Interview with Christophe Casenave from ZEISS: “Sony Alpha is in a phase of professionalization”

Lenspire posted the content of an interview with Zeiss product manager Christophe Casenave. Here are a couple of interetsing informations:

1) Sony Alpha is in a phase of professionalization: “Sony Alpha is one of the most rapidly evolving system, the one in which most innovation is brought at the moment and it is a system in a phase of professionalization. We believe that we can help making this system appealing to professional photographers by providing pro-grade lenses.”

2) Reason for the Sony A7 success: “Many people like to provide old lenses they owned, or sometimes their parents owned, a second life. Even if these lenses are not ‘up-to-date’ or modern in terms of quality, they provide some kind of nostalgic look. Only this system allows to adapt so many older lenses.”

3) Why they launched the Loxia series: “We remarked that many people were adapting our ZM lenses, even if they are not all optimal for the digital sensor. In addition, we figured out that the AF lenses, while still quite compact, compared to DSLR lenses, still tend to get bigger on this system. The combination of these three factors gave us the idea to develop a new family of very compact, very high craftsmanship manual lenses”

4) Why the Loxia 21mm has a complete new design (not borrowed from the ZM series): “We could not do a symmetrical design, because we needed to ensure that the ray angle is low enough to avoid any kind of aberrations in the corners. As such, we chose a Distagon, with a very light retro-focus.”

Personal note: “Sony Alpha is in a phase of professionalization”…can’t wait to see that coming true at Photokina 2016!

Links to all Zeiss made FE Loxia and Batis lenses:
Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8 lens in US at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto. In Eu at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0 lens at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto. In EU at Amazon DE, WexUK. In Asia at Digitalrev.
Zeiss Loxia 50mm f/2 Planar T* Lens for Sony E Mount at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama., WexUK, CameraPro.
Zeiss Loxia 35mm f/2 Biogon T* Lens for Sony E Mount at Amazon, BHphoto, Adorama, WexUK, CameraPro.
Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 FE lens at BHphoto and Adorama. In Europe at WexUK.