SC-Skopar 25mm f/4

In February 2001, four decades after the cameras themselves were discontinued, Cosina announced the first new wide-angle lenses for Nikon S and classic Zeiss Contax rangefinders in over thirty years — the SC-Skopar 21mm f/4, 25mm f/4 and 35mm f/2.5, and the first multi-coated wides either mount had ever seen. SC is the whole idea: S for the Nikon S series, C for the classic Zeiss Contax, one external-bayonet lens for both, plus the Kiev copies of the Contax. The 25 reached Japan that June at ¥70,000 and American buyers that autumn at $399 — seven elements in five groups, ten blades, 43mm filters, 141 grams, with a brightline finder and a slip-on focusing handle in the box. Eight hundred were made, in a single run. And unlike the Leica-screw Snapshot-Skopar that shares its optical design, this one is coupled to the rangefinder.

The one-lens-two-systems trick works because Nikon copied the Contax bayonet and its back focus but not its rotation from close-up to infinity: the two bodies wind a lens to slightly different positions for the same marked distance. On a 50mm or a telephoto that divergence causes real focusing trouble, which is why Cosina sold everything 50mm and longer in the range as an S lens, Nikon mount only. At 25mm depth of field covers it, and Cosina’s own spec sheet simply calls the mount the SC mount, Nikon S and old Contax. There is no focusing ring in the usual sense either. The lens has no helicoid of its own — it rides the body’s — so you focus with the wheel under your index finger and watch the barrel rotate, which is precisely how the vintage Nikkor wides behave. Two sets of aperture markings run round the barrel so the f/stop stays readable wherever it ends up, and the slip-on handle in the box clamps over the barrel for anyone who would rather turn the lens than the wheel.

Optically it is the 1999 Leica-screw Snapshot-Skopar 25/4 in a different suit: Cosina publishes the same seven elements in five groups, the same 82 degrees, the same ten blades — and almost nothing else carries over. The screw-mount lens weighs 90 grams, takes 39mm filters, focuses by a lever with click stops at 3m, 1.5m and 1m, and does not couple to a rangefinder at all. The SC weighs 141 grams on a 43mm thread it shares with the classic 21/4, 28/3.5, 35/2.5, 50/1.4 and 135/3.5 Nikkors, and it is coupled from infinity to 0.9m. Stephen Gandy, who distributed the line in the United States, found the mechanical fit and finish “quite high in today’s age of plastic,” with focusing, aperture and mounting all working smoothly. He singled out the bundled 25mm brightline finder as a first for Voigtländer and a joy to use, and had one real complaint: the focal length is engraved in small red characters he wished were bigger and white.

The line outlived its moment by very little. Cosina followed the wides with bodies — the Bessa R2S in Nikon mount and the R2C in Contax, both shown at Photokina 2002 — then with an SC 28/3.5, an S 50/1.5 Nokton Aspherical, an S 50/2.5 Skopar, an S 85/3.5 APO-Lanthar and a last S 50/3.5 Heliar in 2005; a 35/1.2 Aspherical for the mount reached three prototypes before poor sales cancelled it. Sales never justified a second run of the wides. Cosina’s records close the 25/4 in April 2005, CameraQuest listed the line discontinued and on closeout in March 2007, and every published production figure for it still traces back to that one distributor. Classic-camera owners owe the whole episode to Cosina’s CEO Hirofumi Kobayashi (小林博文), who was willing to tool up for a market no large manufacturer would touch — and eight hundred modern, multi-coated, rangefinder-coupled 25s exist for a mount whose own makers had walked away from it decades earlier.