Zeiss Ikon pricing. $127 for a lens shade?

[derek_stanton2]

Camera body - $1617. / May 05

 

 

Distagon 15mm - $3796. / May 05

 

Biogon 21mm - $1307 / May 05

 

Distagon 25mm - $1152.

 

Biogon 28mm - $1042.

 

Biogon 35mm - $1042.

 

Planar 50mm - $824.

 

Sonnar 85mm - $2579.

 

 

Lens shades - $127.

 

 

Viewfinders (15mm or 21mm) - $491. / May 05

 

 

*US$ prices from an email sent by www.ClassicConnection.com. I'm guessing these are

MSRP, as one must send an email request to sam@classicconnection.com for their 'special

pricing.'

[eliot_rosen]

$ 3796 for the 15/2.8 Distagon. Aw heck. I was thinking about that lens. No way now.

[0_007]

notice the price difference between german made versus japanese made lenses.

[mark_ng]

wow...i think that 15mm is the most expensive of the 35mm rangefinder market now!

 

Not to mention that the lens shade (looks exactly like the CV lens shades) is $127!

These numbers are funny..camera body for 1617? who sells stuff using numbers like that? 1625 or 1600 makes more sense...actually the Sonnar 85 doesnt look all that cheap either. Wonder how it will measure up to the Leica 90 or 75

[steve g]

Now they are starting to sound more like Leica.<br><br>

From B+H:<br>

Leica<br>

Hood for 19mm f/2.8 R Lens (#11329, 11258) (Replacement)<br>

Price : $ 199.95

[eric friedemann]

In fairness, the $127 ZI lens hood price isn't even in the same league with the retail price of $580 for the Nikon HK-29 Lens Hood for 600mm f/4 manual focus lens. Not to be left far behind, you'd pay $560 for the Canon ET-155 Lens Hood for the EF 400mm f/2.8L IS lens.

 

While Leica is to be admired for supplying hoods with its lenses, Leica isn't shy about wacking people for replacement lens hoods. For example, $177 will get you a hood for the Leica R 28mm f/2.8 PC lens; and be prepared to be bent over when you pay $199 for a 19mm f/2.8 R lens hood. Even the hood for the Leica M 28-35-50mm f/4.0 lens will set you back $139.

[mike_elek]

The two highest-price lenses (15mm Distagon and 85mm Sonnar) are made in Germany. Both incorporate floating elements. Zeiss claims the 85mm Sonnar is the first M-mount telephoto lens to incorporate floating elements.

[bobatkins]

Yeh, but those Canon lens hoods are huge. You couldn't even get them in your camera bag. Pound for pound and cubic inch for cubic inch, they're much better value...

[andrew_hull]

How much are Leica's viewfinder magnifiers (the 1.25x ones)?

[patrick_jelliffe]

Leica M VF magnifiers are aobut $275 new; used or gray market, $200 or so.

 

Cheers

[skip_williams]

Mostly ridiculous, esp given that the body is made by Cosina.

 

$3,800 for a 15mm, non-retrofocus lens?! Let's see: $3,800 for a 15/2.8 or <$400 for a 15/4.5 Voigtlander with the finder? Yea, there's a 10x/$3,400 difference in price for that 1.5 stops. :-) You should stop it down to f/5.6 or f/8 anyway to reduce vignetting.

 

$491 for a 15/21 finder? Buy the Cosina ones for $150 instead.

 

What makes me sick is the prices of the Japanese lenses. Are they substantially better than the Cosina-branded lenses? Who makes them?

 

THis camera may go the way of the Rollei/Cosina or Hexar RF. The Rollei died as it offered nothing for the price. The Hexar RF died because it had a fatal engineering flaw and was ignored. Cosina has succeeded on price/quality...so far. Zeiss-Ikon is walking a very thin line on this one, IMO. Maybe Hasselblad thinks that they can push them in the US....I doubt it, personally.

