a Rose shot with the Zeiss Otus 55mm (Patreon)

I've had some questions about the Zeiss Otus lenses and why do I sometimes use them so I'm posting this to answer several people at once.

Zeiss makes the Otus lenses to fit several different brands of camera bodies. These lenses are extremely high quality lenses, are built like a tank, focus as smooth as a dream, and remind me of a fine diamond ring when looking at them. The thought and engineering in these lenses are obvious to almost everyone before picking one up.

But they are manual focus lenses. And for someone like me with vision which isn't perfect that has always been a challenge. I've used the Otus on the Nikon D850 but it was so hard for me to see what was in focus that I almost always ended up changing to another lens which would auto focus. Now that I'm using mirrorless camera bodies the game has changed. The Nikon Z camera viewfinders and vliewscreens are "what you see is what you get" meaning they are bright and have the option to zoom in to focus on a precise spot (like the eye balls) when focusing. Additionally the zebras focusing assistance allows anyone with less than perfect vision to quickly focus manually either through the viewfinder or using the screen on back of the camera. So now I'm able to actually use a lens I've worshipped for several years.

Nikon has been slow to introduce the fast prime lenses for mirrorless cameras. I'm still using the DSLR lenses via the adapter. That works fine but I think the new Z lenses will be better. Just yesterday I finally received the my first Z lens from Nikon, the Z 50mm f/1.2. I haven't had the chance to use it yet but it might give the Zeiss Otus lens a run for the money plus have autofocus. We'll see. I hope so because auto focus is so much more precise and faster for people like me.

Regardless I'm not sure I'll ever sell the Otus. It's just so damn beautiful to hold.