microscopes, which benefited from two scientists, Ernst Abbe and Otto. -With the help of SCHOTT, the quality of optical lenses from Zeiss factory has always been in the leading position. Before World War II, the production hall in Dresden was the largest camera factory in the world.

Disaster struck. On the night of February 14, 1945, the Dresden Camera Factory was bombed by the Allies. This was a disaster. Towards the end of World War II, General Patton's Third Army occupied Jena and originally planned to reopen the factory. However, due to the Yalta Treaty stipulating that the position of the US military must retreat and move westward, Germany was divided into two, the town of Jena and Drei All of Ston was occupied by Soviet troops. Of course, the Russians would not let "American imperialism" get involved in the wealth of this optical giant, so a large number of Zeiss senior technicians were transferred to the Soviet city of Kippu. As war compensation, the Soviet army also dismantled the remaining 94%. Carl Zeiss processing plant and manufacturing plant. The current Kiev camera manufacturing factory was established in Kiev (so Russian lenses still have a place in the optical field with a little bit of superficial technology stolen [robbed?]). However, it seems that the German technology cannot be taken away. With the support of the University of Jena, the Carl Zeiss Jeona LOGO soon appeared again. At the same time, when Patton withdrew, 126 key Zeiss managers and technicians who were also taken away were re-established in Oberkochen, Baden-Württemberg, under the leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) supported by the United States. After building a factory, Carl Zeiss also gained a new life in the "capitalist" society. But since then the Zeiss factory has been divided into two.

The product name of East Germany is: Carl Zeiss Jeona (Carl Zeiss Jeona), historically known as "East Cai". Produced Pantacon cameras

West Germany’s product was named: Carl Zeiss, historically known as "West Zeiss"

In fact, both East and West Zeiss inherited the Zeiss tradition in design, but they both promoted themselves It is authentic to ZEISS. A blessing in disguise, it was this kind of competition that enabled Zeiss to make further progress in optical design.

After the reunification of the two Germanys, the Zeiss factories in East and West Germany joined forces to operate. The headquarters is still located in Oberkochen, with 3,500 employees and branches around the world. At this time, Zeiss was already the strongest player in a wide range of optical fields. In the 135 field, Contax still has Leica to compete with it, but in the 120 professional field, Carl Zeiss T* has already dominated the world. Those who follow me will prosper, and those who go against me will perish! Hasselblad and Rollei have only reached the top two positions in the world by using Zeiss lenses. Without the support of Zeiss, Mamiya and Bronica are destined to survive in the cracks.

In the digital age, it’s Zeiss again! Sony, which was originally an optical layman, turned into one of the leaders in the consumer DC industry.

Similar to the introduction of Leica, let’s get to know a person: Paul Rudolf—one of the most famous designers in the history of lens manufacturing and the person who had the greatest influence on the development of Zeiss.

In 1890, he designed the first astigmatic orthophotographic lens (Anastigmat), ushering in a new era of lens manufacturing at the Zeiss factory. In 1896, Rudolf released the famous Planar double-Gaussian structure lens, which excellently corrected various lens aberrations. Since then, the design of standard lenses of various brands produced around the world (including Leica) have all been indebted to Planner. In 1902, he designed the "Eagle Eye" Tessar lens with three groups of four elements. Although the structure was simple and the price was moderate, the image quality was astonishing, bright and sharp. In this issue of Popular Photography, there is an article on "Centennial Tiansai", which talks about this Tiansai and its derivative designed lenses.

On April 25, 1902, the Royal Patent Committee in Berlin issued patent certificate No. 142294 to the lens named Tesser produced by the Carl Zeiss Jena Company. Since then, a brilliant lens family has gradually developed and grown.

When we turn our attention to the beginning of the history of optical development, we will see that in the early days of optical history (that is, the Daguerre period from 1839 to 1855/60), the dominant optical fiber in the market There are actually only two types of lenses. They are the Chevalier lens designed in 1839 and the Petzcval lens developed in 1840. In 1839, Ch. Chevalier designed an achromatic lens with an aperture of 1:18 for the Daguerreotype camera in Paris. This is composed of a set of convex lenses and concave lenses glued to each other. It can correct chromatic aberration and spherical aberration, but it cannot change the distortion and dispersion at the edge of the image field. (In 1924, C.P. Goerz improved this lens to a maximum aperture of 1:11, named it Frontar, and sold it with the Tengor square box camera).

