We told you that they were coming, we even showed you what they would look like, and today, Zeiss made it official by announcing their Loxia line of lenses. As expected, the two lenses are a 50mm F/2 and a 35mm F/2.
This new line of Zeiss Loxia lenses are for full frame mirrorless cameras, and as you well know, for now, that includes just the Sony E-Mount A7 series cameras. So, as expected, these lenses will be initially released only in the Sony FE (Full Frame E) mount. Though the rumors are that if another company releases a full frame mirrorless, these would be ported to that mount as well.
These new Loxia lenses offer some interesting features for users of the Sony A7 series: the ability to automatically engage the magnification feature when you turn the focus ring to help with manual focusing, and a mechanical screw that you can turn to de-click the aperture ring and make the lens more video friendly.
The refreshing thing about these lenses though, is that despite the fact that they are Zeiss through and through (unlike many other Zeiss branded lenses in the Sony lineup), they are actually very affordable. The new 50mm F/2 comes in at just under $1,000, while the 35mm F/2 at just under $1,300.
The Loxia 50mm F/2 is expected to start shipping in October, while the 35mm F/2 is  expected to start shipping sometime in the 4th quarter of 2014. We don’t have any pre-order links for you quite yet, but we will update the post once they are made available to us.
In the meantime, if you want to learn more about these new Loxia lenses, you can head over to the new Zeiss webpage about them to get all the details.