Zeiss ZF Lenses

G

Greg Lowry

Carbonite Member
Carl Zeiss has formally announced it's new "ZF" manual still camera lenses in Nikon F mount. The first two lenses are the 50/1.4 and the 85/1.4. A more complete range of focal lengths is expected by Photokina in September. Although much less mechanically beefy relative to Zeiss cine lenses, the ZF lenses could serve as inexpensive prime lenses for the RED camera with a suitable lens mount. In addition to being manual aperture and focus, the focus rings have greater rotation which makes them more like cine lenses and thus better for precision focus pulling. They're still camera lenses, so they lack geared focus and aperture rings, but this could be remedied. There is another version of the lenses without a mount so they can really be adapted to any lens mount. And, of course, they will more than cover an S35 sensor.

While definitely not a replacement for Zeiss cine lenses, they're smaller, lighter and cheaper, and may be an option for the budget-conscious.

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9/?Open
 
It is particularly nice because:

"ZF lenses incorporate new technical advances from the ZEISS Ultra Prime®, Master Prime® and DigiPrime® lenses for motion picture cameras. Results have been seen in feature films like "Lord of the Rings", "Alexander", "King Arthur", "Air Force One", "Collateral", "King Kong" and many commercials and music clips. Like the ZEISS lenses for motion picture, ZF lenses feature unusually high mechanical quality, fixed focal length, very precise manual focussing, reliability, and exceptional durability. Special attention is paid to guarantee absolute color matching throughout the whole range of lenses resulting in state-of-the-art image quality."
-DPReview

Yup, by including that little bit of information it would appear as though they're trying to appeal to the up and coming indie filmmaker as well.
They must have become aware of our inclination to use prime adapters on our viddy cams. Props to them for taking notice.
The 50 will reportedly come in at 500, and the 85 shouldn't be too much more. Although, I do expect the WA lenses to come at a premium.
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I used to own a Contax and shot with a Zeiss T* 50mm. Nice lens. I used to like it alot mostly because of it's build quality and solid mechanical feel.

But ultimately speaking the system was too expensive for me and didn't have enought of a range. So I switched to Nikon and went from paying $200 for a Zeiss 50mm to $50 for a Nikon 50mm and I can't tell much a difference between the two as far as image quality. Now I shoot with a Canon 300D but I still use my Nikons on my Canon,
http://www.pbase.com/roxics/image/47205173

Still I think it's great to have the option to buy these in a Nikon mount. Especially since all of Nikons new Primes are AF lenses. These Zeiss lenses (unless I'm wrong) appear to be of all metal construction and would probably focus more smoothly for cine work. Not to mention look at the nice big focus ring they have.
 
While i do think these are cool. I think I'm going to get a nice set of kinor primes and a 25-250 kinor zoom. something to think about is the possibility that with minor tweaking from the factory (or a subcontractor) these lenses could be made into fine little cine lenses. the only concern I would have would be breathing, which is not important in still cameras but is critical in cine lenses. I would also like to see a less sensitve focus ring on a cine version.
 
Zeiss is unlikely to remount the ZF lenses for cine applications (their customer ARRI would object) but they could be remounted by a third party and probably will be if there are sufficient wide angle focal lengths added to the series.
 
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