Brass & GlassMy Locker
Tools

Serial number calculator

You have a camera or lens in hand and a serial number. This turns it into a production year — as a range where the scheme only narrows to a span, and with the source it came from so you can check it.

A serial outside every known block returns “cannot date”, never a guessed year.

Maker
What is it?

The small internal code near the rear of the lens. Pre-1980 C lenses: 3–4 digits. Post-1980 CF/F: a month letter (A–L) then two digits. Leave blank to estimate from the front serial instead.

Only Carl Zeiss Oberkochen (West German) serials are dated here, and only to a range. The internal code above is more reliable when you have it.