darrellc wrote:
The lenses are great, but I don’t think they’ve made what the market wants. And a series of bad, expensive decisions like investing in development and manufacturing of the Otis and Milvus lenses just before dslr sales tanked. And I liked the Batis lenses and owned a few but clearly the market wants lenses with external controls vs their bulbous minimalist aesthetic sacrificing functionality except for that pointless silly LED display. And the Batis 40 AF fiasco was a case study in how not to manage poor press / reviews at product release.
This is not where Zeiss should be and we all lose out what could have been when they exit. ...Show more →
Those are good points all. The expensive, manual focus Otus and Milvus lenses seemed destined to have a short sales life when mirrorless was poised to take over.
jeffbuzz wrote:
Has Zeiss actually built any mirrorless mount stills lenses in-house? Seems like they've just been licensing their coatings and subcontracting manufacturing for many years.
I don't think they made many SLR lenses in house either, at least not since the 80s. I think a few of their special F/EF lenses and some of their M lenses, but I think the bulk of their still lens production has been in Japan since Yashica and then Kyocera took over Contax.
Looks like Zeiss created the lenses in Apple's new, just announced Apple Vision Pro VR/Spacial Computing Headset which includes the ability to take photos and "living memories" videos.
*"For those that wear glasses, you can purchase prescription lenses for inside the headset, made in collaboration with Zeiss."
I hope Zeiss doesn't know something the rest of us don't. Improvement in glass might be nearing a plateau. Sort of the reason that Canon and Nikon are creating unique focal length zooms? That and apparently they don't sell enough to be profitable.
Sad to hear. I love Zeiss glass. Wonder if used prices will now go up.
Sounds to me a bit like what Olympus and Philips Electronics (and IBM too) did, which is ditching the consumer segment and focusing on the more lucrative pro, medical and scientific markets.
What I will really miss is that they didn’t just go in for sharpness, but also for character. Now we may only have Voigtlander left in that segment.
I júst got the Loxia 35 with the current Zeiss cashback to add to my Loxia 25 and Loxia 50.
Perhaps I should get the Loxia 85 as well, now that I still can.
It is not a focal length I would use a lot, but a future without ever being able to get a new Zeiss lens makes me want to get it just in case....
LBJ2 wrote:
Looks like Zeiss created the lenses in Apple's new, just announced Apple Vision Pro VR/Spacial Computing Headset which includes the ability to take photos and "living memories" videos.
*"For those that wear glasses, you can purchase prescription lenses for inside the headset, made in collaboration with Zeiss."
Yes, this just looks like some nice co-branding for Zeiss, as they've always been a big player in vision care, ditto Nikon.
Other than that, I'm curious about this announcement from Apple. Pricey, but as someone who just tried to imagine an expensive new couch in his living room, I can think of some pretty cool business/industrial uses...
Dave Sanders wrote:
Yes, this just looks like some nice co-branding for Zeiss, as they've always been a big player in vision care, ditto Nikon.
Other than that, I'm curious about this announcement from Apple. Pricey, but as someone who just tried to imagine an expensive new couch in his living room, I can think of some pretty cool business/industrial uses...
I was surprised to see Zeiss lenses quickly mentioned during the Vision Pro announcement today. Just a couple of seconds but certainly caught my attention.
LBJ2 wrote:
I was surprised to see Zeiss lenses quickly mentioned during the Vision Pro announcement today. Just a couple of seconds but certainly caught my attention.
I guess it shows that the name recognition is still there! No doubt that, for many, the blue Zeiss logo still means something, all the more painful that they're exiting E mount lens development.
Dave Sanders wrote:
Yes, this just looks like some nice co-branding for Zeiss, as they've always been a big player in vision care, ditto Nikon.
Other than that, I'm curious about this announcement from Apple. Pricey, but as someone who just tried to imagine an expensive new couch in his living room, I can think of some pretty cool business/industrial uses...
