The Zeiss Batis range of lenses for Sony have proven to be extremely popular, especially as Sony has been slacking on producing their own until recently. With the new native Sony FE mount Sigma lenses on the way, though, that may change. Sigma will have quite a few more lenses, and Zeiss still has a couple of holes in its lineup. But it’s planning to fill one of those with a new 40mm f/2.0 lens, according to Nokishita.
The new lens will be the Zeiss Batis 40mm f/2.0 CF. Nobody’s quite sure what the “CF” stands for, but SAR believes it may mean “close focus”. And while it does focus fairly close, at a mere 24cm, it doesn’t seem all that close to me compared to similar focal length lenses for other systems. Maybe, though. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
But the specs so far from Nokishita…
Name: Batis 2/40 CFMinimum focus distance: 0.24mFocus limiter options: Full / 0.24-0.5m / 0.4m – ∞Filter diameter: 67mmPhysical size: Similar to, but a little smaller than the Batis 85mm.
So far there are four lenses in the Zeiss Batis lineup, so this would make a fifth, rounding off the collection quite nicely.
Batis 18mm f/2.8 FE – $1,349Batis 25mm f/2.0 FE – $1,299Batis 40mm f/2.0 FE – $?,???Batis 85mm f/1.8 FE – $1,199Batis 135mm f/2.8 FE – $1,699
I still think there’s possibly room for maybe a 58mm in there, though. There’s no word on exactly when an official announcement will come, nor the price, but looking at the existing lineup, I’ll bet it’ll be somewhere between $1,200 and $1,400). [Nokishita via Sony Alpha Rumors]