I’m sure it will be expensive. Zeiss are a premium brand with limited manufacturing capabilities. Unless it is being made by Sony on their behalf then they will struggle to make the kind of quantities that keep unit prices reasonable.
Zeiss is not a premium brand when it comes to cameras. The most expensive version of the Zeiss Ikon, actually made by Cocina and produced for all of four or five years before being killed off in 2012, sold for much less than a Leica M7. The Contax, actually made by Kyocera until the brand was killed off in 2005, had the nickname "the poor man's Leica". It was popular with photography students because it was a good camera that was much cheaper than a Leica.
Personally, I have never heard "modern" Zeiss cameras mentioned in the same breath as Hasselblad and Leica.
If this Zeiss is made by Sony, there is not a chance that it will be built to Leica standards. That just isn't what Sony does.
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Whats the lowest you think the price could possible be?
I have no idea what the price will be. The main attractions are that the lens is potentially very good, the camera boasts a 37.5MP sensor and it offers 4K video. Zeiss is stressing that it designed the sensor itself, which, given other businesses it's in, I believe it has the ability to do, the implicit point being that it isn't from Sony's parts bin.
The one thing that I'm confident of is that if Zeiss wants to command Leica prices for this camera, it is going to be a major break with Zeiss's history, such as it is, as a camera manufacturer, and a hard sell for the reasons mentioned earlier in this thread. I don't see how Zeiss can expect to compete with Leica unless it can demonstrate the same kind of commitment. It isn't clear to me how it is going to do that with its first foray into camera production in a long time, let alone digital camera production, which it has never even attempted.
I'm pretty sure that anyone who is aware of the history of Contax and of the more recent Zeiss Ikon is going to be wary of purchasing this camera unless it is attractively priced, and will have doubts even then. When the Zeiss Ikon was finally released, after many delays, in about 2008, Zeiss and Cocina made lots of noises about long-term commitment. They pulled the plug on the camera, not to mention the owners, four years later. That was the last time that a camera body had Zeiss's name on it.
If this camera comes with a US$4500 price tag, which would make it far and away the most expensive camera Zeiss has put its name to, I'll be watching with interest, but I won't be buying.
