p.20 #1 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
old-gregg wrote:
Actually I am surprised by how much Zeiss hatred is online following this announcement. If you look at the dpreview article, and the interview with Zeiss, folks are ridiculing them. Not sure where all these strong emotions coming from, as if Zeiss had a history of unethical behavior or something. If you don't like something, just don't buy it.
Personally, I am 100% the target buyer of these lenses. Someone who prefers manual focus for static subjects, dislikes lenses that rely on digital profiles, and appreciates a nice build quality and tactile feel and fortunate to have a budget to afford all of that. Unfortunately for Zeiss I already have their Milvus line for my focal lengths on SLRs and the Voigtlander set for my Sony....Show more →
To me it's the typical "my lens is better than yours" forum crowd. Best ignored.
But then, my favorite 50mm is the Contarex, so.....
p.20 #2 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
First up, its not hatred as such, people are simply and justifiably disappointed in their lack of responsiveness. I think you will find that kind of response to any major manufacturer that:
(i) disappears from view without any explanation to their base;
(ii) while claiming the exact opposite, that they are still a player; to then
(iii) produce an over-hyped nonsense camera that is stillborn in the marketplace ((ZX1), and finally
(iv) to produce endless glossy PR material that makes out they are the greatest with the latest.
Those bad business practices might help explain it a little. The past is another country, and current Zeiss management is a very different outfit to what we had back in Contax days, when they were helter skelter making the best lenses they could. Times have moved on and they have disrespected their stills lens base and burned what goodwill remained among many of them.
They involved themselves in a series of faux 'ranges' that they did not even bother to complete: such as Batis (five lenses), Loxia (five lenses), Otus (four lenses). To use an Americanism, modern day Zeiss is all hat and no cattle. They tanked a decade ago and were already heading for the stills lens exit door with Milvus, a misbegotten range of giant cine-capable lenses that were totally out of touch with the emerging mirrorless cameras of the age.
They are living off their glorious past. And the patronising condescension in their PR stance (we are the greatest!) rankles with many, leaving aside the true believers. People want 20th century Zeiss, not some on again, off again cine-oriented dilettantes.
The passage of time has cut them down to size and brought them back to the field, and they are now just another lens maker in a very busy market full of appealing lenses from many harder working companies. True to form, they have not even committed to any more Otuses after these two. And they are big askers, never a good thing.
p.20 #4 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
bernardl wrote:
Street price of the 50mm f1.4 in Japan will be 261,000 Yen. Which is less than 1,700 Euro.
Way cheaper in Japan. I am almost tempted at that price... but reason will prevail. No point in buying a lens that I will basically hardly ever use.
Cheers,
Bernard
Yes, and Tax Free price e.g. at Map Camera would be 238 010 JPY for foreign tourists (not applicable in my case though).
I'm tempted to buy the Otus ML 50/1.4 too with help from some trade-ins but I'm expecting to buy a few other lenses in the coming months and I think it would be difficult to fit them all in my lens budget, so I think I will not go for it at launch timing at least. I'm also already loaded with other 50mm lenses (including native E-mount CV 50/1, 50/1.2 SE, 50/2 APO-Lanthar), Sony 50/1.4 GM, Sony Zeiss 50/1.4 and lots of adapted 50mm lenses.
p.20 #5 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Makten wrote:
Sorry, but your post is completely unreadable. You need to use line breaks.
But, from the little I managed to read, you seem offended as an owner of Batis lenses. That is just hilarious.
Batis lenses are fine. But they are not Zeiss lenses and they don't draw like Zeiss lenses. Do with that what you want.
I don't particularly understand you very well either. It's less about your line breaks. You're making some crazy, provocative, and fake claims here. It's not especially "hilarious"!
p.20 #6 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Schwarzlicht wrote:
I don't particularly understand you very well either. It's less about your line breaks. You're making some crazy, provocative, and fake claims here. It's not especially "hilarious"!
The Batis lenses are designed and produced by Tamron. If you want to live in your fake belief that they are not, you are welcome. Just don't try convincing us otherwise with zero proof and a flood of fancy words. It doesn't help.
Edit: By the way, being provoked by claims about manufacturers is the definition of fanboyism.
Mar 03, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.20 #7 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Juha Kannisto wrote:
Yes, and Tax Free price e.g. at Map Camera would be 238 010 JPY for foreign tourists (not applicable in my case though).
I'm tempted to buy the Otus ML 50/1.4 too with help from some trade-ins but I'm expecting to buy a few other lenses in the coming months and I think it would be difficult to fit them all in my lens budget, so I think I will not go for it at launch timing at least. I'm also already loaded with other 50mm lenses (including native E-mount CV 50/1, 50/1.2 SE, 50/2 APO-Lanthar), Sony 50/1.4 GM, Sony Zeiss 50/1.4 and lots of adapted 50mm lenses....Show more →
Well, that is certainly good news on the price. That tax free price would be about $1,585 US with today's exchange rate. I have found that when a lens has a significantly lower retail price somewhere in the world, that ends up affecting the used price substantially. At least for those of us living in the US. We are a big market and it is simply too good of an opportunity for people not to take advantage of buying a lens like this in Japan and then selling it in the US for a nice tidy profit.
