Old Zeiss lens for an Olympus body.

Mother's old camera was a Zeiss-Contax IIIa
which has a good fast F1.4 lens.

I want to adapt this lens for my Olympus
E500, and then use manual focusing with it.

Are conversion mounts made for this purpose
and where can I get one?

Please help, PJ

 

It can't be done. The back of the lens is less than 3cm
from the film plane at the infinity setting. It would get
in the way of the mirror. You are pretty much limited to using
that lens on Contax and Kiev rangefinders. (It will fit on a
Nikon rangefinder, but the focus will be slightly off at close
distances.)

If you have a Contax rangefinder - try using it. They are
wonderful cameras.

Peter.

 

Can't help with the mount but you do realize that your(50mm?) Contax
lens will act like a 100mm lens on your E500.
Bob Williams

 

Thanks,
The camera was little used but seems to be
gummed up, possibly with lubricant, and I
can't get anyone to service it. I guess
I'll just have to try myself.
http://yandr.50megs.com/zeiss/contax3/c3.htm
Also, the light meter has stopped working,
and nobody knows anything about it.

Anyway, I have just bought the Olympus prime
lens 50mmF2.0 and the sharpness is far better
than I Olympus zooms I have.

 

message

Yes the F2.0 50mm prime is very good indeed;
I have just started using it.

 

in message

Thanks, I have contacted the above about
service & repair.

 

I would second David's suggestion of KEH. <www.keh.com>
if you can't find a local shop to service it.

It isn't a good idea to try to learn camera repair
on a nice camera which is worth considerably more
than a professional repair bill. The odds of seriously
messing up the first camera you try to fix are too high.
If you want to learn Contax repair, you should buy a Kiev.

Very few old selenium meters are accurate even
if the needle moves. I would not bother trying to get
the meter repaired. Oddly enough, the one on my Kiev 4
is spot on, but it is certainly the exception. I like
my Sekonic L208 handheld meter very much. With negative
film it is not difficult to learn to guess well enough for most
conditions especially if you de-rate the film by one stop.

That sounds good. While your 50mm f/1.5 lens is a famous
1930s design by Bertele, a modern Japanese 50mm can be
just as good. (The old lens is as good as it is because
the people at Zeiss did thousands of pages of calculations
by hand for that lens. Computers have made good lens design
much more common and less expensive.)

Peter.

 

I'm quite getting at it. To pass one of the most difficult subjects in
electrical engineering, you had to calculate a problem that needed 4 pages
of calculations, only with your scientific calculator. It included complex
numbers, hyperbolic sin and cos, matrixes etc. If you made a 4th decimal
point error, the whole problem would be wrong, and your degree would fly.
(Like 1.1234 instead of 1.1235). So, I can imagine what it would be to do
thousands of pages of calculations by hand! Very impressive.

 

.....And that would be a good chance to practice your german.