Just announced: New Zeiss Otus ML 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4

Preorders:
Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 at BHphoto. Adorama. FotoErhardt. Fotokoch. Calumet. WexUK.
Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 at BHphoto. Adorama. FotoErhardt. Fotokoch. Calumet. WexUK.

Zeiss officially unveiled the first two new Full Frame OTUS lenses for mirrorless system cameras.


Zeiss says those lenses will have: 

  • exceptional optical performance and precision and exception build quality with all-metal construction
  • apochromatic design to ensure excellent color fidelity and minimize chromatic aberrations
  • T* anti-reflective coating to reduce reflections and flare
  • manual focus only (smooth metal focus ring with a precision helicoid drive)
  • de-clicked aperture for video
  • 14 lens elements into 11 groups
  • 0.5m close focus

Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 lens specs:

  • 67mm filter size
  • 100mm long
  • 77mm wide
  • 677g
  • $2,500
  • shipping start in spring

Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 lens specs:

  • $2999
  • shipping start “later in 2025”
  • specs will be unveiled later

 

Image sample shot with the new 50mm lens:

Cosina just announced the new Voigtlander 75mm f/1.8 FE lens with built-in BOKEH control ring!

Cosina just published this video with the info about a new Voigtlander 75mm f/1.8 FE lens with built-in BOKEH control ring.

If you rotate it you can create different kind of Bokeh effects:

Curiosity: At the beginning of the video Cosina introduced the new Zeiss lenses with whom they have a partnership. I suspect the OTUS lenses are produced by Cosina ;)

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Thanks Greg Painter for spotting this!

Sigma announces the BF camera carved from a single block of aluminium!

I think you should take a close look at the new Sigma BF camera (here at BHphoto). The main reason is that it has a radically minimalist design, which I personally really like! Here is some important information:

  • carved from a single block of aluminum
  • minimalist controls
  • 230 GB of internal memory
  • No EVF, no SD slot, no HDmi, no IBIS and NO to a lot of things you usually have on a camera!
  • Sigma BF Stands for ‘Beautiful Foolishness’

From a technical perspective, this really is a ‘boring’ camera, but the novelty here is the radical new design and user interface. I would love to see Sony produce a ZV or RX FF camera with such high build quality and a simplified, solid button layout. I’m seriously considering buying the WHITE model :)

Here you can see images of the Aluminum block used to carve out the new BF camera:

The I lens series has been redesigned to match the new BF camera style:

Hands-on images with the new BF:

And here a size comparison with the older FP model:

Preorders:
300-600mm lens at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. FotoErhardt. Fotokoch. WexUK.
16-300mm at BHphoto. Amazon. Adorama. FotoErhardt. Fotokoch. WexUK.
Full press release on Explora

 

 

Here’s why there are massive Sony A7rVI, A7V, FX3II and RX1rIII rumours floating youtube!

If you search on youtube for cameras like the Sony A7rVI, Sony A7V, Sony FX3II and so on, you will find a large number of ‘rumor’ videos. Over the past few months, readers have often pointed these videos out to me and some of them believed that they were real rumors.

But they are all AI generated videos!!!

There’s software that basically uses tools like CHATGPT to create a scripted text for a YouTube video, and then uses AI tools for image and video generation that create images based on that scripted text. In fact, most of the text in these videos is scraped from my websites, and then they add a few fantasy ideas to grab your attention. I hope that Youtube will soon crack down on AI-generated videos. Some of these videos have more views than my real rumor videos on Youtube :(

In general, I’m surprised at how many people fall for these IA pictures and videos. On many social networks like Facebook, IG and TikTok, I see hundreds of thousands of likes for such content and most people believe it’s real!

It’s a crazy world we live in… I almost think it’s time to go live on a mountain with my dog…. ah, sorry… I don’t have a dog… it’s just a dog created by AI!