Let’s be very honest here, Zeiss lenses are fantastic. They’re capable in every single way. For years, they also had some of the best image quality you could ever get from a lens. Zeiss lenses were available for Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony E, Leica-M, and Fujifilm X cameras. But they quietly disappeared from the photo industry with more of a focus on cinema. So what happened? Well, I’d like to relay what I’ve seen in my 12 years of journalism and covering the Zeiss company.

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For many years, Zeiss has been known as a premium lens manufacturer that offered a wonderful look. They were popular among Leica photographers and a few Canon photographers who used 5D cameras. The lenses gave a look Japanese manufacturers just weren’t offering. Zeiss optics were better: sharper, more contrasty, more vivid, and delivered beautiful focus fall-off. It’s was sometimes pretty obvious to tell when you were seeing a Zeiss image. We were reviewing them not long after I started the site in 2009. My first experience with Zeiss lenses was back in 2010. That’s over a decade ago. And even when I look back at that very old blog post, I still get goosebumps about how nice those photos are. A few times, I’ve gone to eBay to find some of those old Zeiss gems for DSLRs. You’d be amazed at how well they’ve held their value.

Back in 2013 though, the entire lens industry began to change. This was a time when major tsunamis and other effects of global warming were wiping out factories. It was also a time when third-party lens companies stepped up and created lenses that turned peoples’ heads. Zeiss announced the 55mm f1.4 Otus lens. They touted that this lens, when shot wide open, would be as sharp as their competition’s lenses stopped down. And as we saw, they were right. I think every photographer at the time was drooling over that lens but also hesitant because of the insanely expensive price. Zeiss touted this lens as a no-compromise lens to create the single best optic, but they neglected a few major points. A lens costing over $3,000 should have weather sealing and autofocus, but they didn’t have either. Still, the image quality really did prevail.

Around the same time, Sigma announced they’d be coming out with a 50mm f1.4 Art lens with autofocus. Amazingly, it held its own with the Zeiss 55mm Otus lens at a far cheaper cost. Lots of folks decided to go with slightly worse image quality fully understanding they could edit the images later on. They really wanted autofocus though.

Zeiss understood this–and found ways to press on. They delivered the Touit series of lenses for Fujifilm X mount and Sony E mount. We reviewed all of those and really liked them. But again, it was sometimes the price that held us back. Then Zeiss partnered with Sony on the full-frame cameras by delivering the Loxia and the Batis lens lineup. The latter had autofocus, but we haven’t seen anything from the company’s lens division since 2019. By that time, they had pretty much given up on DSLRs.

For the record, The Phoblographer has reviewed the most camera lenses of any publication in real-world reviews. We’ve done entire lens guides for their Milvus lenses while their Batis and Loxia lenses are rolled into our Sony FE Lens Guide. Trust me, if we could test them, we’d do so. Across the board, our staff tends to really like the challenge manual focus lenses give us. It makes our jobs a lot less monotonous.

There are some very odd, dark secrets in the camera and lens world. Some manufacturers make lenses for others. Other brands have closed-door deals. But Zeiss never managed to get autofocusing lenses for Canon or Nikon. However, they all had autofocus contacts for manual focusing. If Zeiss had just made some autofocus lenses, things probably would’ve been different.

So why did Zeiss stop making lenses for Son...