Minotar and Minoxar lenses

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What is the difference between Minotar and Minoxar on Minox 35mm cameras

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), December 21, 1998

Answers

Minotar and Minoxar are Tessar type four elements three group design. 35mm/F2.8 Minotar is used in Minox 35ML and other Minox 35mm cameras; Minoxar 35mm/F2.8 lens is a better lens, it focused closer to 70 cm (2.3' ) vs 90 cm (3 feet) of Minotar. Minotar or Minoxar lens is focused by turning a high power front element. Front element focusing is common in many cameras with Tessar lens, such as Rollei 35, Zeiss Ikon Contessa etc. Since the front element of a Tessar type lens has three times the power of whole lens, the focusing movement required is only 1/9 of unit focusing, this is evident from Minoxar/Minotar, the front element movement is about 1 mm, very small.



-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), December 25, 1998.


Minoxar lens is also multcoated. Lens coating is a technique pioneered by Zeiss in coating glass surfaces with quarter wave length floride, to reduce the reflection loss of incident light. Mulitple coatings reduce reflection exponentially vs number of coating; buy using different quarter wave lengths, the transmision effficienty can be made across a broad spectrum. Multicoated lens has better color rendition.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), December 25, 1998.

Hi Martin,

When you mention that the Minoxar lens is multi-coated, does this imply that the Minotar (older) lens are not multi-coated? Single coated then? Thanks.

-- Julian Wee (julianw123@yahoo.com), July 05, 1999.


Julian, the Minotar lens is single coated.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 05, 1999.

Minoxar and Minoctar lenses are the only sucessful wide angle Tessar type 4 element lens.

There are other 35mm/f2.8 lens but they could not achieve with as few element For example, Nikon 35mm/2.8 had to use 5 elements Olympus XA Zuiko had to use 6 elements for 35mm/F2.8 ( quite a bit of flare and not as sharp ) Not even Carl Zeiss, they need to use 6 elements for the Distagon 35mm/f2.8 lens for Contax SLR. Minoxar/Minoctar is the king of wide anngle Tessar type lens

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), February 11, 2001.



When I photograph architecture subjects, I always amaze at the almost unnoticeable distortion of Minoctar/Minoxar lens. A column is amazingly ruler straight. I know, because my 50mm/f2.8 Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, even though it is not a wide angle lens, should be easier to design, yet it has slight pincushion distortion. I have an expensive 6 element F2.8 lens, yet it has visible barrel distortion ! While the 4 element Minoxar gives me straight columns !

Minoctar/Minoxar lens is absolutely amazing Who ever designed the Minoctar/Minoxar was an optics wizard.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), February 11, 2001.


Happy 100th Birthday Tessar

Carl Zeiss is celebrating the centenary of Tessar lens designed by Paul Rudolph in 1902 Eagle Eye Tessar

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), May 28, 2002.


More on Tessar

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), May 28, 2002.

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