This is maybe the most produced lens design ever. More than 5 million lenses (only the ones branded as Tessar, till 2002). The Carl Zeiss logo:



was made based on the lens' rear element. The first Tessar appeared in 1902 and was designed by Paul Rudolph with an aperture of f/6,3. In 1904 Ernest Wandersleb raised that to f/4,5 and it was commercialy available in 1907. In 1932 to f/2,8, this time by Willy Merte. This is considered medium aperture for a photographic lens and the Tessar is excellent as such. Its image definition and brilliance granted the lens the slogan 'the eagle eye of your camera'.

The one is this page is from Jena, East Germany, and according to its serial number it was produced in the early sixties. It is incredibly sharp and has plenty of room for lens board movements even when shooting in 5x7 inches or 13 x 18 cm.



This is called 4 elements in 3 groups because the rear cell is a doublet (two glasses cemented together). By the way, Tessares is the Greek word for 4, as an indication of lens construction. The front element (on the left) is the one with more power (roughly we can say it bends the light rays more abruptly) the rear and middle elements are there for correcting aberrations and improving image quality.





This lens is coated, but also uncoated Tessars, provided you take some care like using a lens shade, yield very good contrast. Only in extreme cases there will be a significant difference. The coating becomes more important when there are several surfaces air/glass, glass/air, but the simple and effective Tessar's design with 3 groups manages very well unwanted reflections





In large format photography the lens is kind of independent from camera. Tessars were considered there a kind of general purpose lens. It is also used as a process lens, that means, for copy work or enlargements. It is not very mentioned as a lens for portraits. It is considered a bit cruel for that due to the reproduction of minimal imperfections. Among the classics from the same period, Heliars and Soft Focus lenses like Veritos are much more common in this application. But when we move to smaller formats, millions of cameras were factory equipped with Tessars. Its sharpness becomes useful when you have small negatives like in 35mm where demanding enlargements are expected. The Tessar f/2,8 was in Ikontas, Super Ikontas, Rolleiflexes, Continas, Contessas, Contessamats, Werras, Contaflexes... and many others.



All in all this is a real classic, a huge commercial success due to the merit of a fantastic lens design. Being extremely common and not expensive, people more often go mentioning fancier, rarer and more complicated lenses.

List of lens makers and lenses using the Tessar design:

Agfa: Solinar
Berthiot: Flor, Olor
Boyer: Saphir
Busch: Glyptar
Dallmeyer: Dlamac, Perfac, Serrac
Ernemann: Ernon
Hermagis: Hellor, Lynx
Ilex: Paragon
Kodak: Ektar
Laack: Dialytar
Leitz: Elmar, Varob
Meyer: Primotar
Plaubel: Anticomar
Rodenstock: Ysar
Ross: Xtralux
Roussel: Stylor
Schneider: Comparon, Xenar
Taylor-Hobson: Apotal, Ental
Voigtlander: Heliostigmat, Skopar
Wollensak: Raptar
Wray: Lustrar

From:"A History of the Photographic Lens", Rudolf Kingslake
(ISBN-0-12-408640-3)

Find and excellent text about the Tessar at the Zeiss website. It was published in 2002 in celebration for 100 years of Carl Zeiss Tessar

For a quick glance of the so many cameras the Tessar equipped, click here