If you plan to make high quality video production with your brand new Gh4 than you may be interested to get a top quality lens too. Zeiss just announced a new CZ.2 15-30/T2.9 lens you can preorder at BHphoto (Click here) for the very accessible price of $23,900.00! As you know this is a manual focusing lens only. But this is the very best cinema lens you can buy for MFT.
Press text:
Compact Zoom CZ.2 Lenses
ZEISS expands its family of cine zooms with Compact Zoom CZ.2 15-30/T2.9 at NAB 2014
Flexibility and highest image quality without any distortion
OBERKOCHEN/Germany, THORNWOOD/USA , 27/03/2014.
ZEISS is launching the Compact Zoom CZ.2 15-30/T2.9 at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 7-10, 2014. The third member of the Compact Zoom family broadens the cine zoom line-up in the wide-angle range. From August 2014, the lens will be available for € 17,900 or US$ 23,900 (excl. VAT)*. The new zoom lens fills the wide-angle gap and complements the already available CZ.2 28-80/T2.9 and CZ.2 70-200/T2.9 lenses. It does not only offer extreme angles of view but also fulfills all the requirements for motion picture zooms: It stands out for its optical brilliance, as well as its distortion-free images.
The ZEISS Compact Zoom CZ.2 family of lenses sets new standards only experienced with fixed focal lengths from ZEISS. Equipped with this set of three zoom lenses, cinematographers can master an enormous range of shooting situations without having to resort to frequent time-consuming lens switches. For sophisticated filmmakers, the ZEISS cine zooms open up new creative possibilities. When working with a zoom lens, you can move a lot more quickly because you don’t have to change lenses and can make different shots from the same perspective.
The ZEISS Compact Zoom lenses are the only cine-style zooms in the world with full-frame coverage. All three zooms were calculated for the full-frame format of 36×24 mm. As a result, they are also compatible with image sensors larger than Super 35 (ex: image diagonal 31.5 mm) and therefore already ready to accommodate future developments in the field of growing sensor sizes. When the lenses are used on Super 35 cameras, users benefit from the positive “sweet-spot effect”: the image circle used by the sensor comes from the inner circle of the lens. As a result, the lens only uses that part of the illumination that has the highest quality in terms of sharpness, light and contrast. In line with the reliable and strict quality requirements that ZEISS lenses are subject to, all three representatives of the Compact Zoom family enable 4K capture.
The cine zooms from ZEISS are masters of flexibility whenever the goal is to achieve high-quality results with little lens changes. The optical balancing between ZEISS cine zooms on the one hand and ZEISS high-end cine lenses on the other fulfills filmmakers’ highest demands, whether they are making big-screen, TV, documentary, music video productions or feature films. All three zooms have a consistent aperture of T2.9, also making them suitable for situations with less available light. And thanks to the established ZEISS color matching, the lenses can be used in combination with the existing lens families ARRI/ZEISS Master Prime, ARRI/ZEISS Ultra Prime and ZEISS Compact Prime, with no additional color grading needed.
Over many years, ZEISS has been continuing to develop the bokeh – that special look of an out-of-focus area in an image. After all, bokeh is one of the most important characteristics of a lens. With special optical design and circular f-stop forms, ZEISS zooms here achieve a particularly harmonious result and depict out-of-focus highlights as circular without any bothersome artifacts. In addition, the Carl Zeiss T* coating – based on several layers in the nano field – ensures a visible reduction of stray light and reflections. The result: brilliant images with a three-dimensional effect.
A special protection against dust and spray water for rough use on the set underscores the high professional standard of these cine lenses.
The cine zooms from ZEISS deliver the well-known quality and performance for which ZEISS lenses have been known for decades. For cinematographers on smaller budgets in particular, it is critical to make safe investments in their equipment. On this point, the Compact Zoom CZ.2 lenses stand out strongly: due to the interchangeable mount system (IMS), with currently five different mounts (PL, EF, F, MFT und E), the lenses can be fitted without problems onto different camera mounts. As a result, the zooms can always be used on the latest camera models, and always in an optimal system mix.
All three lenses – the new Compact Zoom CZ.2 15-30/T2.9, the CZ.2 28-80/T2.9 and the CZ.2 70-200/T2.9 – will also be available as a complete set (without transport case) for € 44,999 € or US$ 59,900 (excl. VAT)*. As a launch promotion, ZEISS is offering in the United States and Canada an attractive financing program for the new cine zooms as well as the Compact Prime lenses: 0% interest for 12 months with a zero US$ down payment.
29 Responses
Nobody actually usually buys them apart from hire companies. Which is why they are the price that they are. They are built to withstand the stresses of movie making and sit on the front of some Red or Arriflex monster.
And when you consider that for movies still shot on film the cost of that film and processing is around the $2-3 Millon dollars mark, the cost of hiring one of these for a few months, or even buying one probably isn’t that great.
They also won’t make that many of these, so that inflates the price further. And can we tell the difference between one of these and a high quality DSLR / APS-C / m4/3 zoom????
Wow! Now THAT’S a distance scale!
I’ll take two!
RIPOFF
Cool….I couldn’t even afford to rent it.
Is there a guy in camera teams, like that one in front of ships “two fathom..”, who announces the distance for the camera man “5.0, 5.2, 5.6, ….” ??
I cannot imagine what the more reliable features for that price point are? May be there is an insurance integrated?
Would have been a nice rumor for 1. April – and in the end true 🙂
I don’t think I will buy one, but good that it exists.
This is strange. If someone can afford this lens it means money does not count. But why film with a GH4 than?!
