Zeiss is leaving the photo industry?

[LUF Admin]

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The Phoblographer has a long article about Zeiss leaving the photo industry.

It is based on this post on the Fred Miranda forum.

[gotium]

Sad to see this. It was largely the Zeiss Ikon, with its beautiful little lenses, that got me back into photography some 15 years ago. 

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[Viv]

10 minutes ago, gotium said:

Sad to see this. It was largely the Zeiss Ikon, with its beautiful little lenses, that got me back into photography some 15 years ago. 

The Zeiss Ikon was a wonderful full-frame rangefinder film camera. I miss mine.

[pgk]

If you look at Zeiss's website it quickly becomes clear that they manufacture across a broad platform of products of which photography is/was a small section. Photographic products are still shown on their website but many are made under licence, or under other agreements, and few, if any, seem to be made directly by Zeiss in their own factories. So do Zeiss actually manufacture camera lenses themselves still (in their own factories)? Maybe not, and perhaps they haven't for some time. I suspect their name will appear on lenses for some time to come indicating some co-operation with other photographic lens makers though. Many photographic lens makers have found other, more profitable areas in which to operate (Angenieux are a good example) and Zeiss have probably decided that operating in a crowded and potentially shrinking photographic market is no longer making them sufficient money to be worth continuing in. 

[Simone_DF]

Sad to see this, but they priced themselves out of the market. I'll hold onto my Sonnar 50mm

[Ouroboros]

3 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

......I'll hold onto my Sonnar 50mm

If any ZM lenses become sought after when production ends, the c-sonnar will be the one.  Lovely little lens!

[Keith (M)]

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Weren't the ZM lenses made under licence by Cosina?

[pedaes]

17 minutes ago, Keith (M) said:

Weren't the ZM lenses made under licence by Cosina?

For quite some while, apart from the £4.5K 15mm/2.8 which it was said was made by Zeiss in Germany.

[TomB_tx]

40 minutes ago, Keith (M) said:

Weren't the ZM lenses made under licence by Cosina?

As was the Zeiss Ikon ZM camera, which I bought instead of an M7.

[willeica]

This discussion here is focussing on recent camera lenses with the Zeiss name, which only tells a tiny part of the overall story. Zeiss was an optical giant before Leitz/Leica and still is one today. Barnack had worked with Leitz and would we have got the Elmar, the lens that made Leica, without the Tessar? Zeiss was so dominant at one stage that it was accused of abuse of that dominance, particularly in its control of the shutter market through shareholdings in F Deckel and Gauthier. The Zeiss firm is still in Wetzlar and I have passed its HQ at an ungodly hour of morning coming from Leica HQ on my way to a Rhine cruise. Back in the 1930s, Zeiss was the king of the hill in the camera lens market and Leitz was a gauche newcomer. The Contax was, however, a relative disaster by having an over-engineered shutter which was difficult to repair, whereas Leica stuck to a cloth shutter which was easy to repair and calibrate. Still, whatever about its cameras, Zeiss has kept up the quality of its lenses and I have two Zeiss 25mm f2.8 lenses for Leica M and Nikon F which are as fine as anything produced by either of those two companies under their own names. However, with the decline in the market for system cameras and the growth in cheap lens imports from China, the market space for quality Zeiss camera system lenses has been squeezed. Also the move to new mounts with the growth of EVF cameras has not helped either. Photographers these days place as much reliance on electronics as they do on optics. Zeiss is very skilled in both of those areas, but they are concentrating on areas where they have a reputation and natural advantages arising from its research. Being at the tail end of a declining market is not a place that Zeiss would want to be. The optical market is very wide-ranging and camera system lenses are only about a third of that.  I have a friend who is a professor of optics and who has been involved in designing lenses costing $5 million each for industrial processes.

This video is worth watching as it gives a balanced historical and current view of the Zeiss company. 

 

William 

[lct]

Sad news indeed. Glad to have kept superb ZM lenses like Biogon 21/4.5, Biogon 35/2.8, Sonnar 50/1.5, Planar 50/2 and Tessar 85/4.

[Anbaric]

It wouldn't surprise me, but the story seems a bit thin - someone on a forum says they heard it from the Australian distributor, then a blogger who hasn't always been terribly accurate in the past takes the quote and runs with it. Personally, I'm still waiting for the Zeiss Ikon eyes from the William Gibson books. Maybe the Zeiss 'optical inserts' for the new Apple Vision thing are the first step.

[pedaes]

57 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

but the story seems a bit thin

Robert White certainly has very few ZM lenses on their website.

Edited June 6, 2023 by pedaes

[Gobert]

Zeiss makes perfect lenses. But does anyone buy them?

[earleygallery]

I too was under the impression that the 'current' Zeiss lenses were made by CV.

Maybe the price point was such that those wanting a less expensive option would buy the Voigtlander and those wanting Leica lenses would buy.....Leica (yes I know they made other lenses for other cameras but I would expect that the M lenses were the best sellers).

Whatever the reason, it must surely be that they weren't profitable enough.

[willeica]

3 minutes ago, earleygallery said:

Whatever the reason, it must surely be that they weren't profitable enough.

That is exactly what I was saying, James. Zeiss is, however, a very profitable company and has always dealt in areas outside of photography. It is world leading in many areas of optical science, particularly in the medical field. Many of us will have seen Zeiss equipment at our local optician's practice, but the company's range is much greater than that. 

Some of this also relates to the current state of the system camera market. Zeiss could easily re-enter the photo lens market at any time if the circumstances were right, but that does not seem likely to happen anytime soon. 

William 

[pgk]

Topcon exited the 35mm camera market in ~1980 and now specialises in other optical products, so the movement of optical companies away from photographic products is nothing new. Most probably could move back into photographic equipment production but most are unlikely to unless the market changes. Currently it looks as though there are a lot of manufacturers producing equipment for a potentially shrinking market (compacts are disappering) so if anything others may well move into other areas if they are able to.

[Winedemonium]

On 6/6/2023 at 6:45 PM, pedaes said:

For quite some while, apart from the £4.5K 15mm/2.8 which it was said was made by Zeiss in Germany.

..and the short-lived 85mm/2.0 Sonnar-ZM - was also made in Germany. (Lovely lens - it's the one I've held on to).

If the rumour of demise is correct, the pity to lose also their optical viewfinders - I prefer my large 21mm and 25/28mm Zeiss versions to anything I have tried from Leica.

 

[Simone_DF]

On 6/6/2023 at 9:10 PM, earleygallery said:

(yes I know they made other lenses for other cameras but I would expect that the M lenses were the best sellers).

I highly doubt that. Leica cameras don't have the market share of Canon, Nikon and Sony. I'd expect their DSLR line to be their best seller, at least up to a couple of years ago, followed by the Batis line for Sony. 

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[Simone_DF]

TL;DR: Zeiss is still committed to sell the current lineup. But the official marketing spin doesn't sound positive either, since they don't explicitly state they are still manufacturing or developing lenses.

https://www.dpreview.com/news/0308510095/zeiss-says-it-s-not-leaving-the-photo-industry

Edited June 9, 2023 by Simone_DF