p.26 #1 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
RustyRus wrote:
Anyone saying it’s not sharp really just needs to not re-evaluate whats important in lens design (100% not saying you) This lens is bitingly sharp from edge to edge even wide open. I have no idea how anyone could ever look at this lens and say that. I haven’t noticed CA yet but I am sure some is present. It always is
Also I shoot MF lens 95% of the time even if owning The entire collection of RF primes from Canon. That is almost used exclusively for video or sports/faster action where I can’t be slower and more methodical. Although some of my favorite actions shots of all time are with a Leica MF lens.
When I shoot MF, my rate of keepers is so much higher than when using AF. Thats just my style though and I think more people would love it they really dug in.
All that said, I am early 40’s and started with AF lenses. I once thought why on earth would anyone use them- Now it’s by far my favorite way to take pictures.
...Show more →
Base on reviews I have the Zeiss is not as sharp as its competitors wide open and only catches up by f2 - f2.8, this doesn't mean its not a sharp lens because it it but its less so than others. Namely the Sony 50mm f1.4 GM which is lighter, cheaper and has AF. Its true some prefer MF but they are a very small minority of shooters.
Oct 10, 2025 at 02:26 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.26 #2 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
SNJOps wrote:
Base on reviews I have the Zeiss is not as sharp as its competitors wide open and only catches up by f2 - f2.8, this doesn't mean its not a sharp lens because it it but its less so than others. Namely the Sony 50mm f1.4 GM which is lighter, cheaper and has AF. Its true some prefer MF but they are a very small minority of shooters.
The Sony may be cheaper and lighter (although physically the same size), and may be a bit sharper, but some of us care more about the bokeh of the lens than degrees of sharpness among already sharp lenses. If you like the bokeh of the Zeiss Otus ML and really don't like the bokeh of the 50 f/1.4 GM, then being cheaper, lighter, and sharper and even having AF doesn't matter--at least to me. I am not a fan of the look the 50 f/1.4 GM creates and particularly the fast and what I find harsh transition zone, but that is just me and my preferences, YMMV
p.26 #4 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
I'm Map Camera's review they found Otus ML 50/1.4 to resolve more detail at f1.4 than Sony GM 50/1.2 at f1.4 both at the center and corners. I have both the Otus and the GM 50/1.4 and I've never found the GM to be sharper wide open either, although I haven't done any formal testing. See 19:51 on this video:
?si=O4nD9nSHLaJWaXRk
GM 50/1.4 is my favorite for shooting events with AF and Otus is a favorite for walk-around general shooting (mostly with static subjects). I think the long focus throw makes the Otus harder to use for fast paced focusing, I've had easier time trying to shoot events with CV 50/1 and 75/1.5, but it's great when fast focusing is not a priority and one can take time to enjoy the process.
p.26 #5 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
This is similar mindset to when the Zeiss 55 1.8 came out alongside the original 55 Otus.
It's similar to assigning worth and value of a country by only factoring its GDP and omitting everything qualitative. You miss out on everything wonderful that gives color to life.
Zeiss has a SMT sector that already creates unbelievably precise multiple orders of magnitude higher optics than what's required in a consumer camera lens. The lens design choices made for the ML down to the aberrations was highly intentional.
The GM 50 1.4 is a wonderful lens along with the GM 85 II. The differences between the GM and the ML more nuanced in the bokeh rendering but really obvious to me in the colors. It's not just a matter of WB temp calibration either. I feel like this attributes to whatever dimensionality means in the marketing as many people don't mention color contrast.
Like Juha I compared both myself directly and also didn't notice any real sharpness difference. I did however notice a slight difference in white fur of dogs. GM has stronger acuity perception but the ML seemed to resolve the individual hairs a touch better. If I get another copy of the GM I'll try to do a more controlled test. SNJOps wrote:
1. Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Otus = 677g
Sony 50mm f1.4 GM = 516g
Canon 50mm f1.4 L VCM = 580g
2. This lens design shows more CA than it should at this price range, plus its not as sharp as other lenses in its class wide open supposedly.