Why film with anything else? 🙂
than what?
Because it might be better than you think. If I told you a selection of film makers including Francis Ford Copolla
preferred footage shot with GH2 over just about everything else on the market, you might get an inkling of where your basic assumption might be wrong.
I can think of two practical reasons.
1) Someone might really, really live by the old, “glass over body” maxim. (unlikely)
2) 99.99% of potential users are going to rent instead of buy.
Shooting an indie film, $24,000 on a single standard tele is madness. But spending, say, $750 for a five day rental? Not so outrageous.
April 1 was 3 days ago :~) Seriously, I think this kind of investment by Zeiss (and others) only serves to continue the validation of the MFT format for pro work, both video & still. I can’t afford it, but the release of this stellar piece of equipment can only benefit anyone using this format.
This seems to be the third Zeiss lens for that price with a micro Four-Thirds mount. I believe the others start at US$4900. If you need top quality, can you do with less? 😀
I can only imagine putting up US$1 million to make a small film, where most of it goes to the lenses.
In a movie production, the price of a lens rental can quickly become a dust of a fraction of the overall cost. When you see all the trucks they rent, thats nothing. On a USD 1 Million budget, thete is no way that most of it goes into lenses. But they won’t use a kit pancake, being delusional that its near stellar.
In key situations where those lenses are desirable, they actually save nightmare and money in movie postprocess. Fixing color matching, distorsion, vignette and aberration, frame by frame so that the end result is seamless on a large movie screen, thats not for the feint of heart.
A perfect match for a GM1!
Out of curiosity, does anybody know what the 3rd (counting from the left) scale is for? The first one is T-stop, second is focal length, fourth is distance. I’m trying to puzzle out what the 3rd scale running from about .58 to .95 is — and it’s lettered “upside down” w.r.t. the other scales, too. So, meant to be read from the camera’s left side while the others read from the right side?
My best guess is that it mechanically linked to the focal length and is a scale for the angle of view.
The real news is that m4/3 is beginning to be recognized as a serious option for professional cinema/videography. Notice, however, the focal lengths (15-30, 28-80 and 70-200) and the words “cinematographers on smaller budgets”, “safe investments”, “five different mounts” and ” optimal system mix”.
These are still super35 lenses, with the option of mounting them on m4/3 cameras, which will turn the uwa zoom into a standard zoom (short on both ends!), the standard zoom into a tele (short on the long end) and the tele zoom into a semi-ultra tele for wildlife documentaries.
without doubt good stuff, but imo western made products /brands are way too expensive. People prefer to complain at expensive japanese products instead. it’s a funny world.
Look at it from another angle: If you would lose a shot even in a middle budgeted production or if you lose time for rigging something that sits and works not smoothly in an existing technical work flow or if an optic is not super reliable such a production can lose the amount of money this lens costs in an afternoon. And they won’t even buy, but rent it. This little thingies exist for a reason.
Look at it another way, and for that price, you could have several spares of any other 4/3 zoom and still save yourself $20,000 and not lose any time in your production in the very, very unlikely event one of them failed. Backups are a safer bet every time. Drop that sucker on to concrete and you are doubly screwed.
Its not about lens failing. 43 zooms hardly ever fails, thats not the worry.
Stills and movies are two different planets. AF, auto metering, auto aperture, auto everything, is a recipe for losing far more time in a movie set. Of course you can use 43 manually, but its not exactly the same smooth operation as cine lenses.
This is not to say it can’t or should not be done with 43 lenses. There are many cases where its arguably better suited.
video reportage of live events with heavy use of transitions to do away with AF/exposure hunt, meant to be posted on youtube , on small budget, very fine results are possible.
And then you look at it from a production managers perspective in a pro-environment:
One doesn’t buy that lens, one rents from a rental house. One wants all lenses in a movie to have optical characteristics fitting each other (coating etc.) as much as possible. Because fumbling longer in post will cost a fortune. One needs certain characteristics in mechanics like extremely long and smooth focus throw – so the leading lady is not upset that extremely expensive body parts of her are soft or out of focus and she has to repeat a shot. Because then she gets upset and slams the studio door. Maybe the director too. And the focus puller gets kicked through that door.
If one loses time for needing to adapt lenses that are not fitted to work in a professional surrounding and/or can not easily be attached to a rig with the existing professional gear while at the same time providing the highest technical/aesthetic characteristics possible, the math goes like follows: One day of shooting even a middle budgeted tv-movie costs in my country about 40.000 €. Shooting time 10 hours a day. So one hour equals 4.000. If you lose only ten minutes a day because you have to adapt gear that does not perfectly fit the work-flow (usually you may lose even more) and you have about 20 days to shoot, you have lost 200 minutes, about three hours, about 12.000 €.
Now consider that a big movie may easily cost X times that amount a day. And: The leading lady is so upset she needed another half an hour to cool down and getting re-painted ….. yes, and it was the shot with the five cars crashing into each other in the background 🙂 ….. any production manager will happily spend the rental cost for that monsters from Zeiss.
I would get a different leading lady if she pulled that crap.
This is about working with it, depending on it and achieving professional results. You cannot remotely compare this to anything M43, which is about overpriced plastic toys.
That’s because nobody buys western products anymore, given the prices.
Anyway, this is not about Japanese or German, this is a professional product. I mean professional, not a piece of plastic with a “pro” label stuck on; and it has nothing to do in a M43 forum, to be sure.
Where do you find all that nice totty to shoot? 🙂
Now that Tokina 11-16mm T/3.0 Cine Lens with it’s 1899,- sounds like a bargain 😀