Tele-Tanar 13.5cm f/3.5

Tanaka Kogaku built its Tanar lenses first and foremost for its own Tanack screw-mount rangefinders, and only two of them ever stepped outside Leica thread: the W Tanar 35mm f/2.8 and this lens, the only Tanar telephoto offered for Nikon S and Contax RF bodies. Unlike the 35mm — one shared barrel sold indifferently for either bayonet — the Tele-Tanar 13.5cm f/3.5 came in three genuinely distinct versions, one per mount, and the Contax build does not even physically fit a Nikon body. The design was announced in Autumn 1955 as a four-element, three-group telephoto — the November 1955 issue of Shashin Kogyo published the formula without giving it a type name — but the Nikon and Contax versions arrived late in the lens’s short life: the earliest known example is serial 15201, pointing to 1957 or 1958, and when Tanaka Kogaku failed in late 1959, production ended for good.

The lens shown at announcement was chrome, priced at ¥18,500 in Leica mount, yet no chrome example has ever surfaced and it may never have been sold in that finish; the production lens, in series by late 1956 or early 1957, is black with only the milled parts and the mount left in chrome. It focuses to 5 feet, stops down to f/22, and frames through the external TANACK 13.5cm finder, with a long hood and a cylindrical brown leather case completing the outfit. Serial numbers run as a single sequence shared across all three mounts, from 13702 to 16858 — possibly begun at 13501, the “135” echoing the focal length — for a likely total of under 3,500 lenses across all mounts. Within that run the Nikon and Contax barrels evolve: early 15xxx examples wear the same fine milling as the LTM version, while later 16xxx barrels carry small knurling never used on any Leica-mount lens.

The optics may have outlived the company. koiWide’s study of early Soligor lenses identifies two distinct optical types among the rangefinder-era Soligor 135mm f/3.5 — a line sold in Leica, Nikon S, and Contax mounts — and concludes that one of them likely carries the Tele-Tanar’s optical system, its rear element size and placement matching the Tanar’s. If so, the anonymous four-in-three formula went on wearing a second nameplate — and Tanaka’s practice of building its full lens lineup in-house lends the connection extra interest.

The Nikon and Contax versions had at most two or three years on the market before the company failed, and they surface far less often than the Leica-thread original — yet prices have historically been gentle, with a Nikon-mount example bringing just €188 at Westlicht in 2003. The few users who have written the lens up rate it a capable performer for a 1950s 135 — a step behind the best Nikkor and Canon glass of the day, in a barrel lighter than Canon’s silver 135mm at nearly the same size — a footnote lens from a company that spent its whole short life in Leica’s shadow, twice reaching for Nikon’s.