Question about Mirotar

Hello dragos,

Yes both those lenses exist - in fact both pre-existed the Contax RTS system as they were available in various mounts, mostly M42, from the late 1960s.

They were available to members of the public to buy BUT were never available over the counter; they had to be pre-ordered and you had to pay half the money in advance before they would start building your lens. The cost of insurance alone was crippling! They came in bespoke hard cases which did not protect the lens very well when being dropped as happened to one person at London's Heathrow Airport.

I have owned the 500mm and used it sparingly at Olympic Games back in the 80s. The only way to use it was on a very sturdy tripod, predetermining the focus and moment of shooting as focusing was slow but manageable at f4.5. The 1000mm was a monster of lens - I have never owned one as I would have no use for such a lens. It weighed more than you could imagine and like the 500mm focusing was achieved by cranking the camera in or out at the end of a bellows; the tripod weighed almost as much as the lens! I looked through one at Photokina and also saw one in the back of a military vehicle near the East German border.

The 500mm does appear periodically for sale and I've seen two in the last few years being offered in Japan. They were only ever made by Carl Zeiss of Oberkochen, with a near identical version being made by Zeiss Jena, though for a fraction of the price, which does appear on Ebay quite often.

By modern standards, these fast Mirotars are dinosaurs but what is beyond doubt is the quality of the images they can produce if set up carefully. For wildlife and surveillance, they're pretty impressive but there are many modern lenses that are as fast and much lighter and easier to use. Definitely for the collector more than the photographer.

While I remember, there was one other Mirotar lens from the early days of the Real Time System: the N-Mirotar 210mm f0.007 which had a huge trigger grip which contained the power pack and operating switch; only 43 were manufactured.  I have never owned one but did get to play with it on the East German border back in the 70s.  It offered an image that was 2,500 times brighter than one shot with a f1.4 lens, using a 3-stage image intensifier.  As I found out to my cost, it had a bit of a problem; when you switched on the light amplifier, the unit emitted a very high-pitched whine and the East German guard dogs went berserk.  We had to retreat to a safe distance and abandon the night observation.  Modern light amplifiers are mercifully silent.

One bonus of the system that Contax employed in the N-Mirotar, which involved a wide-aperture macro lens, was that we could shoot at 1/500 on 400ASA film on a clear night with a visible moon; we used to use bulk Ektachrome in a Contax RTS with a 250 Back and push it a stop to 800ASA - we were provided with a superb sound deadened version of the PMD and the entire camera and drive assembly was contained in a jacket that further reduced sound.  Happy days.

The N-Mirotar has occasionally appeared in specialist auction houses here in Europe and sometimes on Ebay. There's no point in buying one that shows heavy use as replacement parts are near impossible to find; being first-generation night equipment, they were prone to technical issues.  I never saw a price quoted for one when they were being sold.

Sept 28, 2015 22:13:22 GMT dragos said:

As usual, plenty of information and i really appreciator.

Thanks again and is a pleasure to know those kind of infos.

Thank you dragos for your kind comments - it's always nice to know one's efforts are appreciated.

Check out: www.klassik-kameras.com/Carl-Zeiss-Orion-80B-Night-Vision-Lens  - it is nearly identical to the original N-Mirotar and is in essence identical in all but name; it even has a C/Y mount.  I must admit, if I had 1900 Euros, I would buy it if only to remind me of the good old days snooping around the East German borders....

UPDATE:  If you check the klassik-kameras website, you will see they have a N-Mirotar listed for 3900 Euros - they also have stated that only 43 lenses were produced; nice to find a new fact about the old system!  I've amended my earlier text to show this.