I expect that in a few years this lens will be available on the used market for substantially less than $1,500 (my guess would be about $1,200 in 3 years) and given the excellent build quality, such copies will still be in excellent to very good condition. I am much more interested in the lens at that price.
p.20 #8 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Makten wrote:
The Batis lenses are designed and produced by Tamron. If you want to live in your fake belief that they are not, you are welcome. Just don't try convincing us otherwise with zero proof and a flood of fancy words. It doesn't help.
Edit: By the way, being provoked by claims about manufacturers is the definition of fanboyism.
MEH. This speculation may or may not be true or partially true, but the probability IMO is certainly believable particularly since ZEISS seems to partner with several B2B manufacturing companies with different specialties/capacities to produce ZEISS photography lenses for years now. Not unlike the latest ZEISS Otus ML lenses.
I bet most of us that purchase(ed) and use ZEISS Batis lens(es) are more interested in the following ZEISS characteristics we see in our ZEISS Batis lenses:
-ZEISS Sonnar and Distagon prime lens designs
-ZEISS High micro contrast
-ZEISS 3D pop
-ZEISS "True Color" matched among each lens in the system
-ZEISS T* multi-layer coating
-ZEISS APO (Batis 135)
-ZEISS Water and dust sealing
-ZEISS Aspherical technology combined with special glass
-ZEISS price
-And last but not least, auto focus.
p.20 #9 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
LBJ2 wrote:
MEH. This speculation may or may not be true or particularly true, but the probability IMO is certainly believable particularly since Zeiss seems to partner with several B2B manufacturing companies with different specialties/capacities to produce ZEISS photography lenses for years now:
I bet most of us that purchase(ed) and use ZEISS Batis lens(es) are more interested in the following ZEISS characteristics we see in our ZEISS Batis lenses:
-ZEISS Sonnar and Distagon prime lens designs
-ZEISS High micro contrast
-ZEISS 3D pop
-ZEISS "True Color" matched among each lens in the system
-ZEISS T* multi-layer coating
-ZEISS APO (Batis 135)
-ZEISS Water and dust sealing
-ZEISS Aspherical technology combined with special glass
-ZEISS price
-And last but not least, auto focus. ...Show more →
Out of curiosity, have you used any non-Batis Zeiss lenses?
IMO almost all modern, above average level lenses exhibit most of the "Zeiss characteristics" in your list. Tamron lenses certainly do, anyway.
I mean, this is not a coincidence. Tamron patents to the right.
p.20 #10 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Makten wrote:
Out of curiosity, have you used any non-Batis Zeiss lenses?
IMO almost all modern, above average level lenses exhibit most of the "Zeiss characteristics" in your list. Tamron lenses certainly do, anyway.
I mean, this is not a coincidence. Tamron patents to the right.
Yes. Some of my favorite being the Classic and the Milvus 100/2 with the Classic 135/2 as runner up. I also hope to get my hands on one of the new ZEISS Otus ML lenses at some point too. Count me in as one who is also very happy to see ZEISS producing a new photography series in 2025, regardless of where it was manufactured.
p.20 #11 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Lee Saxon wrote:
This is pretty shocking. Marketing is always going to involve "spin", you're always going to see chats like this run by people whose "taste" and "opinion" regarding the lens is a positive one, but it's unusual to see an explicit lie about the results of an objective lab test.
Either Art of Photography literally has a defective sample somehow (seems unlikely since his results were excellent except for CA) or Zeiss needs to apologize for this response and/or publish some test results explaining the disparity.
They might be talking about transverse aberrations specifically, not axial (longitudinal) aberrations.
p.20 #12 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
i am a target consumer of this line of lenses from Zeiss...but so far the samples that i'm seeing are not great...seems like the older 55 APO is better.
p.20 #13 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
A strange omission, leading to a likely response of no. It does have internal focus with what looks like an MFD of 0.5m, so let's hope it is an FLE design.
260 long degrees of focus throw, and that's a lot of racking for a 50mm MF lens. They show a lot of pre-release imges with the camera/lens mounted on a tripod. Focus throw is one of those issues that sees many at each end of this bimodal distribution, probably due to what and how they shoot, and how fast they need to acquire focus. Zeiss's opinion:
'The Otus ML 1.4/50 is indispensable in every photographer's toolbox. Whether you're capturing portraits, street scenes, or cinematic moments, this lens is your perfect partner for bringing your creative vision to life.'
It might be another byproduct of Zeiss's period away in the cine arena; we have in mirrorless effective tools to use to attain focus with short-medium throws. Zeiss have never made a high end MF lens for mirrorless systems - excluding the 52mm Loxias in that category, as Zeiss would agree.
I found some other issues with it, but not anything people here would want to hear.
Mar 09, 2025 at 06:29 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.20 #14 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
philip_pj wrote:
A strange omission, leading to a likely response of no. It does have internal focus with what looks like an MFD of 0.5m, so let's hope it is an FLE design.
