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The Zeiss Otus 50mm and 85mm f1.4 are Here For Canon, Sony, and Nikon

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 02/28/2025
02/25/2025
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Last Updated on 02/28/2025 by Lara Carretero

Today, Zeiss is announcing that they’re finally returning to the world of stills photography and mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras primarily designed for photography. They were previously teasing the new Otus lenses via social media. And now, we know what’s officially coming. The Zeiss Otus 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.4 will be coming and made available to Canon RF, Sony E, and Nikon Z mounts. And they’re not as expensive and was previously leaked.

All images are from Zeiss. Used with permission.

Here’s what you need to know about the lenses:

  • The Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Otus has a 67mm front filter thread. It is the successor to the Zeiss 55mm f1.4 Otus. It also has a focusing range of 0.5m and a working distance of 0.39m and was created using 14 elements in 11 groups. The lens will weigh differently for each variant: E-mount at 677g, RF-mount at 697g, and Z-Mount at 718g. The lens also features a 1:7.3 image ratio at minimum object distance.
  • The Zeiss 85mm f1.4 has a 77mm front filter thread. It is the successor to the Zeiss 85mm f1.4 Otus. This lens has a focusing range of 0.8m and a free working distance of 0.68 m. It is made with 15 elements in 11 groups and weighs 1040g for E-mount, 1055g for RF-mount, and 1061g for Z-mount. The lens also has a 1:8.1 image ratio at minimum object distance.
  • Both lenses are manual focus only, with focus confirmation. This is the same as what they did back in the DSLR days until Sony let them make an autofocus lineup of lenses.
  • They have aperture rings: they can be clicked and declieked.
  • They’re still using the yellow Zeiss font from the original Otus lineup.
  • The lenses also ensure excellent colors, thanks to the apochromatic lens design, while minimizing chromatic aberrations. With the Zeiss T anti-reflective coating, you will also see reduced reflections and flare, improving clarity and color accuracy.
  • They both are weather resistant, which is different from the previous lenses for DSLRs. This addresses one of the toughest issues that the Otus lenses had. All the other lens lineups except for the Touit lineup had weather resistance of some sort.
  • All aluminum bodies with rubber for the focusing ring. Zeiss originally chose rubber back in the 2010s because users complained about the ring being too cold to touch in freezing weather. Rubber is another natural ingredient that works in this case.
  • The lenses are available for Sony E, Nikon Z, and Canon RF lens mounts. The Leica L mount is the only full-frame mirrorless autofocus mount that hasn’t been included.
  • The 50mm is priced at $2,500, while the 85mm is priced at $2,999. That’s not bad; and I think that we have to simply just expect that higher end lenses are going to cost more.
  • Zeiss didn’t go into the sharpness and rendering from this lens anywhere like they used to back in the day. So, we shouldn’t necessarily expect that the image quality will be the sharpest on the market. This also reflects how a brand like Leica isn’t really luxury anymore. So, we shouldn’t expect that this lens will be a luxury lens of any sort.
  • Nothing we saw from the images they showed us looked like it was a token Zeiss lens. We didn’t see the Micro Contrast that we’d known their lenses to have for many years.

We’re pretty hyped that these lenses are coming for Canon, Nikon, and Sony mounts. If anything, Sony is the only brand that can really test the true potential of the sharpness due to their higher megapixel camera bodies. Too bad that it isn’t coming in L-mount, otherwise we could’ve also seen what it does on the Leica SL3.

The Phoblographer has requested review units. And we’re very curious to know why someone would purchase these due to them only being manual focus. However, real photographers who’ve done zone focusing know that sometimes manual focus can be better for our brains. We tend to create far less brainless images then.

Here are the sample images

A woman with dark hair, gazing to the side, stands near a reflective surface with a blurred chandelier in the background.
A close-up of a person’s hands resting on their knees, wearing blue corduroy pants and a dark, textured sweater.
Woman with long brown hair and blue eyes, wearing a black turtleneck, gazing directly at the camera.
A glass sphere on a blurred pathway reflects colorful autumn trees and leaves.
Ornate church ceiling with intricate frescoes and golden carvings in a decorative arch.
Rocky islands surrounded by misty waves in a calm, overcast seascape.
50mm f1.4 canon canon rf lens nikon Nikon Z Sony E weather sealing zeiss zeiss otus
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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