Zeiss ZE vs Canon Lglass

Zeiss is a great choice, many say it is better. The mechanics of the Zeiss lenses are smoother for video style work. Optically you would need to look at your budget and see if there is much of a difference given the 5D's lower resolution video image. Price is not that different from the Ls. The non-Ls are where the price difference is large.

If you want to use the camera at all as a stills camera I would stay with the Ls. Autofocus might be something you want to use for still shooting.
 
For shooting stills the L's are handy because of AF. They shoot beautiful video, but the focus throw is really short since they weren't designed to be video lenses. I've moved from Canon L's to Sigma 1.4's for my main primes (35 & 85) as they're sharper and cheaper than the Canon counterparts. The new Sigma 35/1.4 is a really special lens and a bargain at $900. Its on my main lens. The 85/1.4 is another gem, great bokeh and subject isolation. When Sigma updates its 50/85mm lenses to the new "Art" series I'll be upgrading to both. I don't have a 50mm right now since its so close to 35 and I have the 24-105 to cover that range.

I've owned many different Zeiss and L lenses and I personally like the contrasty "Zeiss look" - but I'd go adapted C/Y lenses over ZE's if you're fine with MF. I had the ZE 21, 35, 50 and 100mm lenses and while they were fantastic, I did't feel they were an upgrade over the C/Y 28, 35/1.4, 50/1.4 and 100/2 lenses I sold to get the ZE's. The Zeiss lenses have a longer focus throw which makes them well suited for video, the C/Y's also have manual aperture. You can get a 28/2.8, 35/2.8, 50/1.4 and 85/2.8 for about $350 each, that's about what you'd pay for a used ZE 35/2 + 50/1.4 combo.

I moved away from the 5d2 to a FS100 and now I'm back in the Canon camp with a 5d3 - because the still capability also makes me money - but not enough to support two separate systems at the moment. After I round out my Canon lens lineup I'm going to start hunting for another 35/1.4, 50/1.4 and 100/2 C/Y on ebay.
 
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