Zeiss + Nikon = Canon in Trouble?

The Zeiss ZF lens is mechanical only, and has no electrical interface with a Nikon camera. They probably cannot reverse engineer Canon’s all electronic EF mount.

To use a Zeiss lens on a Canon body, you must not only use MF, but also manual meter and aperture. You first set the lens to F1.4, focus, then manually set the lens to shooting aperture (eg F8) and watch the viewfinder darkens before pressing the shutter. This is your grandfather’s method.

--
Peter Kwok
http://www.pbase.com/peterkwok

Nikon customers will be happy for a new line of good lenses, though I wonder how many of them can afford these lenses.

Canon customers will be happy for more competitions for lower Canon price tags.

Greta for all customers.

py for their

SchnellerGT said:

I think the latest news from Zeiss and Nikon is quite promising!
Does anyone think Canon will follow, or will Canon simple risk
losing customers to Nikon?

--
Three generations of Canon Digital Photography at
http://www.threewood.com
(S10, G2, EOS-20D)

Click to expand...

wrong. set the camera to A-mode, chose your aperture in the camera body, focus wide open then stop the aperture ring to your pre-chosen aperture then shoot. the camera will chose the shutter speed. if you want a point and shoot camera you should have gotten one.
--
max

Peter Kwok said:

The Zeiss ZF lens is mechanical only, and has no electrical
interface with a Nikon camera. They probably cannot reverse
engineer Canon’s all electronic EF mount.
To use a Zeiss lens on a Canon body, you must not only use MF, but
also manual meter and aperture.

Click to expand...

but this is the same with nikon no? currently the d70 for exemple cannot meter with MF lenses so it'S everything manual.

by the way, you don't need to have anything fancy done by a third party manufacturer for the Canon bodies to meter.. I have an old Zenital MF lens and the camera still meter just fine with it. I put the lens at the desired aperture and use Av mode and the camera calculte the proper shutter speed.

what makes you think that with another MF lens it won't do the same?

You first set the lens to F1.4,

Peter Kwok said:

focus, then manually set the lens to shooting aperture (eg F8) and
watch the viewfinder darkens before pressing the shutter. This is
your grandfather’s method.

--
Peter Kwok
http://www.pbase.com/peterkwok

Click to expand...

--



http://www.pbase.com/zylen

Eric Chi said:

Nikon customers will be happy for a new line of good lenses, though
I wonder how many of them can afford these lenses.

Click to expand...

how expensive can they be? the're manual focus lenses! not even a chalenging focal length either..frankly 50mm should not be that expensive.

Eric Chi said:

Canon customers will be happy for more competitions for lower Canon
price tags.

Greta for all customers.

py for their

SchnellerGT said:

I think the latest news from Zeiss and Nikon is quite promising!
Does anyone think Canon will follow, or will Canon simple risk
losing customers to Nikon?

--
Three generations of Canon Digital Photography at
http://www.threewood.com
(S10, G2, EOS-20D)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--



http://www.pbase.com/zylen

Daniella said:

Eric Chi said:

Nikon customers will be happy for a new line of good lenses, though
I wonder how many of them can afford these lenses.

Click to expand...

how expensive can they be? the're manual focus lenses! not even a
chalenging focal length either..frankly 50mm should not be that
expensive.

Click to expand...

See this for an idea how expensive a manual 50mm lens can be:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=150799&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

compare this with the fully auto 50/1.8 at $70 Hopefully the Zeiss will be less than that.
--
Misha

The Zeiss lenses will have a list price of slightly less than $500 for the 50, and slightly less than $1000 for the 85 in Japan. The price in the US will probably be less - how much I don't know.

These lenses will come from the Cosina factory where Zeiss already gets it's Zeiss M-mount body and M lenses; they are well equipped to do this sort of thing.

Zeiss has stated repeatedly that they are not willing to accept the tolerance slop that an AF lens requires, although that, of course, is mutable.