3. AF is needed by almost everyone that shots anything involving people and animals. Zeiss made a mistake by making this new Otus line MF only considering the platforms they are intended for and the competition from other companies.
p.26 #6 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
I'm not convinced that the Zeiss 50 Otus ML does anything better than the 50mm GM lenses. If it does something slightly differently (bokeh, color, etc.), for me it would not be worth the hassle of manual focus, especially for work. I have two of the Zeiss Batis lenses and they are wonderful.
p.26 #7 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
zlatko wrote:
I'm not convinced that the Zeiss 50 Otus ML does anything better than the 50mm GM lenses.
Diglloyd, who is far more competent than an average Youtube entertainer, claims that the 50mm f/1.4 GM is extremely weak for landscapes because of its strong field curvature which increases as you close aperture, combined with focus shift. He shows samples where the mid-field section gets softer as you go from f/1.4 to f/4 which is bizzare. I couldn't find time to reproduce his findings yet. But if true, and his copy is not an outlier, that's a pretty significant weakness.
And by the way, historically Zeiss has always been good at not playing games, so to speak. All other manufacturers play games sometimes. The currently popular one is to make lenses that are crazy sharp in the middle, at the expense of weak corners (that never get good at any aperture), or geometric distortion (software correction also destroys corners), or high vignetting. Zeiss is known for their sense of balance: good detail (high-frequency MTF), good contrast (low-frequency MTF), good frame uniformity, no major distortions, good bokeh. When it comes to optical qualities, they don't like sacrifices. They sacrifice elsewhere: high weight and cost.
p.26 #8 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Well, they are the people that unceremoniously walked out the door on their own photographic legacy and user base almost ten years back, then tried to deny it. Many or nearly all of us would have preferred that they stick around, you know, like the previous century.
In design acumen terms, it's ten lost years in the field, and it was a very active decade, both in glass developments and shifts in taste, new competitors too.
There is nothing bizarre about FC at middle apertures - the industry simple failed to inform users about it. It appears in no data sheets or even dedicated white papers or interviews of which I am aware. Curvature is very common in the cine world, as a deliberate design goal. They are emulating the curvature of human vision. People like this look, actors look better, more like themselves.
The curvature issue is very interesting and we want more people to become aware of the facts of it; Roger Cicala did a deep dive into the topic back in 2013, and discovered that curvature of field actually *frequently worsens with changes in aperture settings*, moving from wide open to mid-apertures. He saw this in fast 35s:
‘I’d also never really thought about what happens to field curvature when you stop down. If I thought about it at all, I probably assumed it would flatten out. Or maybe stay the same but the increasing depth of field would make it less noticeable. Turns out that isn’t always the case either. So, because I made assumptions and didn’t know what I didn’t know, I wasted a lot of time. Weeks of time.’
This web page eloquently displays the huge variability of many fast lenses with respect to their field curvature. On the 'flatten out' comment, be aware that the broader DOF you get from stop down tracks faithfully around the focal plane (whether curved or not curved), so you never really fix it, just make it harder to see.
And mid-aperture curvature makes a lazy design kind of sense, when you think about it - lens makers know that (thanks in good part to their propaganda) many users will use their f1.4 lenses wide open most (or much or all) of the time, so they design for flat fields *at the wide open aperture setting*. Many designers did not trouble themselves about what happens at f5.6-f8.
p.26 #9 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
No hard feelings against Zeiss, I got amazing images out of my non Zeiss lenses in the meantime and Otii while I owned them.
If I have the choice between a lens with field curvature and one without to shoot landscape, I'll always pick the lens without FC.
I personally like the results from the Otus 50mm f1.4 ML a lot. It's a great piece of optics and the price is reasonable in Japan (around 40% cheaper than in the US). If Nikon even decides to come up with a 80+mp landscape camera it will be a great match for it.
p.26 #10 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Steve Spencer wrote:
The Sony may be cheaper and lighter (although physically the same size), and may be a bit sharper, but some of us care more about the bokeh of the lens
I'm not familiar with the 1.4 GM (I opted for the 1.2 GM based on comparisons), but I'm really wondering what's so outstanding about the Otus's bokeh, especially when I look at the first and second images in the post on page 26 #3. In my opinion, it looks a bit shaky at the high-contrast edges (I also experience this with the 1.2 GM, but not so much with the 1.2 Nokton).
