Zeiss to discontinue producing lenses for photography?

dourbalistar said:
"The report of my death was an exaggeration."
-Mark Twain and Dpreview (and maybe Zeiss).
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As a literature teacher, the Twain quote is awesome. The problem is that Dpreview's 'death' was reported by Dpreview itself. I hadn't seen any news that Amazon had changed its mind about shutting the site down. They had promised to keep the site up to preserve the massive amount of info on it; but said no new content would be added and the staff would be let go.
 
Glad to hear Zeiss commenting on this rumor and maybe a nice wakeup-call for their marketing. I had an ad for a cash-back on their photographic lenses in my inbox a few weeks ago which could also be a hint they are emptying the shelfs. Other than that: Dead silence in recent years. Now, let's hope there is coming new stuff. Updated ZM lenses would be welcome here: Real tabs instead of the little contarex-style focussing-knob, a more compact and affordable 85mm f2 or 2.8. A really fast 1.0-2 50mm... If they start making stuff for FF-mirrorless there may be something to trickle down to us users of rangefinders via Cosina.
 
I'm sure that the Zeiss name, like Leica's, will live on photographically but just how much design, and even production, will be undertaken by Zess remains to be seen. With a changing and shrinking photographic marketplace, businesses like Zeiss will no doubt concentrate on profitable rather then peripheral lines. But if they can have input into products built under licence/agreement which maintains their name and requires minimal upfront cost to them then this would be a logical way to move forward. The high end photographic world is awash with high quality lenses and the nuances of difference are often difficult to effectively quantify. I have lenses from Sony and Leica which are both extremely good and both are more than 'fit for purpose' for 99.999% of uses. The price differential does not reflect the difference in images produced. In all liklihood, being at the top of the price market is a difficult position to maintain and whether Zeiss want to try to compete at this level is an interesting question which only they can answer.
 
I must admit this does make me more inclined to move the ZM lenses I'm interested in (50/1.5 Sonnar, 50/2 Planar, 35/2.8 Biogon) up the look for list despite my lack of budget for them. Finding ones I can afford without the Zeiss wobble is the harder part...
 
CMur12 said:
So, Hasselblad won't be using Zeiss lenses anymore? This one is hard for me to imagine.

Rollei also used Schneider lenses for their 6x6 SLRs, so maybe Hasselblad will do the same (?).

- Murray
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It's more than likely they have the option to license making them.
 
Hmmm ... might be time to buy a CZJ M42 mount or two - although my Helios and Takumars are OK for my tired old eyes ...
 
Just got myself a mint second hand 15mm ZM f2.8, made in Germany. On film from the few prints I have done, I am OK without the centre filter (which was missing from the sale).
Hope they do produce more ZM and other lenses in the future.
 
xpatUSA said:
Hmmm ... might be time to buy a CZJ M42 mount or two - although my Helios and Takumars are OK for my tired old eyes ...
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LOL just bought a looks-nice Flektogon 20mm M42 for my 1.7 crop Sigma ... a nice yummy 35mm equivalent!
 
pgk said:
I'm sure that the Zeiss name, like Leica's, will live on photographically but just how much design, and even production, will be undertaken by Zess remains to be seen. With a changing and shrinking photographic marketplace, businesses like Zeiss will no doubt concentrate on profitable rather then peripheral lines. But if they can have input into products built under licence/agreement which maintains their name and requires minimal upfront cost to them then this would be a logical way to move forward.
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That is what they have been doing with Rollei, Yashica, Cosina and Sony for decades. I wouldn't be suprised if we will see more along this line of low-risk, small batch, cooperation in the future.
 
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The high quality of the most recent Cosina Voigtlander VM releases could lead one to believe that they (maybe) are getting a little uncredited help from Zeiss in the designs. Cosina did, after all, build those ZM lenses to Zeiss' specifications.
 
My impression is that the optical industry all over the board made some noticeable steps forward in the last about 15 years compared to the slow pace of the eigthies and nineties. I suspect this is as much about advances in brute-force computing-power available for small money as in software for optical calculations and not to forget a growing knowledge and consensus across all sources about the favorable characteristics of a lens and how to achieve them. There may and probably will have trickled down something from Zeiss to Cosina but I think all of them made impressive steps forward with their latests releases.
 
oldwino said:
The high quality of the most recent Cosina Voigtlander VM releases could lead one to believe that they (maybe) are getting a little uncredited help from Zeiss in the designs. Cosina did, after all, build those ZM lenses to Zeiss' specifications.
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I can abolutely assure you nothing of the sort. Cosina and Zeiss make a point of very separate designs and specs.

There is no Zeiss in Voigtlander.

Stephen
 
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