Some people asked me when the new Zeiss 50mm lens will ship. It’s a long way to go guys! At least according to BHphoto (Click here) the lens will ship from July only. Preorders are up at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and SonyStore USA (via AlphaCameraDeals). In Europe at Wex UK and Amazon DE.
54 Responses
And you get #300 instant discount if you pre-order!?
Just a wishful thinking!! 🙂
$$$!!!
It annoying that they release stuff then have to wait for months ? Most manufactures launch a product when it ready to be shipped and in the shops within a few weeks at the most?
For example the 70-400GII I have been waiting to get this, and the UK date just keeps slipping from showing available early April (Sony UK website) to just not available at moment?
They should hod back the announcements of new stuff till they are ready to actually ship the damn things LOL!
Maybe Sony has to wait for enough pre-orders to even start manufacturing it? Other vendors might sell much larger quantities, so they can produce a certain number of items and can be sure that those can be sold.
70-400GII hit the stores in UK some time ago. Not far after the release. I seen on myself in very early March.
Per e-mail from Sony US “The new estimated shipping date is 07/14/2013.”
Great lens, but too expensive!
Show me a full-frame A-Mount roadmap and I’ll start buying lenses again.
Both of my a850’s are working and I don’t think the a99 is worth it( I shoot stills)and without any idea to what Sony plans to do I’m not going to invest any more money with this mount.
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-1 If you have not used an a99 then you would not think it is worth it. I have both the a99 and the a900 and I can tell you that the a99 is most definitely worth it!
+1 99 better than my 850
I hope it is… Look how old your a850 is…
Heck, it doesn’t even have a flip screen LCD/live view, much less Video…
All the a850 and a900 do are take FF 24mp pictures… They can do that decently at least…
People always talk about how great their a900 and a850 are… Well my a580 has a 1 point higher rank on DXO mark than those bodies… And it has live view flip screen lcd, and manual focus video… And it was only 799.00 so to me the a850 and a900 were never really worth bragging so much about anyway… So again, I hope the a99 is better than those OLD FF Alphas, Doesn’t mean the a99 delivered in price, performance, specs just because people ‘like it better’…
And people always talk about DXO points without realizing they are an arbitrary weighing of single data points from graphs, that only represent a small scope of what cameras are capable of.
It’s like bragging about your capabilities by showing me the length of your little finger.
Having ZA lenses on the drawing board and in stores is like reading an A-mount roadmap for the next decade or so.
Meh. Too expensive. Besides, I’d rather have the 85mm to compliment the Sony 50mm, or maybe better yet, the Sigma 35mm.
sigma 50mm 1.4 = $450
Sigma 50mm 1.4 = $350 at christmas time last year. yay me. I couldn’t really wish for a better 50mm lens. Faster focusing would be nice though.
Sony should acquire Sigma hehehe…
Cant wait to get it!!! After Comparing my Zeiss 24-70 to the Zeiss 24 f2, 85 1.4 and 135 1.8 I lost my fascination with it. I’m now only going to use fixed focal length lenses for my fine artwork and the 24-70 will be only used for less demanding work where critical image sharpness is not needed. The 50 mm will fit in nicely. You can have the Zeiss 24mm f2 , Sigma 35 1.4, Zeiss 50mm, 85 and 135 setup and have a world class collection to produce some out standing images!!!!!
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Too bad Zeiss hasn’t made a 35mm f/1.4 SSM for the A-Mount yet.
It will be hard even for Zeiss to beat the Sigma 35/1.4 in quality, let alone in price.
I’m not worried about beating the quality – you have to remember that almost all of 35mm lenses on a market for DSLRs are years old, before some of modern techs were even introduced (Sony’s 35 got a design from 1987). Price definitely might be high though.
well, there some alternative zeiss 35mm/2 lens from RX1, it had better quality than the others 😀
This lens cost roughly usd 3,000 …. ha ha ha
By the way, just almost as the same price point as Leica 35 f/2 Asph but got auto focus and free 24mp camera.
