In the 1930s, rangefinder camera makers pitted the Gauss lens design against the Sonnar design. Eventually, Gauss won... but now 7Artisans is bring back Sonnar lenses for a rematch.
CORRECTION: I said in a title that “All Canon rangefinder cameras used L39 screw mount.” I should have said all interchangeable-lens Canon rangefinder cameras THAT YOU'RE LIKELY TO FIND use an L39 screw mount; if you've got a super-rare pre-WWII Canon Hansa or war-era S-II or whatever, you probably already know that it has a different mount. And of course the late-model Canon 7 and 7s cameras have not only an L39 mount, but an exterior breech-lock mount used for mounting the 50mm f/0.95 lens and the Mirror Box II reflex housing. Geek creed restored!
This is a year old, but I just found it. I bought one of these and agree completely with your very useful review. And a big thumbs up for your observation that pictures shown on RU-vid are pretty useless for comparing lenses. Except for yours; the pictures of the book spines were great, because they were enlarged to almost one-to-one, and really did demonstrate the "Sonnar glow." Subscribed. Oh, I use the 7Artisans mostly for black and white film, where it give results a lot like vintage lenses; you can definitely tell the difference between the 7Artisans and modern Leica lenses. I like the Sonnar better, even though it's not as "sharp."
I love your channel. Production value is so high. You are a very underrated channel. Please! Make more videos. I love my Epson Rd1 and im glad you like that camera too! The topics you cover especially the “why do you shoot film” is great. I learned alot.
Some basic theory is great when it is described as well, understandably and precisely as this. The difference between Gauss and Sonnar is important, but little known in today's hipster circles... Thank you!
this review is really another intelligent take on lens reviews. Thank you for sharing this knowledge. Now I know why there are these drawings of glass on my lens boxes.
I love videos like this which explains the ideas behind lens designs. I heard that most of Zeiss patents for lens designs are used today by Nikon and canon and they pay some royalties to use them
Here's a great place to start, from Roger Cicala on the Lensrentals.com blog: www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/lens-geneology-part-1/. There's also a part 2 of the same article. In fact, browsing around all the “History of Photography” posts on this blog is a great way to kill some time and learn interesting obscure stuff. As you dig more into it, you'll find that almost everybody disagrees at least slightly on the genealogy of lens designs and on what category a particular lens fits into, and many of them get very snarky about it in online comments (“You're an idiot to think the 1927 Putz Super-Wackar is a modified version of the Encabulator design.”) Don't worry about it - a lot of smart people were working on lens designs in the 19th and 20th centuries, they all had the same goals, and they all were working with the same limited resources, so it's not surprising that they would do similar stuff at about the same time, and who gets credit for what often depends on how you phrase the questions. Just look at lens history as an entertaining pageant of the struggle of human ingenuity against the nasty laws of physics...
This 35mm lens is not the Sonnar lens design it is Biogon. Biogon is based on Sonnar design. Sonnar design was and still is used a lot but mostly on short to medium tele-lenses. I think 7Artisans is using name Sonnar for the marketing purposes.
I won't disagree with you, but I'll point out that applying the classic taxonomies to modern lenses is sometimes a judgment call. Can we at least agree that it's an asymmetrical rather than a symmetrical design?
