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Zeiss ZF-I Lenses for Nikon F Mount


ShunCheung

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I guess if Zeiss calls the lenses "Industrial," it makes it less absurd to pay outlandish prices for a lens without at least a CPU.

 

 

Shun, would you guess the two screws at in the aperture ring of the lens pictured come out to allow installation of an IC prong? You wouldn't need two screws just to lock the aperture.

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Nikon F mount is standard mount for the factory automation cameras using line sensors. That's one of the reasons for the re-release of UV 105. Even Pentax makes F mount 35mm and 50mm lenses for this use. Carl Zeiss seems to be interested in the same field.

 

Interestingly, the aperture locking screw seems to utilize the very threads for the Ai prong.

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When you consider that we are living in the 21st century, a chipless and manual focus lens manufactured for a super AF body seemed like a person who is boxing in the dark.

 

Is this the last few kicks before the patient's heart stops? :) C'mon Zeiss ... you can do better.

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On the Zeiss website, there is also a second press release issued on the same day (Nov

6th).

 

It announces lenses for near-IR photography.

 

"The ZF-IR lenses were developed for special applications in the near infrared range. The

Planar T* 1,4/85 ZF-IR and Distagon T* 2,8/25 ZF-IR are the first products in this special

series of the familiar ZF lenses. [...] A special coating which is transmissible for

wavelengths up to 1,100 nanometers is applied to enable photos in the near infrared

range. Of course, the focusing scale has also been matched to this wavelength range."

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What is it about the chip in the lens that makes it so desirable? I think a lens which has a solid and precise manual focusing action and doesn't wobble is much more valuable than a chip in a poorly constructed lens.

 

Zeiss isn't going to put the chips in the lenses because this would render them potentionally unusable with a future Nikon body, should Nikon want to get rid of the competition.

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<I>What is it about the chip in the lens that makes it so desirable?</I>

<P>

The ability to have metering with the majority of Nikon DSLR bodies currently in production, in terms of number of of units manufactured, seems to be a pretty good reason. :-)

<P>

After I mount a lens onto a body, I would like to be able to start shooting. We are in the 21st century now. Lens info should be transmitted automatically from lens to body and recorded into the EXIF data. It is silly that one needs to enter/select lens info every time after a lens change.

It wastes time and is error prone.

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"I think a lens which has a solid and precise manual focusing action and doesn't wobble is much more valuable than a chip in a poorly constructed lens."

 

 

Vivek, the Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AFD lens retails at B&H for $328 with lens hood. The Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 ZF lens retails for $787 with hood.

 

 

For almost two and a half times the price Zeiss could easily produce a solid and precise manual focusing lens WITH a chip. Cosina will apparently be able to make two Nikon-mount lenses of reasonable quality with CPUs to retail at around $450 U.S.:

 

 

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0711/07110201voigtlander.asp

 

 

But you say its harder to make a 25mm lens than a 40mm or 58mm lens. Fair enough; the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 ZF lens retails for $492. Again, Zeiss wouldn't loose money spending a few dollars, or even a few dozen dollars, on a CPU.

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This is very cool, Zeiss is taking the lead in areas which Nikon has been neglecting for many years. Particularly a wide-angle IR lens would be very welcome. A couple of days ago, I handled the vanilla ZF lenses and the quality was what one can expect. The IQ was excellent. Here in Finland, the price difference compared to regular Nikkors is not huge, so the ZF lenses are a good alternative.

 

A 25/2.8 IR lens is something totally new...luckily the local camera dealer has closed for the day :)

 

BTW, I use a D70 and several MF lenses and also medium and large format and don't see chiplessness as a big problem for many applications. I'm still waiting to see a large format lens with a chip in it ;-)

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Putting a chip into a manual-focusing lens is simple and other producers begin to follow up this by now. Since the chip provides the exit pupil distance, metering accuracy is improved compared to other approaches.

 

The benefits of the chip are several, besides the obvious one of giving metering with all cameras. When the chip is present, you can't forget to set up the camera for a given lens (as can happen with AI/AIS lenses on D2- or D3-cseries cameras). People doing difficult areas of photography that needs careful notes for the work to be repeatable, will appreciate that the Camera/lens does the book-keeping of settings into the EXIF instead of having to write notes on paper :)

 

The actual cost of having a chip inside a lens already in the production stage is just a few dollars. So I can't see any good arguments against the chip. If you feel the chip is a threat for your use of the gear, ignore it. No big deal.

 

I'm actively putting chips into as many as possible of my MF lenses, bellows units, extension tubes and so on. So far, about 60 different units with about 20 more to go. (not all candidate lenses are eligible).

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  • 9 months later...

OK...

 

Now that the D90 is out of the bag, I can say it:

 

The Zeiss ZF line was introduced to be a precision manual focus, multi-platform lens for both still and cine use in the

Nikon F mount.

 

In short order, one of the reasons Nikon has been rather quiet at times is that the film industry has been having a hard

time converting to digital.

 

The Nikon F mount manual focus lenses such as the legendary 300/2 have already been in use by film makers for

decades........

 

The rest will be history.

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