Zeiss announced new F-mount wide angle and macro lens for Nikon camera

I just noticed this update:

 

http://www.zeiss.com/photo

Quite interesting. I never thought I'd be tempted to buy a late-model lens for my old F bodies.<p>

 

However, Zeiss' statement regarding matched color rendition won't interest a whole lot of photographers outside cine work because the consumer isn't talented enough to see the difference, and they think they can make it up in Photoshop.

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I think Zeiss can put that line under the <u>Lost to the Deaf and Blind</u> consumer category.

I hate to have to agree with you, but I do. The differences in color rendition between different lenses (Nikon and otherwise) are just staggering. What I can't understand is why it doesn't seem to compute in lens evaluations. I mean, you can have all the perfect sharpness and distortion tests, but butt ugly color, and the reviewers will all be hopping up and down about how great the lens is.

 

Oh well, I guess four years of art school does make a difference....

-Janet

Pico, don't underestimate the talent of the consumers.

 

There is a large market for the Zeiss F mount lenses in particular the wide angles. With an

adaptor, ZF lenses can even be used in Canon cameras. At the moment, Zeiss wide angle

lenses have a very high price tag in the ebay. I brought my Contax 21 2.8 for USD800 and

now it could be sold for USD2000 to 3500. There is a defficiency in the performance of

wide angle lenses for both Nikon and Canon, this is why people is willing to pay for high

prices for the Zeiss wide angles. You do not even see this kind of price surge in Leica

lenses.

 

The introduction of the new ZF25 2.8 will certainly help a lot in relieving the tension in the

market. With the performance of modern DSLR, the camera has no mercy of revealing the

faults from the lenses. The new ZF25 is as big in size and weight as the Contax 21 2.8. It

can focus down to 0.17m shorter than any other Zeiss wide angles. We expect to see

ground breaking performance like the Contax Zeiss 21 2.8.

"0.17m shorter than any other Zeiss wide angles"

 

Carl Zeiss Jena 20mm f4 can focus down to 0.155m.

Sigh... i don't think they are good for Digital :(

Gaaa - only 1:2 max-mag.

By the early 1980s when Kodak introduced its VR color print films the exact color rendition of a lens became less important. If you shot color negative film, small color differences between lenses were less detectable because of the filtration used in printing the negatives. Now that most color slides and negatives are scanned and printed digitally the ability to adjust color in the final print is even greater. This isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. I still like the look of a Type R print from a color slide more than I like a digital print but the subject has to be right. If enough adjustment has to be made in color and contrast then the digital tools can really improve the final result.

 

I use lenses made by Canon, Nikon, Konica, Minolta, Asahi, Vivitar and others. They all have slightly different color rendition. This doesn't mean that one is bad while another is good. It just means they're different. Some lenses have very different color casts. I love my 35mm f/2 Canon FD SSC with the concave front element. It's extremely sharp but it has the yellow cast becaiuse I haven't given it the UV light treatment. When I know I might shoot color slides I use a 35mm f/2 Canon New FD. It has a very neutral color balance and is also sharp. Apart from the 35/2 SSC the lens with the most obvious cast in my collection is the Vivitar 90-180mm f/4.5 Series 1. This is a very useful and sharp lens for macro work but it has a very warm color cast. If I used it with slide film I would also use a filter to at least partially offset the cast. With print film it's fine.

The new ZF wide angles are excellent for digital SLRs. Its performance are superior to any

Canon and Nikon wide angles in particular when you are doing large prints you will see the

big difference.

<I>The new ZF wide angles are excellent for digital SLRs. Its performance are superior to any Canon and Nikon wide angles in particular when you are doing large prints you will see the big difference.</I>

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Joseph, what is that basis for that comment? The new ZF wide angles were announced merely a few days ago; have you made or seen any side-by-side comparisons?