 

Skip

[deecy]

Given that:

1) If the film is flat against the pressure plate during the

exposure, and,

 

2)if the film advances to the next frame when the film advance is

operated, and,

 

3)Understanding that if all of the above conditions obtain, the

lens and the lens alone is the determining factor in image

quality, and,

 

4) The best lenses mount perfectly on inexpensive camera

bodies which fulfill all the above criteria (for example, the Bessa

R2A and R3A).

 

Then:

 

It is nearly irrelevant what name is on the front of the camera

body or how quiet the shutter is.

 

So therefore:

 

1) Buy a less expensive camera body, and

 

2) Buy the best lenses you can afford, and

 

3)On the grounds that all it does is keep the sunshine out of the

lens, buy the cheapest lens shade on the market.

 

4) Put the money you didn't spend toward another lens, a good

scanner, or a photo printer. Or put it in an S&P Index fund.

 

That's my $0.02

 

Tom

[arthuryeo]

Ok ... back to Leica lenses ... they are more affordable. :-P

[ben z]

"Zeiss Ikon pricing. $127 for a lens shade?"

 

I'm looking on the bright side, at least there's one item out of that list that I can afford.

[bill_marshall1]

I agree with Mark. This ia a very odd price list - almost like it was lifted from another currency & put through a conversion formula. The prices of each of the 4 lenses ready for release is a price upgrade of about 15.8% over the prices published on the Cosina website. The fifth lens, the 21 Biogon is not scheduled for release until next year, so this is probably the least reliable price.

 

The thing that is most odd about this whole list is that while Cosina has posted prices for 5 of the lenses, it has not yet posted prices for either the body or the 2 German-made lenses. Furthermore, I had called Hasselblad in New Jersey as recently as this morning & they are still not prepared to give me a price even on the lenses that are due for release in December. So it is strange that Sam Shoshan is making public prices that neither the Japanese nor American distributors are ready to make public.

 

I wnder what Sam's channels are. Very mysterious.

[dan_fromm1]

I can't address ZI's pricing of lens shades, but there's a simple explanation for Leica's prices. They reject and smash nine of ten made. Stringent QC, or perhaps processes that are out of control.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[icuneko]

Wow, only $127 for a lens shade/hood! If I buy a dozen, do I get one free?

[donald_ingram1]

Apologies in advance for the rant :-)

 

If only this years lenses the Zeiss 15 and Leica ASPH 50 summilux had hit the streets 18

months ago when their designers started the projects. But that was before the digital light

became so bright. Then we might all have been in awe, much happier and certainly poorer.

 

But now Leica, Zeiss and Hasselblad's price policies of setting at the maximum the market

can bear, are only going to temp even more big dollars away from from top class optics

and film, to the new convenience and tonality offered on the horizon by next year's semi-

pro digital generation - Olympus E-3, Canon D20, Nikon D200 etc.

 

Perhaps these traditional firms, know this all too well, and are positioning and slowing

down to survive their long winter.

 

Looks like voitglander has the cost quality balance right - as a stop gap till digital hits the

right spot.

 

For me looks like the M6 will continue to serve well with its 35 summilux ASPH, as the

inside, low light - low profile tool of choice.

But the way forward looks increasingly to compliment it with one of the new generation of

cameras for everything else.

[stuart_richardson]

I am with Skip here...that 15 is totally ridiculous. 10 times the cost of a voigtlander one,

lord only knows how much heavier and bulkier (at least 3 times it appears), only 1.5 stops

faster, and for the vast majority of people this is not even a focal length that is used often.

I understand that it will be more useful when a digital comes out, but that is only if the

camera is not full-frame. Who knows about the digital Ikon, but isn't the digital M

supposed to be full frame??

[waterden]

The reason German pricing is higher than Japanese is not quality - it is simply that Germans pay themselves too much. That is why they have around 10% unemployment and why their economy is in deep trouble. Mercedes tried to cut corners to retain market share and its reliability ranking has gone from no 1 to no 28 in four years. Thats why the Mercedes arm of Daimler Benz has seen profits collapse by almost 70% this year and the company is now relying on Chrysler for profit stability - now there's a joke for you. This is very serious and you can thank restrictive German labour practices for this. Sadly, it probably means that you can wave good bye to a lot of famous German marques, starting with Leica and Rollei. Well done Zeiss for manufacturing outside Germany.

