Zeiss, which denied rumors it is leaving the camera lens manufacturing space last year, is teasing the arrival of a new optic. While it might appeal to some, photographers shouldn’t get their hopes up: it is almost certainly a cinema lens.
The lens manufacturer took to social media twice in the last week to tease a new lens coming to the market, saying only that it “arriving soon” and “approaching fast.”
Zeiss has been very quiet on the lens manufacturing front in recent years, leading many to assume that meant it was quietly bowing out of the lens manufacturing market. Last June, the company denied these rumors.
“We are not leaving the photo lens market. Definitely not. There are no restrictions on [the availability of] our products,” Zeiss said at the time.
Still, it is hard to ignore the fact that the company hasn’t produced a new lens for photography since 2018. Unfortunately for those hoping for new Batis or Otus lenses, that is unlikely to change in the near-term, at least, as the lens it has been teasing online is from the company’s cinema division. The cinema segment of Zeiss’s business has been busier than its photo lens business, but not by much. The Supreme Prime Radiance lenses, which are its most recent addition, debuted in 2021.
Given that silhouette of the lenses in the Zeiss social media announcement look a lot like the Supreme Prime Radiance optics, it’s possible Zeiss is expanding the lineup. That said, the small tidbit of the lens that is visible in the shared teaser photo shows a red “T*” only; the Supreme Prime Radiance lenses feature that icon to the left or the word “blue,” which isn’t visible on the teaser image.
Whatever it is, Zeiss is showing that it is still actively manufacturing optical glass, it’s just not doing anything new in the photography space right now. That makes sense as its last attempt at a new product in the photography space, the ZX1, didn’t do well. The company told PetaPixel that it “learned a lot” from that experience and it wasn’t going to produce a ZX2 as a result.
Look for Zeiss to share information on its new cinema optic sometime in the near future.
Image credits: Zeiss