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Additionally, the new Ziess lenses are a 35mm/f2 and a 25mm/f2.8. For Nikon digital, the 35mm is not a wide angle. So there really is only one wide angle from the point of view of Nikon DSLRs. The other ZF lenses so far are teles or macros.

Shun Cheung,

 

We will see the side-by-side comparison in the future.

 

The basis for that comment comes from extrapolation. At the moment, the real platform

for testing wide angles come from the Canon full frame 5D and 1DsII where lenses from all

the brands including Nikon, Zeiss Contax, Canon and Leica could be tested. The lens

which come first out of all these brands come from Zeiss Contax C-Y 21mm f2.8. As I

have also mentioned earlier in this panel that the price of this lens raised from USD800 to

USD2000 to USD3500 in the ebay. Excellent performance and termination of production

are the cause for this price surge.

 

Recently, Zeiss introduced ZM 25 2,8 which has similar performance but at the moment

there is no full frame M camera to test it.

 

If you have handled Zeiss C-Y 21 2.8, you will believe this lens is strange that it weighs

540g twice the weight of Nikon 24mm 2.8. Why did Zeiss made it so heavy ? The reason

behind is that there are many lens elements inside the lens which are used for the

correction of chromatic aberration. Although you end up with a heavy lens, you are

returned with ground breaking performance.

 

Zeiss has not published the MTF graph for the new ZF 25 2.8, but there are two features

suggesting this lens could have excellent performance. This lens is big and heavy.

It is longer than 90mm in length and weighs 480g, suggesting it has many elements for

the correction of chromatic aberration. The other feature which suggested it will be good

is that it can focus down to 0.17m. For other brands, lenses can focus near but the image

quality may not be good, for Zeiss, if it can focus near, it will definitely be good.

 

After all this, you might still not believe in what I am saying. I am writing all these after

long uses of Zeiss lenses. Why do people pay large sums for Zeiss lenses, there must be a

reason. Ego problem is not the whole story.

 

I can see why people think it is not a good idea to introduce the ZF series. The Nikon

lenses are so good and there are so many of them. The ZF lenses are a lot more expensive

to make. I believe Nikon will introduce the full frame DSLR and you people will understand

why the ZF lenses outperform Nikon lenses. Zeiss Contax lenses has outperformed Nikon

and Canon lenses as shown by the Canon full frame bodies.

"Carl Zeiss Jena 20mm f4 can focus down to 0.155m."

 

Tommy, thank you for telling me that the lenses from Zeiss Jena can focus nearer than ZF

25 2.8.

However, I would not include Zeiss Jena lens in this discussion for one reason. At the time

when German unified, there were proposal for the unification of Zeiss in West Germany

with Zeiss Jena. There were so much difference between the two companies that a direct

union was not possible. Liquidation was the fate of Zeiss Jena. I know some of the Zeiss

Jena lenses are good, but I would not include them because they are very different from

the Zeiss I am talking about.

If a lens is big & heavy, then the ONLY thing you can be sure of is that it is big & heavy...ever tried a big and heavy russian lens...rather use a milk bottle.

Zeiss are not stupid - they obviously designed the 25mm for digital in mind. It's probably easily going to beat Nikon's offerings since Nikon's 24mm was designed in the 1970s when digital was just a dream in some Kodak scientists' mind.

I am not sure that I agree with the "Zeiss is not stupid" part. If they are designing these new lenses with digital in mind, Zeiss should definitely put a CPU and AF-S in them. Moreover, they should produce a version that is fully compatible with the Canon EF mount, also with CPU and AF. Afterall, Canon has over 50% of the DSLR market, and Sigma, Tokina, Tamron, etc. can all produce lenses that are fully compatible with Canon EOS's EF mount.

 

As the way things are now that ZF lenses are AI-S equivalent, they mostly appeal to those Nikon users who prefer shooting 35mm film with MF bodies such as the F3, FM/FE series. For one thing that is a somewhat limited market, and not everybody there is willing to pay the high Zeiss prices.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I talked to a sales staff at my local pro store about Nikon introducing 24x36mm full-frame DSLRs. I was wondering whether he got any news as back then, the Photokina was approaching. His reaction was that if Nikon introduces any FF DSLR, they should also redesigned some new wide angles for it. If we are aware of this issue, most likely Nikon is also aware of it themselves.