Does anyone know if this shares an optical design with the kick-ass, new Zeiss 55mm distagon 1.4 (which is only for canon and Nikon)?
The 55mm f/1.4 is a much bigger lens, so different design, but also twice as much money.
If you watch the Friedman Blog video of the Sony optical engineer you can see where he is going through the options for the new 50mm lens, one of them has a huge positive front lens, Sony rejected that design due to the weight and cost, it looks like the 55mm f/1.4 from Zeiss is similar to that design.
That big front lens design might be f/1.2 design as early rumors?
I just hoped this new 50 was f/1.2 at this price I would buy without delay.
The focal length is different. That’s 55mm, this is 50mm, the optical design will be different.
Also this is a Planar while that is a Distagon.
Nice, but nothing special, no 1.0 not even the 1.2 they have from Contax days. No weather seal, either.
It says allot, when a 50mm 1.4 is something of an event for a system, please, Sony, please give us some lens that we can get excited about.
Can only agree: 1500$ for a STANDARD lens… How much gold does the SSM motor contain to justify such a price? I just bought a Sony 50 (New) for 300$… I can’t see how this new lens will be 5 times better in corner sharpness and in terms of distorsion.
I have absolutely no plans on buying this and find it rather expensive but its not a simple case of additional SSM. Its a new optical design and its highly possible that its sharper than the older 50mm especially where it matters – wide open.
I have a Minolta 50mm f1.4 which is optically the same as the Sony version except for newer coatings and aperture blades and its pretty soft at f1.4 with lower contrast.
My friends Sigma 50mm f1.4 is noticeably sharper at f1.4 than the Minolta while by f2 and higher there is little difference between the two.
So my guess is that this new optical design of the Zeiss will enable the lens to show good sharpness wide open. If not then it will flop rather badly ! 😛
Dude, it’s weather sealed design.
1.2 autofocusing is slower then 1.4 and with modern day sensor, you’ll be able to boost ISO slightly to compensate for the .2 or 1/3 stop loss of light. Also to make this lens .2 faster, it’ll make the lens heavier, larger and more expensive then it currently is.
It is my understanding that this lens actually is weather-sealed. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong. But regardless of that, I still think this lens is about $500 over what it should be.
it’s impossible to make an autofocusing alpha mount lens faster than 1.4 due to technical limitations of the system. but this one should be nice, better build than any af 50. real quality but expensive
Good to hear that Sony Zeiss lens deploys Glass-molded aspherical elements.
Such technology is only found in high end lenses like Nikon 14-24 and 24-70
http://imaging.nikon.com/history/scenes/25/index.htm
But weather-sealing still not available as yet?
it is WR.
epic fail lens.. epic fail system
epic fail comment
+100000
Does anyone know where this lens differs from my ZS 50, which costs about 600? Autofocus aside?
Gary friedmann posted a video of the Sony Lead lens designer, Motoyuki Ohtake, on youtube, A very interesting discussion of the constraints of lens design straight from the horse’s mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=okl5mwkZ_7s#!
Nice video for information. It looks like Sony was trying to get as good a lens as they could and still fit it into a reasonably sized package. Zeiss on the 55mm f/1.4 just went for as good a lens as possible. It looks the new Sony Zeiss will be much better than the old f/1.4 but not super contrast and sharp until f/2.8. Corners do look much better though even at f/1.4.
We don’t need an overpriced 50mm f1.4 there is no way Sony can justify the cost of this lens when all is said and done it’s still a 50mm f1.4
Some people still don’t get it… It has a CZ sticker on the barrel! Isn’t that enough?
Now they need to produce a FF Alpha body worthy of this lens….
Or SAR users worthy of commenting.
I have the sigma 50mm F1.4 and I must say the new ZA 50mm is just too expensive…and I love the idea if 50mm with 77mm filter size…consistent with all my other lenses.
If u love the 3d pop, the ssm, faster af (I hope In Comparison to sigma) this is a reasonable price if you ask me. No one is comparing this price against a canon 50mm 1.2?