Some years ago Zeiss licensed Kyrocera of Japan to use the name Zeiss on some lenses made for the Contax brand of cameras. Life was good.
Contax went out of business in 2005, ending the need for these lenses. As soon as the agreement expired in 2006, Zeiss looked for something to do with the Japanese manufacturing capacity.
Zeiss decided to put these former Contax mount lenses in Nikon mounts instead, and that's how we get these ZF lenses. These are new lenses made in Nikon mount.
This lens is not made in Germany and it is not made in a Zeiss factory. It is made in Japan by Cosina, the same company that made the cheap FM-10 for Nikon and many other inexpensive lenses and cameras for third-party makers for many decades.
Manual focus lenses went obsolete 20 years ago. This is a lens for the gear hobbyist or collector, or someone shooting manual focus 35mm film cameras. This lens can't autofocus and makes no sense to use on for any digital or AF Nikon.
It feels exactly like a third-party manual focus lens from the 1970s, and for good reason. Cosina, who makes this lens, made many of the third-party lenses of the 1970s. This Zeiss branded lens even has the same focus ring finish as my very first ever third-party lens. I got a Vivitar 200mm f/3.5 T-mount lens for Christmas in 1973. It has the same anodized aluminum finish, engraved markings and straight-ribbed focus ring of this Zeiss lens. Ditto for the 25mm f/3.5 Lentar lens I bought for my Minolta at Fortunoff in 1974 before I could afford camera-brand lenses. I was only 12 years old back then.
Better lenses, if this Zeiss was better, don't improve image quality anywhere near as much as stepping up to a larger film format.
Intro Specs Performance Recommendations
Name
Zeiss calls this the Zeiss Planar T* f/1,4 50 mm ZF
Optics
7 elements, 6 groups. T* brand multicoating.
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