ZEISS LENSES ADAPTED TO BRONICA CAMERAS

The old Bronica/Hasselblad rivalry brings to memory the so-called Gene Autry and Roy Rogers feud. Or, the New York Yankees vs. the original Brooklyn Dodgers. If you liked one you were not allowed, by your friends, to also like the other.

Hassy owners have boasted about their use of fine Zeiss lenses over whatever lenses Bronica was promoting at the time. In the late 1940s to early 1960s, Zeiss, now broken into the Western Zone (good guys) and old Eastern Zone (Jena) (commie bad guys), had lenses made by two rival arms from the same old octopus. The Western arm, however, was not above buying some of their best optics from their Eastern zone rival, as they were not at the time making such products.

After the WWII, the 180MM f2.8 Olympia Sonnar and its reflex housing for post or pre-war Contax rangefinder models was still made in the Eastern zone and non-exclusively marketed by Western zone Zeiss affiliates. Attached to the Flektoskop and Flektometer reflex housings with a large screw thread, the lens was eventually adapted to Hasselblad 1000F by that innovative photographic group, the Life magazine camera department. Based on their success, adapter mounts were later made in Germany for consumer use.

Having successfully mated an adapted 180MM f2.8 Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar to a Kiev 88 with good results, I thought about trying the same idea on a Bronica S2-A. The back focus from the Zeiss lens to the Bronica was critical and I felt most difficult to correctly set up to maintain sharp focus, not just closeup, but right to infinity. I realized that this was a job I could not do alone, and so enlisted the help of a professional machine shop in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

I went to see Byron Gibson at Metro Custom Machine and Design Co. Inc. (phone- 732-238 1287), who had produced some quality machine parts for my various projects in the past. He assigned precision machinist Jimmy Patterson to the job, who realized the difficult nature of this task.

Rings removed from Bronica Helical Focusing Mount

Creating a large bayonet mount for Bronica S-2A, was not out of the question, but would be most difficult to achieve. For that reason, I decided to use the bayonet mount from a defective Bronica Helical Focusing Mount I already had.

These are hard to near impossible to fix, if broken, so worth scrapping for the parts. Good ones and broken ones are still relatively inexpensive and somewhat common.I took the entire thing apart, removed the bayonet mount and took it, a camera, the 180MM and the tripod/35MM part of the Sonnar mount to Jimmy Patterson.

New Linking Ring

I needed to have him measure the screw mount into which the lens fits and find a way to create an adapter ring which would fit into the bayonet mount and allow the 180MM lens to screw into the front of it.

He found out that the lens had a metric thread and that inside the bayonet mount was a left-hand threaded section that allowed the focusing helix to move back and forth.

New Ring screwed into old Bayonet mount

I took four trips to the machine shop as the adapter mount evolved, and needed additional work to modify. The lens could not at first screw far enough into the mount for the camera to focus to infinity. Jimmy had to machine down the front of the bayonet mount to allow his adapter ring to screw deeper into the bayonet mount.

Eventually this worked, so that the lens focused to and past infinity. Just fine. However, screwing the lens into the new adapter unscrewed it from the bayonet left-hand thread. This was solved by my solidifying the adapter/bayonet combination with "locktite".

Adapter on 180MM Zeiss Sonnar ready to mount on Bronica S-2A

I later painted the outside of the adapter ring with black nail polish, which gives a tough, chip free finish. I also cemented the back (non-shiny)side out of some black leatherette into the ring to prevent light from reflecting around.

180MM Zeiss Sonnar on Bronica S-2A

The results - sensational! The lens fills out the entire 6x6cm frame and is even sharp wide open at f2.8. (note: this is the more rare all-black pre-set model as used on Contax rangefinder cameras and early Exaktas - not the auto diaphragm model from the Pentacon 6). To say I�m pleased is putting it mildly. The results I am getting are sensational. This combination is excellent for portraits, wide open, blurring out the background and still keeping the subject sharp.

As a bonus, I found out that the Carl Zeiss Jena 300MM f4 Sonnar (pre-set - of the same era as the 180MM) has the same thread mount as the 180MM. I searched one out and just tried it on my adapter mount and it works perfectly.

I made my initial photos with the 180MM using a tripod to avoid camera movement of any kind for the sharpest tests. However, wanting to use the lens out and about, I have put it on my S-2 and am using it hand-held, outdoors, at 1/250th and 1/500th shutter speeds, yielding crisp perfectly sharp results.

This Zeiss/Bronica adapter is the best lens adaptation I have done to date.

It is precision and strong holding both the heavy 180MM and 300MM lenses solidly on the Bronica cameras with no fear of any damage from the lens falling off. And, that is without any lens counterbalancing tripod mount.

I hope I have encouraged others to make similar mounts for these fine Zeiss lenses and also to create their own unique custom lens conversions for classic Bronica.

I started out to adapt a pre-set 180MM f2.8 Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar to Bronica S2A mount for my use on that camera and models S2 and C.

I wanted to use that lens, as it is close focusing, and sharp wide open, to shoot portraits with the background blurred out. The pre-set 180MM Sonnar was originally designed to fit the Zeiss Flektoscope reflex housing for the Contax rangefinder cameras. As such, it has a large screw mount which fits into a big tripod adapter containing the lens mounts for various 35MM cameras, including, originally, 35MM Exakta, Praktina and 42MM screw mount for Praktica and Contax S/D.

I made an adapter which the lens screws into and then the whole unit mounts on the Bronica cameras. Knowing this same large screw mount also was on the Carl Zeiss Jena 300MM f4 pre-set lens. I wanted to also try this on my Bronica adapter.

I bought a low cost, as-is, 300MM Sonnar which was a disaster to repair and ended with a cracked glass element etc.

Recently I got another such lens, also as-is. While this is a later model of the same thing, and various internal parts cannot fit together, still I made one good lens out of two. Fitting this lens into my adapter, the unit (although heavy) mounts solidly on my cameras, including Bronica C, with which I have taken some good test photos.

Considering the weight of the lens, my adapter holds it firmly on the camera, which itself mounts on a tripod. I am still looking for the even more rare Carl Zeiss Jena 500MM f8 long glass tele, which may also have the same screw mount to fit my adapter.

300mm Sonnar mounted on Bronica C using Sam Sherman's adapter (Thanks to Sam for Photos!)

Technical Information - Taken with Kiev 88CM and 65MM early version of the f3.5 MIR wideangle - originally for the first model Salyut - adapted by me to work preset on the "B" mount Kiev 88 - and then with adapter to fit Pentacon 6 mount. Shot on Ilford XP2 - 1/125th sec. / f8 hand held- Scanned from the negative on Umax Astra 2200.