[christopher_moss]

"...but isn't the digital M supposed to be full frame??"

 

Sorry, Stuart, but Leica says it will use the same sensor as the DMR, with the same crop

factor.

One has to doubt these prices: they don't seem to give any hope of a profitable future for

this camera. Could Zeiss be *that* stupid?

[les_lammers]

I'll wait a year or two and the lenses will be selling for substantially less in the used arena.

 

After seeing these prices, Leica seems the better value. Where is the

Hexar RF?

[bill_marshall1]

Skip said: "You should stop it (15mm Distagon) down to f/5.6 or f/5.8 anyway to reduce the vignetting."

 

That's the whole point, Skip. According to Zeiss, you don't have to stop this lens down. They claim that you can shoot interiors hand-held at high speeds & get even illumination across the plane. They seem to regard it as a break-through lens. Of course, it's not going to break through my wallet any more than it is yours. LOL

 

Skip, you ask who makes these lenses. "Are they substantially better than the Cosina-branded (Voigtlander?) lenses?" Obviously I have no more idea than you do - nor will anyone else until we can shoot some pictures with them. But here's what I do know. While the lenses are assembled by Cosina, they are designed by Carl Zeiss. Zeiss says that these are new designs, based on their experience in designing lenses for the movie industry. So, they are the latest designs, based on a solid investment of R&D. Erwin Puts says that Cosina's Voigtlander designs are copies of Leica & Zeiss designs that are available in the public domain. Good designs to copy but not much new in R&D. R&D costs money, so the Zeiss lenses are more expensive. Are they any better? I have no idea. Same is true for the body. Zeiss invested in R&D to develop the new long baseline, viewfinder, & eyepiece as well as the overall body design. Any better than the Bessa? If you need to focus longer lenses or ultra-fast lenses (especially at wide angles) or if you prefer built-in framelines for your 28mm lens, then yes, it is more capable. If you don't need/want to do those things, then a Bessa will probably do you just fine.

[bill_marshall1]

Interesting to see the reaction to the prices here. Three of the five lenses made in Japan are listed at substantially less than the "60% of Leica price" that had been announced at Photokina & PhotoPlus. The other two, the 35 & the 50, are in the 60-70% range.

If they are better optically than Leica lenses, this would seem to be a good thing.

 

And, of course, we have no idea whether this list is the last word on pricing - or even the first word for that matter. I'll sit tight until B&H gets into the act.

[mike_elek]

On the other side, digital has reset what's acceptable pricing. $600 for a digital P&S is sheer stupidity, but these fall of the shelves quicker than they can roll out new models. Same thing applies to digital SLRs. Paying $1,000-$1,500 every two years to keep up with the curve is more gullibility on the consumer end.<P>

 

Now, regarding pricing: Kyocera/Yashica Contax cameras and its Zeiss-branded lenses have always been priced higher than their Japanese counterparts. Did you expect Zeiss to give away their equipment? I doubt Zeiss ever targets bottom feeders when they are pricing their lenses.<P>

 

Last time I looked, Leica wasn't giving away its lenses. From B&H:<P>

 

50mm f/1.4 Summilux: $1,895<br>

50mm f/2.0 Summicron: $1,195<br>

21mm f/2.8 Elmarit: $2,695<br>

90mm f/2.0 Summicron: $2,195<P>

 

How many people here only buy new Leica lenses?<P>

 

As far as comparing the Zeiss Distagon and the Cosina Voigtlander Heliar, these are two different lens designs. The Distagon is a complex 11-element lens with floating elements. The Heliar is a simpler design, though still impressive in its performance.<P>

 

Regarding the comment about closing the Distagon lens two stops to eliminate vignetting. Do you know this to be a fact? Or just making an assumption (which is likely correct)?<P>

 

Once again, these are ZEISS lenses, not warmed-over or rebadged Cosina Voigtlander designs.<P>

 

The made-in-Germany 85mm Sonnar is priced very competitively compared with Leica's 90mm Summicron. Can't tell with the 15mm Distagon, because Leica doesn't offer a lens this wide.<P>