It looks like Carl Zeiss AG have discontinued two items, one of them which probably won’t be missed much, the other which will.

The items in question are the Zeiss Ikon SW camera, a rangefinderless version of the Zeiss Ikon M-mount rangefinder, to be used with wide-angle lenses that would require and external viewfinder and need no rangefinder focusing due to their large depth-of-field. photoscala recently reported that the camera was no longer available in Germany, but now it seems it’s also no longer available in the US. It may still be sold in Japan, though. The reason I believe this camera won’t be missed is that you can still get the regular Zeiss Ikon ZM rangefinder camera, which doesn’t cost that much more, and which is equally suited to be used with wide-angle lenses, but also has a parallax-corrected brightline rangefinder viewfinder built in.

Zeiss Ikon SW with Distagon 4/18 ZM. Picture courtesy of Carl Zeiss AG

The other discontinued item is the Sonnar 2/85 ZM, Zeiss’ Leica-mount fast-tele/portrait lens, which has a very good reputation among rangefinder shooters and will probably be dearly missed. Its disappearence was noticed as early as last month, when it suddenly was no longer listed on the official Zeiss website. There has been no official announcement from Zeiss so far, but rumor has it that the lens is actually no longer produced. The 2/85 was one of the two lenses manufactured by Carl Zeiss AG in Germany, the other being the 2.8/15 Distagon. It is possible that due to the high retail price and manufacturing costs for this lens, it was no longer profitable for Zeiss.

Zeiss Sonnar T* 2/85 ZM. Picture courtesy of Carl Zeiss AG