New Zeiss anamorphic lenses!

[Andrew Reid]

“Christian Bannert [of Zeiss] took great pleasure in asking me to guess the third surprise coming from Carl Zeiss. An 1800 mm T1.3 lens perhaps?…I had no clue.

“We’re back in the Anamorphic Lens business,” he said.

[url=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/index.php/topic,61.0.html]More on the anamorphic forum here[/url]

[Caleb Genheimer]

Holy Sweet Mother of All Things Glorious! Too bad they're only rentable, sounds like . . . but still . . . They'll be on the budget for any films that I plan to do, that's for sure!

And "compact zooms" oh, savory goodness. I hope  there's something from WIDE (16/17mm) to out past GH2 "normal" (25mm) . . . if there is, and it is under f2.8, I'll buy it, however much it costs.

Zeiss seems to be pretty committed to nog going stagnant

[Andrew Reid]

I am really impressed with Zeiss's new 'added value' strategy :) OK we know the business reasons but regardless this is great. I don't usually rent but will do with these.

[disneytoy]

If profitable, this will open doors for other lens makers to make affordable Anamorphics.

[Caleb Genheimer]

This is some of the best news in YEARS. If I had to pick ONE lens that I absolutely wanted a manufacturer to make, it would have been an all new anamorphic. If I had to pick ONE company to make it and do it right, it would've been ZEISS.

I hope these lenses confirm the large interest in anamorphics among the DSLR crowd, because if there's one thing that confirmed interest seems to do fairly quickly, it seems to create lots of new interest-satiating products. A healthy plethora of new-generation anamorphics would be amazing, especially with the GH cameras' 2x crop making "wide" a bit difficult to pull off at times. GOP1 on the GH2 already has buckets of tastiness that I'm absolutely satisfied with, but I can tell that the right lenses would make this tiny camera unbeatable for what I'm after.

while Zeiss can be a tad on the clinical side of things, I think the very nature of anamorphic lenses will provide the user with ample means of combating their surgical aesthetic. I have no doubt that, should the Zeiss sharpness be what you want from these lenses, they will deliver. But any anamorphic, if provoked (especially with aggressive light sources), WILL show organic character. If I had to make one prediction, I'd say Zeiss will probably offer them with "flare" and "Zeiss look" coatings (if not right away, further down the road).

[MikeCooprb]

Howdy, my name is Michael from Sunnyvale, California. I just wanted to introduce myself to the forum as this is my first time here. If this post is in the wrong section, mods please move it.       
       
I am an Information Technology professional working in the IT industry for the past 15 years. My hobbies include biking, running, and playing video games (a big Xbox gamer).       
       
Thanks for having me and I look forward to making many contributions to the forum.