260 long degrees of focus throw, and that's a lot of racking for a 50mm MF lens. They show a lot of pre-release imges with the camera/lens mounted on a tripod. Focus throw is one of those issues that sees many at each end of this bimodal distribution, probably due to what and how they shoot, and how fast they need to acquire focus. Zeiss's opinion:
'The Otus ML 1.4/50 is indispensable in every photographer's toolbox. Whether you're capturing portraits, street scenes, or cinematic moments, this lens is your perfect partner for bringing your creative vision to life.'
It might be another byproduct of Zeiss's period away in the cine arena; we have in mirrorless effective tools to use to attain focus with short-medium throws. Zeiss have never made a high end MF lens for mirrorless systems - excluding the 52mm Loxias in that category, as Zeiss would agree.
I found some other issues with it, but not anything people here would want to hear....Show more →
describes a floating mechanism, but perhaps that isn't accurate. There is nothing official from Zeiss that I can find discussing a floating elements design. Perhaps it doesn't have one. We will know before long.
p.20 #15 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
In the CP+ Zeiss Otus stage presentation by Cosina & Zeiss, there was a discussion about floating element design but it was in the part where they discussed Otus 85/1.4 photos taken by Akagi-san, where they were talking about how pin sharp it is at close distances. Cosina's Sato-san confirmed there that it has floating element design, but since they were talking about 85/1.4 it isn't fully clear if the same applies to 50/1.4. They are both internally focusing (not unit focusing) but it could be hard to confirm floating element design if it's not officially mentioned somewhere.
The talk about 85/1.4 floating element design can be found here from around 36min onwards (in Japanese but captions can be set to be auto-translated to English):
Mar 09, 2025 at 09:10 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
p.20 #16 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Juha Kannisto wrote:
In the CP+ Zeiss Otus stage presentation by Cosina & Zeiss, there was a discussion about floating element design but it was in the part where they discussed Otus 85/1.4 photos taken by Akagi-san, where they were talking about how pin sharp it is at close distances. Cosina's Sato-san confirmed there that it has floating element design, but since they were talking about 85/1.4 it isn't fully clear if the same applies to 50/1.4. They are both internally focusing (not unit focusing) but it could be hard to confirm floating element design if it's not officially mentioned somewhere.
The talk about 85/1.4 floating element design can be found here from around 36min onwards (in Japanese but captions can be set to be auto-translated to English):...Show more →
I do think confirmation that the Otus 85 f/1.4 ML has a floating elements design makes it more likely the Otus 50 ML does too. I can't find anything in the official Zeiss documentation that highlights a floating element design for the Otus 85 ML either, so the omission of the information for the Otus 50 ML may not be meaningful.
p.20 #17 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
Steve Spencer wrote:
I do think confirmation that the Otus 85 f/1.4 ML has a floating elements design makes it more likely the Otus 50 ML does too. I can't find anything in the official Zeiss documentation that highlights a floating element design for the Otus 85 ML either, so the omission of the information for the Otus 50 ML may not be meaningful.
I re-checked Cosina's Otus 50/1.4 product introduction video that they published 2 days before CP+ and actually floating element design was mentioned there at around 4min point, so it looks clear that 50/1.4 is also a floating element design based on that. "Focus uses a floating structure and is designed so that the overall length of the lens doesn't change when focusing."
p.20 #18 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
"Focus uses a floating structure and is designed so that the overall length of the lens doesn't change when focusing."
i think Zeiss marketing people are confusing their terms here. lens length not changing is due to IF (internal focusing), not necessarily a floating element design.
i mean, TBF...the 55 Otus is not as sharp as the 85...so maybe i need to cut Zeiss a bit of slack.
p.20 #19 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
It's Cosina saying that it uses floating design for focusing and is also internally focusing. I'm sure they know the difference.
The focus adopts a floating structure was a first sentence and after that they said that Even when focused, the lens length is unchanged by design and explained it's for the purpose of making it easier to shoot on a tripod.
In Japanese "フォーカスはフローティング構造を採用し" refers to FLE design and they used that wording.
I'm sure they wouldn't call it a floating design if it wasn't as they have several FLE lenses in their own line (mostly not internally focusing).
p.20 #20 · ZEISS Otus ML line officially announced!
philip_pj wrote:
First up, its not hatred as such, people are simply and justifiably disappointed in their lack of responsiveness. I think you will find that kind of response to any major manufacturer that:
(i) disappears from view without any explanation to their base;
(ii) while claiming the exact opposite, that they are still a player; to then
(iii) produce an over-hyped nonsense camera that is stillborn in the marketplace ((ZX1), and finally
(iv) to produce endless glossy PR material that makes out they are the greatest with the latest.
……….l..
The passage of time has cut them down to size and brought them back to the field, and they are now just another lens maker in a very busy market full of appealing lenses from many harder working companies. True to form, they have not even committed to any more Otuses after these two. And they are big askers, never a good thing. ...Show more →
