Zeiss ZF lens

Saba Mazloum · May 12, 2009

Hey lads..

If any of you has shot with the stills Zeiss Zf lens.. how did you find it?

What are your thoughts about it? i personally loved the 100mm Makro Planar lens..

Saba Mazloum · May 13, 2009

No one?

Glynn Albert · May 14, 2009

Hey lads..

If any of you has shot with the stills Zeiss Zf lens.. how did you find it?

What are your thoughts about it? i personally loved the 100mm Makro Planar lens..

I own a set of these ZF lenses, 25mm 35mm 50mm 85mm and the 100mm, my favorites are the 35mm and the 100mm. I use them the Letus Ultimate. I bought them through Abel Cinetech Burbank. The are sweet.

Saba Mazloum · May 14, 2009

I own a set of these ZF lenses, 25mm 35mm 50mm 85mm and the 100mm, my favorites are the 35mm and the 100mm. I use them the Letus Ultimate. I bought them through Abel Cinetech Burbank. The are sweet.

Thats interesting, because i worked with the same exact set.. 25,35,50,85,100mm... did you buy it as a set? and was it cheaper than buying one by one?

I loooove the 100mm.. but the 85 is a bit weird.. quite hard to focus.. what you think? This ASC dp i worked with said that the 25mm isnt that good..

David Auner aac · May 14, 2009

I loooove the 100mm.. but the 85 is a bit weird.. quite hard to focus.. what you think? This ASC dp i worked with said that the 25mm isnt that good..

I don't think that they're that good, all of them. The housings have a very plasticy feel to them and from what I have seen the optics are not spectacular either. No wonder since they're made by Cosina and not by Zeiss themselves (Cosina has been building cheap third-party lenses for many mounts for ages!). I think you're paying for the name and the lens designs but for that price the workmanship and built quality are really lacking! One may like the look of the ZFs or not but quality-wise they're not THAT much better than Nikkors (maybe Canon or Minolta lenses too, don't know about these). I'd guess you'd be hard pressed to find them superior to the best prime Nikkors out there. Check this out: Ken Rockwell's 50mmlens comparison. Take what you read with a grain (or a spoon) of salt, but look at the pictures. You get the idea...

Cheers, Dave

Shane Kelly · May 14, 2009

Hey lads..

If any of you has shot with the stills Zeiss Zf lens.. how did you find it?

What are your thoughts about it? i personally loved the 100mm Makro Planar lens..

I use them on my red camera and really like them, they are a good lower cost alternative to pl primes. They do have varying stops and the 18 is, in my opinion, too slow and expensive - the nikon 17-35 is a better alternative for this focal length. They are all metal construction and feel really solid. The focus is really well dampened and feels like a pl lens. They have a longer focus throw than most other stills lenses out there which makes it better for focus pulling. I put zacuto zipgears on mine and can use a follow focus with them.

If you buy a set from ducloslenses.com they can remove the click-stop in the iris ring and will install follow-focus gears and 80mm fronts. Here's a jpg shot from the 100mm on the red, 4khd.

files.me.com/skellycinematography/krktyn

Edited May 14, 2009 by Shane Kelly

Glynn Albert · May 15, 2009

I don't think that they're that good, all of them. The housings have a very plasticy feel to them and from what I have seen the optics are not spectacular either. No wonder since they're made by Cosina and not by Zeiss themselves (Cosina has been building cheap third-party lenses for many mounts for ages!). I think you're paying for the name and the lens designs but for that price the workmanship and built quality are really lacking! One may like the look of the ZFs or not but quality-wise they're not THAT much better than Nikkors (maybe Canon or Minolta lenses too, don't know about these). I'd guess you'd be hard pressed to find them superior to the best prime Nikkors out there. Check this out: Ken Rockwell's 50mmlens comparison. Take what you read with a grain (or a spoon) of salt, but look at the pictures. You get the idea...

Cheers, Dave

Plastic feel? They are all metal construction and feel really solid. The focus is really well dampened and feel like a pl lenses.

Glynn Albert · May 15, 2009

I don't think that they're that good, all of them. The housings have a very plasticy feel to them and from what I have seen the optics are not spectacular either. No wonder since they're made by Cosina and not by Zeiss themselves (Cosina has been building cheap third-party lenses for many mounts for ages!). I think you're paying for the name and the lens designs but for that price the workmanship and built quality are really lacking! One may like the look of the ZFs or not but quality-wise they're not THAT much better than Nikkors (maybe Canon or Minolta lenses too, don't know about these). I'd guess you'd be hard pressed to find them superior to the best prime Nikkors out there. Check this out: Ken Rockwell's 50mmlens comparison. Take what you read with a grain (or a spoon) of salt, but look at the pictures. You get the idea...

Cheers, Dave

It is very dangerous to make comparisons or assumptions of lens performance from virtually any of the lens 'test' sites. Most of these sites and testers use dubious methology and most have agendas of their own. If you have directly compared lenses of your own in a rigurous manner then fair enough, but it is just not sensible in my view to take the opinion of lens testers

Glynn Albert · May 15, 2009

Thats interesting, because i worked with the same exact set.. 25,35,50,85,100mm... did you buy it as a set? and was it cheaper than buying one by one?

I loooove the 100mm.. but the 85 is a bit weird.. quite hard to focus.. what you think? This ASC dp i worked with said that the 25mm isnt that good..

I did purchase as a set and did get a discount. ASC DP's work with PL lenses, the union AC I worked with doesn't like Nikon mount for film period, they are used to PL, but there is a price for PL, its rather like comparing apples and oranges. I guess what Im saying is that if you had the choice to drive a Lexus or a Ferrari then you would dog the hell out of the Lexus but that doesn't mean its not good, it only means that its not a Ferrari. I put a 12mm Arri pl mount on the Letus today and it was soft at larger apertures as well. But brilliant at higher f's, and yes the 25mm ZF does go a bit soft at 5.6 but this is characteristic of wide angle lenses. They like to be stopped down. It looks pretty sharp at f8 to me. Meanwhile our right, the 100mm is great, why do you say that the 85mm is hard to focus? The 100mm has more barrel travel. Are you saying the travel is too short on the 85 to pull?

David Auner aac · May 15, 2009

It is very dangerous to make comparisons or assumptions of lens performance from virtually any of the lens 'test' sites. Most of these sites and testers use dubious methology and most have agendas of their own. If you have directly compared lenses of your own in a rigurous manner then fair enough, but it is just not sensible in my view to take the opinion of lens testers

I wasn't saying that one should. And I'm quite aware of that, especially Rockwell is under heavy fire for that kind of nonsense. But the pictures aren't that subjective and it was the only thing I could share on the matter, example-wise. As far as construction quality goes, hm, I was shown early examples of these lenses by photographer a couple years back. Could it have been a 50 and an 85? Like the first two lenses available? These two didn't feel too good to me. I didn't have the time to test them against any other lenses though. And I wasn't saying that they are not good. I was merely implying my doubt that they were THAT good to justify a far higher price!

Cheers, Dave