Zeiss truly has the tightest grip over our wallets.

The Zeiss lens gears are gears that can be hand-tightened to fit onto the barrel of different sized lenses so that focus pulling systems can have control over the focusing ring. They are a fantastic tool for improving focus racking especially for the Zeiss Milvus and Otus lenses. These premium stills lenses have a 3D rendering ideal for cinematic video, which is why many filmmakers have been using them over cinema glass. However, this was not their original design. The inconsistent sizes, filter threads, lengths, focus throws and lack of focus gears make them difficult to swap back and forth in a camera rig for a production. The Zeiss lens gear intends to solve this problem.

Features

I will be reviewing the medium and large versions of the Zeiss lens gears for the Milvus 15mm and 35mm and Otus 28mm and 55mm, though you could definitely use them for any stills glass as long as they are the correct size. The medium is designed for my 15mm, 35mm and 55mm modern Zeiss optics. The gears are fantastic because they require no screws, simply place the gear over the lens and twist. Twisting extends the inner circumference within the gear to tighten the space. It’s simple and you can tighten with as much pressure as you’d like in case you want to control the amount of grip to protect your lenses. With other cheaper rubber versions, they definitely work but are cumbersome to take off due to a specifically tight fit and may leave marks on the rubber focus like you can see from one of my Milvus lenses.

If you have it on all the time this may not bother you, but these lenses really can double up as stills lenses and sometimes you would prefer to focus by hand without the gear. This might be especially true for the wider lenses as you may want to go handheld due to their focal length and focus throw. The focus throws on the 15mm, 28mm, 35mm and 55mm as are follows: 90, 120, 225, 250 degrees. The Zeiss focus gears are very easy to take off, though you may need to take the lens off the camera mount first in order to take off the lens gear. With each gear comes a gum gum, which is essentially a pre-cut rubber strip that you can stick to the inside of the focus gear to extend it’s tightness and also protect the wonderful rubber focus ring of your Zeiss rubber focus ring. This is the primary reason you want to buy this lens gear, as the supple rubber on the Otus and Milvus are such a pleasure to manipulate and it’d be a shame to ruin them as they can definitely scratch and warp. You’ve spent so much money on the lenses, it makes sense to pay a premium to protect them, right?

Cons

Aside from the price, the biggest criticism I have with these lens gears is that the medium doesn’t fit on the Otus 55mm despite what the website states! Well, it does fit without the gum gum, but it’d be a super tight fit with the gum gum on. Since I only want to buy one focus gear for my 3 medium sized lenses, I won’t be using the gum gum because of the Otus 55mm. It’s pretty frustrating, but the lens gear is designed so smoothly you won’t see significant marks on the rubber focus ring when you take it off. Then you have the absurd price tag of over $200 USD for one focus gear! That’s more expensive than some lenses! You never expect cheapness from Zeiss, but this is quite ridiculous especially when the problem I mentioned above exists.

Zeiss Otus 55mm f1.4 EF with medium lens gear & gum gum

Final thoughts

As for recommendations, I would say the rubber focus rings do do the trick, but will likely warp or leave indents on your precious Zeiss optics, affecting resale and aesthetics. If that doesn’t mean anything to you then get a cheap $30 rubber focus ring. But unfortunately it likely does and since you were able to afford such expensive optics to begin with, you likely have enough for this premium focus ring. It will be a painful purchase, but it is indeed one of the more luxury accessories you probably should get to protect your Zeiss investment.