More about ZF lenses

[Huck Finn]

Here's a Q&A from Zeiss about the ZF lenses:

www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7890-8183

 

[Mazurka]

Thanks Huck. It's a good read, though mostly marketing speak. About the only new information is how many lenses they will bring to Photoinka. Erwin Puts clearly has much to learn from Kornelius J. Mueller.

Q. For Nikon users, what will be the advantage to using a ZF lens over a ZS lens with a Nikon adapter?

ZF lenses come with everything the user of a classical Nikon SLR expects, like fast change Nikon F bayonet, automatic close-down aperture, rotation direction of focus and aperture ring like on original Nikon lenses, including that tiny second aperture scale to enable optical readout of the aperture in the viewfinder, and AI coupling fork. With a ZS and an adapter, all these commodities would be missing.

There are some inaccuracies. The "Ai coupling fork" is actually the meter coupling prong for pre-Ai bodies. And M42 to Nikon adapters aren't that popular because they have to be mild teleconverters to preserve infinity focus.