Oct 11, 2025 at 03:56 AM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.26 #11 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Nifty Fifty wrote:
I'm not familiar with the 1.4 GM (I opted for the 1.2 GM based on comparisons), but I'm really wondering what's so outstanding about the Otus's bokeh, especially when I look at the first and second images in the post on page 26 #3. In my opinion, it looks a bit shaky at the high-contrast edges (I also experience this with the 1.2 GM, but not so much with the 1.2 Nokton).
I like the bokeh in those shots. I won't waste time trying to explain why I like it. I'm not sure I can do that well at all and I think bokeh is pretty subjective, but I do know my preferences and I generally like what I see from the Otus.
p.26 #12 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
I would be more interested in 28mm than 100mm, but either way, it looks like another lens/focal length in the Zeiss ML series will be announced next week.
p.26 #13 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Looking at the hypernatural micro-contrast and rapid onset bokeh a couple of pages back, a 28mm would be a much better deal for the faithful. They have an 85mm which almost certainly breathes longer/tighter for typical portrait distances, so 100mm at f1.4 would be much heavier and larger, and unnecessary. Zeiss always made great 28s and 25s too, and 21s, for that matter.
p.26 #14 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
A 28mm would make more sense, there are fewer great mirrorless bright 28mm lenses than there are brilliant 100mm ones and a 28mm is more convincing as a MF lens than a tele one.
Cheers,
Bernard
Oct 13, 2025 at 04:33 AM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.26 #15 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Vento wrote:
I would be more interested in 28mm than 100mm, but either way, it looks like another lens/focal length in the Zeiss ML series will be announced next week.
It will be interesting what they release. It certainly could be a 28, but instead of a 28 they might go with a 35 now and release a 25 at a later date. I don't think a 100 is likely right now.
p.26 #16 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
philip_pj wrote:
Looking at the hypernatural micro-contrast and rapid onset bokeh a couple of pages back, a 28mm would be a much better deal for the faithful. They have an 85mm which almost certainly breathes longer/tighter for typical portrait distances, so 100mm at f1.4 would be much heavier and larger, and unnecessary. Zeiss always made great 28s and 25s too, and 21s, for that matter.
Despite the MF focus I would welcome a 100/105mm f1.4 if Sony/Sigma don't make one.
p.26 #17 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
I'm just trying to think through how they operate, in the above post of mine. The DSLR Otus 100mm came along very late, almost as an afterthought to the range. I saw it as their epitaph lens. The O100 appeared in May 2019, whereas the first one, the 55mm, had appeared in Novenber 2013.
The gestation period before the Otus range even made it to four lenses was all of five and half years. It was the clue that Zeiss had lost interest earlier than we thought - they started making these tiny ranges of 4/5 lenses (Touit, Loxia, (Tamron) Batis, Otus). It all looked 'hands off' to us.
I kind of didn't want to post that info, seeing how some people are thirsty for more ML Otuses. They might be waiting a while, at a time when a lot is happening in the photographic (and geopolitical) worlds. And what would I know?
I expected them to put their recent (2024) Nano range on a sharp diet and girth reduction plan for MILC repurposing, instead of this new path. Six Nanos (all T1.5=f1.4) come in: 18-24-35-50-75-100mm. They are already reasonable in weight (by Zeiss standards) at around 1000 grams each, even with 86mm filter threads and 0.8 gears. They cover full frame, look like B lenses for their higher end cine ranges and, most significantly to the near future, they feature interchangable (MILC) mounts and shims. $US26,000 for the six.
But an Otus 100/1.4 might suit what they are trying to do at present, having started with two (more or less) portrait and general focal lengths. They already have the heavy 85mm coming, so people are expecting a complex, heavyweight lens again, but better focus aids might come to the rescue; why have a 100mm at 1.4 if you cannot use it except for set shots? (tripods, careful set up using the long focus throw). What about a 35mm and a 24mm? You would not be happy but many more would be.
p.26 #18 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
For Z mount video users I expect the upcoming Z mount cinema range (official teaser released) to significantly reduce the appeal of the newly announced Z mount Leitz Hektor T2.1 lenses (42,000 US$ for the 6 set). I expect them to also offer AF capabilities.
p.26 #19 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
bernardl wrote:
For Z mount video users I expect the upcoming Z mount cinema range (official teaser released) to significantly reduce the appeal of the newly announced Z mount Zeiss Hektor T2.1 lenses (42,000 US$ for the 6 set). I expect them to also offer AF capabilities.
