Schneider C-curtagon 2 8/35 M42: the lens I had 30 years ago and now I get it again.

 

This lens has a rich history, with a production run spanning over 30 years. It represents a newer design of the Curtagon 35mm, distinguished by a smaller lens casing. The enduring popularity and extended production period highlight the lens's reliability and timeless design in the realm of photography.

The C-Curtagon lens boasts a unique design feature on its aperture ring—three sets of aperture numbers painted around the ring, allowing for easy observation of the aperture setting from any angle. Although initially designed for consumer film cameras, Schneider adapted this design for industrial use, creating a lens that resembled the size of an enlarger printing lens but with a smaller casing.

Attached are images of the Robot camera, primarily employed for surveillance purposes. This camera occasionally featured the Robotar lens, manufactured in Japan, further contributing to its functionality in surveillance applications

Selling my first copy of this lens during the film era, I observed that its image saturation was not particularly high, resulting in less appealing color film performance. However, it excelled as a lens for black and white photography. With high resolution and medium contrast, the Curtagon's retrofocus design has proven to deliver excellent performance on Sony A7x cameras.