The majority of "Zeiss" glass these days...isn't it made by Cosina? I mean, the last I heard, the ZF and ZE series (for Nikon F and Canon EF) manual focusing Zeiss lenses, as well as the newer series for Pentax K-mount, were ALL being made by Cosina, for "Zeiss". Zeiss these days is really just a name...just as the modern Contax cameras of the 1980's were made by Yashica, and then later by Kyocera. The "Contax" brand of cameras, and their associated lenses, have really been "Yashica" or "Kyocera" since the late 1970's, when the Contax name was bought, and resurrected.
Same with the Voigtlander 35mm rangefinders; Cosina bought the rights to the old Voigtlander name over a decade ago, and began producing. As far as Zeiss lenses...they have some nice lenses, as well as some that look horrible...the 50mm f/1.4 Planar for example--UGLY bokeh...simply horrific....God-awful. Hashy. Harsh. Yeeech! What is really sad is that one of the absolute best lenses Cosina ever made, the 125mm Apo-Lanthar, was discontinued at the insistence of Zeiss, in order to get the production contract for lenses branded Zeiss...since the APO-Lanthar was NOT of Zeiss origins, and was one of the absolute best-corrected macro lenses, Zeiss forced Cosina to stop production of a lens that would have made their offerings look like dogmeat by comparison.
Zeiss aka Cosina has made some pretty well-proved manual focusing lenses for 35mm cameras over the last few years, but their autofocusing stuff is kind of a mystery to me. I'm not really sure what they have in the AF ranks.