The small aperture causes the exposure time of a Daguerreotype camera to be at least 15 minutes. Professor Josef Petzval in Vienna has been working on solving the problem of too small aperture of the lens, and developed a lens in 1840. A new lens with a full aperture of 1:3.7. The emergence of large aperture lenses has significantly shortened the exposure time of the Daguerreo Camera. Among them, the Daguerreo Camera used for shooting portraits has an exposure time of less than 1 minute. level. Modified Petzval lenses are still widely used in slide lenses today. Petzval lenses also have their own optical limitations, which are mainly reflected in the blurring of the edge field when used for landscape photography. The Voigtlaender Company, the world's oldest camera manufacturer, produced a metal camera equipped with this lens in the same year. This camera has become a highly sought-after object among collectors due to its extremely small production volume. The price of a metal camera equipped with a Petzval lens was quite high at the time, costing 120 gold shields. (In comparison, a good racehorse cost only 100 gold shields.) Despite this, Folunda sold 600 of these cameras.

In 1865, designer Carl August Von Steinheil designed Periskop. This is a double lens structure lens with two sets of meniscus lenses. (Each set of lenses contains a concave and convex lens. The so-called concave and convex lens is also called a meniscus lens. As the name suggests, it is shaped like a meniscus. It has a convex lens and a concave lens bonded together.)

1866 His son Hugo Adolph Steinleil further developed it and designed the Aplanat lens, which also has a symmetrical double lens structure. This lens corrects spherical distortion and chromatic aberration very well, but it fails to solve the astigmatism problem at the edge of the image field. Successor types similar to this structure include the Lynkeioskop produced by C.P. Goerz and the Euryskop produced by Voigtlaender. It can be said that Aplanat is the ancestor of the symmetrical double-element structure lens. Many popular lenses now use the Aplanat design.

With the advent of the dry plate camera in 1879, photography became more popular. Lens design underwent significant development at the end of the 19th century. In the early days, designers were able to design lenses with large apertures but small shooting angles. By this time, the need for large apertures and wide angle shooting had been raised by photographers. Professor Petzval realized that in order to design a wide-angle lens, the problem of astigmatism at the edge of the image field must first be solved, but unfortunately the types of glass that could be used at that time could not meet the needs of designers.

Adolph Steinheil obtained a patent for an asymmetric double-lens structure lens in 1881 and named it the Gruppen-Antiplanet. This lens consisted of two glued mirror feet. Through the action of the convex lens of the front lens group and the concave lens of the rear lens group, a shooting angle of 60 degrees can be achieved at an aperture of 1:6.5. This lens also overcomes the problem of astigmatism within a certain limit.

In the same year, Adolph Steinheil designed another portrait lens "Portrait-Antiplanet". The difference from the Gruppen-Antiplanet is that the rear lens group of this lens is separate. This structure became the basis for the design of future Triplet lenses. In 1890, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott of Jena, Germany, trial-produced a new glass variety. The production of this glass played a decisive role in solving the astigmatism problem of lenses.

Harold Dennis Taylor, technical director of the British T. Cooke & Sons Optical Company, applied this new glass and simplified Petzval's design to obtain a lens that can well correct astigmatism. This Taylor lens with an aperture of 1:4.5 has a slightly asymmetric structure. It is worth mentioning that it consists of only three mirrors, the so-called Triplet. Two convex lenses and a concave lens separate the aperture blades.

In 1889, Dr. Paul Rudolph, a designer at the Carl Zeiss Company in Jena, proposed his principle of field edge astigmatism correction. The first lens that could truly correct astigmatism was developed in 1890. This is a wide-angle lens that utilizes the 2-group 4-element structure of a telephoto lens designed by Gauss in 1840. Dr. Rudolph designed the Planar and Unar lenses in 1897 and 1900 respectively. In the decade from 1890 to 1900, a total of 10,000 non-astigmatic lenses were sold. These lenses produced by Zeiss are all marked as Anastigmat. Since this name has not been patented, in order to prevent imitation, Zeiss has marked its non-astigmatism lenses with the three patented names of Protar, Planar and Unar since 1900. Among them, Unar is composed of four independent lenses, with a convex lens placed at the front, then a concave lens, and two meniscus-type lenses at the end of the lens; Protar is composed of two asymmetric lens groups bonded together. The barium silicate glass developed after 1900 allowed the lens to not only correct astigmatism, but also obtain a flat image field.

In 1902, Dr. Rudolph designed today's longevity Tesser, which is closely related to Unar and Protar. This lens is composed of 4 lenses, which are distributed asymmetrically on both sides of the aperture in pairs. , the front group is two independent pieces of glass, and the rear group is made up of a concave mirror and a convex mirror bonded together. The light is converged by the front group of lenses, and then diverged from the bonding plane of the rear group and projected onto the film plane. The Tessar lens has always been regarded as a modification of the Triplet lens. Through modern research on optical history, we trace the origin of the Tessar lens to Portrait-Antilanet.

