All,
A friend who shoots Sony SLRs wanted to get a Zeiss 35/2 or 35/1.4 in that mount. Since they make even AF lenses in Sony mount, I figured this would be easy, but on the Zeiss website, it looks like they only make AF lenses for Sony. What am I missing. I thought sure the ZE/ZF mode lenses were also ported to Sony.
No, Sony has an exclusive deal with Zeiss, with Zeiss producing certain lenses for Sony.
Zeiss will not produce these lenses in other mounts and will not offer the ZE/ZF lenses in Sony mount, that would cannibalize on Sony sales.
EDIT: you guys are too fast. Made my edit pointless...
You can convert some of the current Zeiss lenses in other mounts to the Alpha mount, the ZF line is possible to convert quite easily by Leitax conversion.
Sure thing. If he wants the 35/2, it was manufactured in ZS and pops up at bargain prices from time to time (B&H and Adorama seem to pick them up once every six months or so), and it's an easy way to adapt the lens (same optics as the ZF/ZK etc). The 35/1.4 was never manufactured in ZS, but the mount conversion is fairly simple. Adam's right about the C/Ys, although the 35/1.4 MMJ has to go from C/Y to M42 to Alpha, so it's a bit more involved but not all that difficult. Not sure about the AEG, but seboh has one that he plans to/has converted, so you could check with him.
As well as the per-lens mount swap, you can also swap the Sony camera mount to Nikon mount. This loses the auto-aperture and auto features, and has no auto-focus, but if all you want to do is use ZF lenses with your Sony, it could be a lot cheaper than using per-lens mounts:
From an ease of use standpoint, I would highly recommend going with the Zeiss ZF instead of the ZS mounts and using a Leitax mount adapter for Sony. The reason is that the A/M switch on the side of the ZS lenses are really easy to hit when changing the aperture on the lens. This can get pretty annoying after a while. The other obvious reason to go with ZF is if you ever decide to move to Nikon or even Canon your covered. M42 (ZS) would not offer that as it is not compatible with Nikon.
carstenw wrote:
As well as the per-lens mount swap, you can also swap the Sony camera mount to Nikon mount. This loses the auto-aperture and auto features, and has no auto-focus, but if all you want to do is use ZF lenses with your Sony, it could be a lot cheaper than using per-lens mounts:
I am going to St. Petersburg at the end of the month, so I will be able to check it out and report back. Apparently the lever is quite soft. I don't know how much it needs bending, I imagine not that much.
Edit: I was wrong, the lever is not soft, but it is doable.
The lever of the aperture ring is hard to bend due to the fact that it is not very convenient to bend inside the camera. It is made of steel with a thickness of 1 mm. It has a decorative coating that can peel when bent. The whole operation together with overcoming your own fear takes 2-3 minutes. Then, it can bend back to the position of 90 degrees for use with SONY lenses. But if you do it many times - it can break. The mount is more designed for long use.
If anyone is interested, I can send photos of the installation process.