While the Contax SLR 50 is unquestionably better than the Canon 50, the Canon 50 is not that far off that I'd really be interested. The lenses I'd be interested in would be the wideangles as well, as others have said. The 21 is significantly better than the 20 Canon, and if Cosina manufactured it, it might well be reasonable as well. It's likely be be a lot cheaper than the best in that range, which is the new 19/2.8 Leica, which can't be fitted to Canon FF bodies easily anyway as the mirror has to be shaved, and is priced much like other Leica items.

Henning

In Japan they are going to be released on february for 58,800 and 116,600 yens respectively (source : BicCamera website).

Prices for ZF and ZS versions are also exactly the same.

Thank you, Max and Daniella, for correcting me that auto-exposure works in Av mode.

What I really want to say is that automatic diaphragm on EF mount is electronic. The Nikon F mount uses old fashion mechanical coupling to close the aperture diaphragm during exposure. If Zeiss cannot reverse engineer Canon’s purely electronic interface, then the users are stuck with the pre-1960 procedure of focus wide-open and stop down before shooting.
--
Peter Kwok
http://www.pbase.com/peterkwok

misha said:

Daniella said:

Eric Chi said:

Nikon customers will be happy for a new line of good lenses, though
I wonder how many of them can afford these lenses.

Click to expand...

how expensive can they be? the're manual focus lenses! not even a
chalenging focal length either..frankly 50mm should not be that
expensive.

Click to expand...

See this for an idea how expensive a manual 50mm lens can be:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=150799&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation
compare this with the fully auto 50/1.8 at $70 Hopefully the
Zeiss will be less than that.
--
Misha

Click to expand...

--
Galleries: http://www.pbase.com/jon_b

Canon EOS mounts have always been able to accept Contax/Yashica, Nikon F, Olympus OM, Leica R, Leica Visoflex, Pentax 42 Screw Mount, and still maintain metering. Just get the appropriate adapter.

Eric Chi said:

Canon customers will be happy for more competitions for lower Canon
price tags.

Greta for all customers.

py for their

SchnellerGT said:

I think the latest news from Zeiss and Nikon is quite promising!
Does anyone think Canon will follow, or will Canon simple risk
losing customers to Nikon?

--
Three generations of Canon Digital Photography at
http://www.threewood.com
(S10, G2, EOS-20D)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

and we'd have the same manual lens for our eos, so its no big deal eh? Thats what I figure anyway. And did you guys know there are numerous older fd type Nikon lenses that canon EOS can use and NIKON can't? The canon eos system is better suited to use these older lenses, so we can use most of them anyway with the right adapter.
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http://netgarden.smugmug.com/
DSC V1 Sony for Infrared, Canon 20D,
a few too many lenses...

Well it is the funniest thing I've seen all day.

The volume of Zeiss lenses will be so small that I would be surprised if Zeiss could take even 1% of the prime end of the market away from Canon. Still, for the brave souls who desire the very best optics, this is an interesting endeavor indeed.

But, since one can convert a Nikon MF lens to a Canon bayonette, there is no problem converting a Nikon mount Zeiss to a Canon--if Zeiss down not step and just put an EF bayonette flange on these lenses.
--
Mitch

I saw it last week, and yes funny. (see my comment on Imagerunners and other Canon products). I have no idea, but would guess Canon makes more in minutes on such machines and the consumables than they'd make in a long time selling to a niche market, but snob appeal could be good advertising and marketing.

The Zeiss lenses for Nikon are actually made by Cosina.

While very similar in design, they are not the heralded ones made in Germany (for which the reputation was established)

I would guess that they are very nice, but it's clear that theres some cost-cutting in the manufacture of the Nikon Zeiss, and they just won't be as good overall to the original legendary Zeiss lenses.

Here's a link to the Cosina, i mean, Zeiss factory making the Nikon glass

http://www.cosina.co.jp/seihin/co/zf-85/index.html

--
cheers,
adamM
(gear in profile)
http://www.robotbreeder.com