Microsoft has a product like this called Holo Lens. It is used in some industries for remote help and support and obviously it is not huge in the consumer market segment. Apple does better than Microsoft in the consumer market, but at $3500 a piece, I don’t know how well it will sell. I wouldn’t walk around like this in my house or at work, unless it becomes as transparent as my eyeglasses.
The optics game is really not a huge deal in these tiny lenses. It is more about computational photography than the actual optics inside. Zeiss lenses on Sony Experia phones end up near the bottom of the list in MKBHD blind smart phones camera test every year.
ramesesthe2nd wrote:
Microsoft has a product like this called Holo Lens. It is used in some industries for remote help and support and obviously it is not huge in the consumer market segment. Apple does better than Microsoft in the consumer market, but at $3500 a piece, I don’t know how well it will sell. I wouldn’t walk around like this in my house or at work, unless it becomes as transparent as my eyeglasses.
Agreed, I could see it as a specialty piece of kit in a purpose-built environment...I have a friend who is a heavy duty mechanic and does service and support on very large transmissions used in oil well drilling; he uses something like this in his shop. When he's working with people around the world.
Also, if an interior designer brought one to my place, I wouldn't mind that. I'm awful at picturing stuff in my space
johnvanr wrote:
Sad to hear. I love Zeiss glass. Wonder if used prices will now go up.
Sounds to me a bit like what Olympus and Philips Electronics (and IBM too) did, which is ditching the consumer segment and focusing on the more lucrative pro, medical and scientific markets.
What I will really miss is that they didn’t just go in for sharpness, but also for character. Now we may only have Voigtlander left in that segment.
Zeiss must expect declining demand for high quality optics in the consumer market. Perhaps this is a consequence of mirrorless platforms and computational imaging masking optical distortion and aberrations that used to be more obvious to the end user. I prefer optical corrections but concede that the market may no longer support them. Off-loading some of the image corrections to the camera processing pipeline should give us smaller, less expensive lenses. Whether or not it actually does is yet to be seen.
jeffbuzz wrote:
Zeiss must expect declining demand for high quality optics in the consumer market. Perhaps this is a consequence of mirrorless platforms and computational imaging masking optical distortion and aberrations that used to be more obvious to the end user. I prefer optical corrections but concede that the market may no longer support them. Off-loading some of the image corrections to the camera processing pipeline should give us smaller, less expensive lenses. Whether or not it actually does is yet to be seen.
It’s probably a combination of issues:
- Zeiss doesn’t offer AF lenses without an agreement with the manufacturer and thus unlike Sigma or Tamron doesn’t reverse engineer lenses for new mounts; with eye AF etc. and the manufacturers themselves turning out premium lenses, the market segment for their manual focus lenses is smaller;
- they probably have great margins in their other fields with limited marketing and distribution costs, while the consumer market is expensive to serve and market to;
- and, yes, a shift toward computational correction, though I do believe a market will remain for “real” lenses, just probably not one worthy enough for Zeiss.
It’s a real pity, though, with their other brand, Contax, disappearing earlier, their niche will be missed.
That said, I have several Zeiss lenses ready to sell and now I don’t know if I should hold onto them and see if their value increases. Contax, now long gone, commands premium pricing for some gear in the used market.
This news saddens me, I was hoping that they would offer lenses for the Canon RF and Nikon Z mounts, I guess those will never come.
I quite like my 21mm and 25mm Loxia, there will be plenty of used lenses on the market for years to come. I wonder if they will license out the T* coating? I have so many questions....
Their lenses have qualities that are hard to quantify, amazing micro-contrast and saturation. I will treasure my Loxia's for years to come.
I prefer lenses with external controls, but I don’t find the LED display silly. On the Batis 25mm it is useful for zone focusing. This is sad news because I had hoped they might renew their lesn line by adding external controls on renewed versions of some of their lenses.
Batis lenses were something special. 