Here's my take on this. The 25mm is a new design and Zeiss has advertised that the ZF lenses work well with FF DSLRs. They should work well on DX too (if there is little fringing on FF, it will only increase by a factor of 1.5 on DX). Previously people (mainly EOS FF users) have reported that the 21mm Zeiss (for Contax?) is optically better than the Nikon or Canon wide angles on Canon FF DSLRs. I don't see why the new 25mm should be any worse.

 

The ZF lenses have a long focusing turn, which helps with manual focus at wide apertures. They are solidly built thus they won't have problems like my 20mm AF-D. They're expensive so Zeiss can afford to throw away the bad samples.

 

I believe Zeiss is making the lenses for Nikon mount because the Canon mount can already use Zeiss (and Nikkor) lenses through adapters. The Canon mount requires an electronic diaphragm and may have patent issues (don't know, maybe they've expired?) Also, Canon is infamous for making their EF lens protocol hard to reverse engineer - Sigma et al. have frequent problems with lenses not working correctly on the EOS bodies esp. if it is an older lens on a newer camera. If the lens is manual focus and has no connections, it will work on any F mount camera. And since Nikon has a mechanical diaphragm, the lens doesn't have to have the electrical interface at all to work with automatic aperture. With Canon cameras, these lenses can be used (and apparently are) but there is no automatic aperture which makes the use of the lenses really impractical in many situations. Basically hand-held shooting stopped down is almost impossible (unless you have solid hands comparable to a tripod ;-). Thus the Nikon mount is more manual focus non-electronic lens friendly.

 

Would you buy a $1000 Zeiss lens if it had electrical contacts and AF but no guarantee of compatibility with future bodies? Thanks, but I will prefer the manual focus lens because it is a more secure investment in my mind. A $300 Sigma is ok to buy because even if it won't work on the D200s or whatever comes out next, it was at least cheap. If I buy an expensive lens, it had better be compatible with new bodies as long as I care to use it. I regret selling some of my manual focus Nikkors now that Nikon again supports metering with them.

 

Once some reviews of the 25mm ZF have come out, and if there is no 18-24mm ED Nikkor prime (DX or not, but has to be ED) by that time, I will buy the ZF 25mm. And perhaps also the 35mm. I have no interest in the 85mm though, as it is just too expensive and Nikon's 85mm lenses work great.

As you people all know, with the exception of Foveon sensor, each light sensing unit or

each pixel can only record one colour out of the three primaries. This is the case in Nikon,

Canon and most other digital cameras except Sigma which is using the Foveon sensor.

 

Therefore, only 1/3 of the colour informations can be recorded correctly. The other part of

the colour informations can only be guessed by the built in software of the camera. Wide

angle lenses do commonly have chromatic aberrations particularly at the corners. This

optical problem couples with the guessing work from the camera do make the colour

fringing even worse at the corners. All the wide angle lenses from Nikon and Canon do

produce significant colour fringings which are exacerbated by the use of digital recording.

 

Contax Zeiss 21mm 2.8 was originally designed for film recording. It has 15 lens elements

with weight 530g. Steven Moseley thought it is heavy for no reason. Canon used 11 lens

elements for their EF 20mm 2.8.

 

The lens elements in Contax Zeiss 21mm 2.8 consisted of both convex and concave ones.

The light passing through this lens has to converge and diverge in a number of ways and

by doing so the chromatic aberration are well corrected even at the corners.

 

ZF 25 2.8 is 100g heavier than Contax Zeiss 25mm 2.8 and it has 2 more elements. You

would expect it to have good performance even at corners.

 

The introduction of auto focus will reduce the durability of the lens.