Carl Zeiss AG is a long-standing German company manufacturing optical systems, industrial measuring instruments and medical equipment. The company's name comes from one of its founders, German optician Carl Zeiss (1816-1888). Carl Zeiss began manufacturing scientific instruments in Jena, a city in southwestern Germany. After 1866, Carl Zeiss's commercial activities officially began. A set of microscopic imaging theories proposed by Dr. Ernst Abbe, a researcher at that time, became the scientific basis of the optical industry. Dr. Paul Rudolph, one of Abbe's assistants, A set of high-performance photographic lenses was developed. Thanks to these achievements, Carl Zeiss has become a leading company in the field of optical instruments. Since then, along with highly achromatic lenses (1880s), aspherical mirrors (1930s), astronomical telescopes, binoculars, eyeglasses, surgical microscopes, projection planetographs (1925) and other epoch-making achievements, Carl- Zeiss remains at the forefront of the optical instrument industry. Carl Zeiss obtained a patent for an effective anti-reflective coating technology in 1935. This technology is the Carl Zeiss T*, which is considered one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century.
Carl Zeiss AG was founded in 1846 by Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott Founded in Jena. Due to World War II, the original company was split into two parts. One is Carl Zeiss AG in Oberkochen, which has two important affiliated factories in G?ttingen-Aalen and Hallbergmoos. The other one is Carl Zeiss GmbH in Jena.
Carl Zeiss is the first constituent company of the Zeiss Group (Zeiss Gruppe) and one of the two largest components of the Carl Zeiss Foundation (Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung). The Zeiss Group is located in Heidenheim and Jena. The other constituent companies of the Carl Zeiss Foundation are the glass manufacturers SCHOTT GmbH and Jenaer Glaswerk, located in Mainz and Jena respectively.
Today, Carl Zeiss has grown into the largest optical instrument company in Europe, with 14,000 employees and factories and subsidiaries in more than 20 countries, including Japan and the United States. Carl Zeiss produces a large number of high-performance lenses. The applications of lenses cover many fields, including scientific research, industry, imaging, aerospace and national defense. Carl Zeiss is also used in style photography, film production (analog and digital film), archival photography and quality inspection photography. Whether on earth or in outer space, it has the best performance in design and performance under any environmental conditions.
Classic Zeiss optical products
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Zeiss has developed several lens designs (arranged from wide-angle to telephoto), which are all classic lenses Some product designs have influenced the imaging of an era:
Distagon: It is a reverse-focus wide-angle lens design, mainly used for 18mm to 35mm. It is characterized by slight distortion and high central resolution.
Biogon: It is a symmetrical design and is specially used for rangefinder cameras. It has average resolution but obvious light loss.
Hologon: A linked rangefinder camera designed for ultra-wide angle, but it has more obvious loss of light than Biogon and needs to be corrected with a filter.
Tessar: "Tessar lens" is a standard lens design, mainly composed of four lenses in three groups. It is characterized by low deformation and thinness.
Planar: Transliterated as "Planar" in mainland China, it is designed for standard wide-angle to 135mm medium telephoto lenses. It is a fully symmetrical Gaussian lens with 6 elements in four groups. Initially, it was only f/4.5. Today's Planar lens has been made to f/1.4. Planar is characterized by perfect chromatic aberration correction, symmetrical design, and extremely low distortion. Planer was designed by Paul Rudolf in 1896.
Sonnar: Transliterated as "Sonar" in mainland China, it is designed for medium telephoto (135mm) to telephoto (250mm). It is characterized by no spherical aberration, minimal light loss, and deformation as low as the naked eye. Unrecognizable, but dispersion must be corrected with APO. Invented by Zeiss optical designer Ludwig Jacob Bertler in [[1931]]. Vario-Sonner is a variable zoom design derived from Sonner.
Tele-Tessar: It is a super telephoto (above 250mm) design derived from Tessar. It is characterized by no spherical aberration, extremely low distortion, extremely slight light loss and very few lens components. The minimum number of lenses is 300mm F/2.8 uses only 7 lenses.
Mirotar: a super telephoto reflective lens. There are 500mm f/8 for general photography and 500mm f/4.5 and 1000mm f/5.6 for space use.
Super Achromat: It is the lens design with the best achromatic ability at present, and is only used for Hasselblad cameras.
Mutar: 1.4x, 1.7x doubler, used for Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex cameras, Rollei 16 micro cameras, currently only used in Sony digital cameras.
Mutargon: Reducer (also known as wide-angle lens), currently only used in Sony digital cameras.
T* coating: It is a multi-layer anti-reflective coating jointly developed by Chase and Rollei.