In 1902, the Zeiss company began selling Tessar lenses, including the Tessar series with a maximum aperture of 6.3 for quick shooting, and the Tessare series with a maximum aperture of 10 for reshoots. In 1905 and 1906, designer E. Wanderleb increased the maximum aperture of Tessar to 4.5 and 3.5. These developments relied on the production of new types of glass. In 1912, Dr. Wandersleb further modified the Tessar lens, making it more popular. By this time, people could already install the Tessar on a fixed large phone.

The calculation data of Tessar were further adjusted in 1921. In this year, Dr. Willy developed the Tele-Tessar with apertures of 6.3 and 8 suitable for telephoto. The actual rear cut-off of these two Tele-Tessar The distance is shorter than the focal length of the lens, and they are not a typical Tessar structure. Only the Kino-Tele-Tessar produced later for film cameras and the Tele-Tessar-K produced for Contax were telephoto lenses with a typical Tessar structure. In order to meet the needs of aerial photography, Zeiss launched three more lenses, f 4.5/250, f5/500 and f5/700, in the same year.

In 1927, Dr. Willy Merte further improved the aperture of the Tessar lens to 1:2.7. This newly developed Tessar lens was used on most video cameras and cameras at the time. But compared with the f/3.5, which was also popular at the time, the edge imaging sharpness of this lens was slightly lacking. In 1931, Zeiss replaced 1:2.7/120 and 1:2.7/165 with Bio-Tessar 1:2.8/135 and 1:2.8/165. The new Bio-Tessar is a six-element three-group achromatic Triplet lens designed by Dr. Willy Merte. The front group of the lens is composed of a concave lens and a meniscus lens bonded together. There is an independent concave lens in the middle, and the rear group is It is made up of a concave and convex lens, a concave mirror and a convex mirror bonded together. The independent concave lens set in the middle can effectively change the phase difference problem at the edge of the image field.

Zeiss then designed the Apo-Tessar f1:9/1200mm and the S-Tessare f6.3/1200mm for remakes.

In the early 1930s, Dr. Willy Metre designed a Tessar lens for Zeiss specifically for small-format cameras. The structure of this lens was derived from the Tessar f3.5, but the aperture was increased to 1:2.8. , this lens was first used on the Kolibri 3*4cm camera, and was later used as a lens on the Contax1 model produced by the Zeiss Ikon camera factory in Dresden. In 1934, Zeiss developed the Tessar f2 with a coated foreground group. In 1939, the Tessar was further improved by correcting the 6th or 7th lens, which allowed the Tessar f2 to better solve the image distortion problem at full aperture. In the field of wide-angle photography, Zeiss designed a 28mm lens with an aperture of f1:8 for Contax. Although the aperture is very small, the imaging angle of this lens has reached 75 degrees. Until the late 1930s, Zeiss regarded the Tessar as the sharpest lens it produced, as described in the Zeiss advertisement at the time as "Zeiss Tessar - the Eagle's Eye of the Camera".

After World War II (1947), Dr. Harry Zoellner (now the technical director of the Carl Zeiss Jena factory) designed the Tessar f2.8/5cm in 1951 by applying the newly developed thorium element glass. The Tessar lens has just been officially launched on the market. Compared with f3.5, in addition to the increased aperture, the imaging quality has also reached a new peak of the Tessar lens. The Tessar f2.4 designed by Dr. Harry Zoellner in 1965 had reached the pinnacle of the optical level at that time. However, the development of this lens was abandoned halfway due to the loss of image quality caused by the excessively large aperture.

The Carl Zeiss Oberkochen factory near Stuttgart is also committed to the development of Tessar lenses and has made a great contribution to the improvement of the optical quality of the Tessar series of lenses. In 1956, Wandersleb improved it and obtained it in 1938. The patented Tessar original lens design produced the super Tessar f4/35mm and f4/85mm mirror-shutter type suitable for Contaflex 3/4. In 1962, the full aperture of the Super Tessar was increased to 1:3.2. Afterwards, Zeiss revised the front lens groups of the wide-angle Tessar and telephoto Tessar, so that Tessar lenses could finally be used in series on Contaxflex cameras, meeting the needs of users at various focal lengths.

At this point, the organizational construction of the Tessar lens family has been basically completed. Since the 1950s, more improved Tessar lenses have been used by photographers. At the same time, other camera manufacturers also used the design of Tessar lenses to produce a series of anamorphic varieties, including Leitz's early Elmar series lenses. If anyone wants to collect Tessar lenses, there are currently at least more than 400 different varieties of Tessar available in the world.

The large Tessar family shows how advances in optical technology can develop a simple four-element lens in 1840 into a lens that is still important in today's photography field.