I used East German made Carl Zeiss Jena lenses for quite some time on my Praktica. Later I started slow migration to Contax system, which also meant duplicating some of my lenses in C/Y mount. Then I bought Canon EOS 20D. Since I could not afford buying set of new lenses in EF mount, I have been using CZJ and CZ lenses on my 20D with adapters. M42 adapters are reasonably cheap and ubiquitous, but C/Y adapters are quite expensive - expensive enough that I do not like idea of buying more than one. Another problem with the C/Y adapter is, that it is not field-replaceable - it requires fiddling with tiny screw and the fit is so tight on some lenses, that pincers are required for fastening and unfastening. This has lead to a situation where I have my precious C/Y adapter on my Planar T* 1,4/85 and for focal lenghts of 50 mm and 135 mm I use my M42 Jena lenses. I always wondered, whether it is worth, for quality's sake, to go the trouble of installing C/Y adapter and use Kyocera-made CZ lenses. And so I used a free time on my vacation to stage small and simple test to decide how the two pairs of lenses stated in the title of this page stand up against each other.
I set up my camera on a mid-range tripod (Manfrotto 055PROB). I tested each lens wide-open and at f/5.6. For each lens I took three wide-open shots and I refocused for each; the best shot was then selected and used for comparison. For f/5.6, I shot only one picture for each lens as the focus is not as critical in such case. Exposure and white balance was determined using gray card and Pancolar and CZJ Sonnar were used as references. Pictures were then converted from RAWs in ACR and inspected on-screen at 100% or 200% magnification.
Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 1,8/50 MC vs Carl Zeiss Planar T* 1,7/50
Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 3,5/135 MC vs Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 2,8/135
(C) 2006 Borek Lupoměský