Industry-standard German lens manufacturer Zeiss introduced its new Milvus 25mm F/1.4 wide-angle lens, a completely redesigned product that straddles the Otus and Milvus lines, to an eager public on October 18, 2017.
The new Milvus lens joins a large family of glass from Zeiss, “Featuring eleven focal lengths ranging from 15 to 135 millimeters, including two macros, the ZEISS Milvus family covers a host of applications, such as portrait, landscape, architecture and street photography.”
Product Manager at Zeiss, Christophe Casenave, said this of the new Milvus wide-angle lens: “The completely new optical design ensures superior performance across the entire image field…This results in high-contrast photos and a harmonious bokeh. Even at full aperture, there are hardly any color fringes. The finest details can be reproduced in high definition and contrast all the way into the corners.”
According to a Zeiss Milvus design document, the lens line was initially developed for SLR cameras that needed a long back focal distance for short focal lengths due to the mirrorbox. Distagon lenses of the retrofocus design are “ideal for mirrorless system cameras thanks to their optimized ray path.” The high-performance design allows for consistently good correction to the corners of the image with very minimal field curvature.
The Zeiss Milvus 25mm f/1.4, which “was developed for the DSLR systems from Canon and Nikon,” is aimed at landscape and architectural photographers.
Interview and documentary videographers are also mentioned in the Zeiss press, specifically “The four ZEISS Milvus focal lengths 25, 35, 50 and 85 millimeters with an aperture of 1.4 are just perfect for filming. Thanks to their high speed, they are suitable primarily for interviews and documentaries where the videographer can utilize natural light. Thanks to the de-click function in the version for the Nikon-Mount the aperture can be adjusted continuously. ZEISS Lens Gears in a range of sizes permit the use of follow-focus systems.”
Preorders for the Zeiss Milvus 25mm F/1.4 are currently live with an expected ship date in early November 2017. The retail price is approximately $USD 2399.
