Photography with Sentiments: Zeiss Introduces the ZX1 Full-Frame Camera with Lightroom Baked-In to the Unit

Thursday, 27 September 2018

Zeiss Introduces the ZX1 Full-Frame Camera with Lightroom Baked-In to the Unit

German optical equipment manufacturer Zeiss premiered the company’s first-ever, new full-frame compact camera, the ZX1, with a unique feature that sets the device apart from its competition somewhat: A full version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC built into it, the ZX1 comes with a fixed 35mm f/2 lens and a 37.4-megapixel full-frame sensor with an ISO range of 80-51200 developed in-house by Zeiss themselves according to a report from PetaPixel.

Image via Zeiss.

The lens, a Zeiss Distagon 35mm f/2 T* autofocus lens, is all new as well and was developed in conjunction with the sensor for perfect complementarity containing 8 elements in five groups with a minimum focus distance of 11.8 inches or 30cm.

Of course, the feature that has everyone talking is the accompanying Adobe Lightroom product that gives photographers the ability to edit RAW right then and there in a style reminiscent or perhaps popularized by smartphone photography.

This is all accomplished through a 4.3-inch multi-touch display with a pixel density of 338ppi. It offers a really clear picture of what you have going on but might not be acceptable to people who really go deep in their editing but, still, Zeiss deserves points for trying new stuff.

The ZX1 rocks a 512 gigabytes hard drive that can store approximately 6,800 RAW images. It also has 4K video recording at 30fps with 3fps continuous shooting, as well as microphone and headphone inputs.

For those of us that would like to export our work to a desktop or laptop, the ZX1 also comes equipped with WiFi network connections, Bluetooth, and USB-C. The software will update itself through a similar mechanism.

This should relieve some people who are worried that the software will become outdated over time.

If you’d like to check out Zeiss’ presentation you can click on over to YouTube and watch it there.

The Zeiss ZX1 is slated for a street date sometime in early 2019 with the camera’s price and exact specs to be revealed as we get closer to the launch date.