{"id":5342,"date":"2015-07-29T20:46:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T01:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=5342"},"modified":"2015-07-29T20:52:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T01:52:15","slug":"review-zeiss-loxia-35mm-f2-biogon-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/review-zeiss-loxia-35mm-f2-biogon-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 Biogon T*"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zeiss has an interesting strategy when it comes to the Sony FE mount. There are three lines of Zeiss lenses. \u00a0The first, is a joint venture with Sony to co-design native lenses such as the FE 16-35mm f\/4 and FE 55mm f\/1.8. \u00a0Then there’s Zeiss’ autofocus Batis line, and finally the small manual focus Loxia line. \u00a0As of this writing the Loxia lineup consists only of two lenses: A 50mm f\/2 Planar and the lens reviewed today: the 35mm f\/2 Biogon. \u00a0Both lenses are native E-Mount lenses, and both are digitally optimized designs that were slightly modified from the existing ZM line of rangefinder lenses to give better performance on the A7 series of cameras. \u00a0The Loxia 35mm is a small lens with a big price tag. \u00a0The $1,299 retail price for an all-manual lens in this day and age raises some eyebrows, but let’s see if the cost is worth it, or whether your money is best spent elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 Biogon T* on the A7 II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with my reviews, I review from a real world shooting perspective. You won\u2019t find lens charts or resolution numbers here. There are plenty of other sites that cover those. I review products on how they act for me as a photographic tool.<\/em><\/p>\n

Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n

The Loxia 35mm f\/2 Biogon is an all-manual lens, and as such, the lens is rather compact without the need for an electronically controlled diaphragm or autofocus motor. \u00a0The lens is constructed of solid metal and glass, and feels incredibly solid and dense. \u00a0it’s notably heavier than it looks, and oozes quality in material workmanship. \u00a0There are no wobbles or flex points at all, and the aperture and focus rings are precisely machined. \u00a0Overall, the size and handling are a perfect fit for the A7 series bodies. \u00a0You get a larger aperture than the FE 35mm f\/2.8 in a lens that’s only marginally larger in size (though it is a fair bit heavier). \u00a0The lens has some weather sealing, with a bright blue gasket surrounding the lens mount to help prevent intrusion of moisture, but as I understand it, no other sealing is present.<\/p>\n

The broad manual focus ring is finely ribbed and beautifully damped. \u00a0The focus helicoid is one of the smoothest and most perfectly damped of any lens I’ve used, and I’ve used over a hundred manual focus lenses from bygone eras. \u00a0My favorite focus feel was found on a relatively cheap Pentax SMC Takumar 50mm f\/1.4. \u00a0I used to simply flip that focus back and forth just for the feel of it, and the Loxia is very much the same.<\/p>\n

The aperture ring is a bit small and blends into the barrel a bit, and I sometimes found it a bit finicky to adjust after focusing the lens. \u00a0However, the actual ring action is also lovely: firm, but not too firm, with nice clicks at each 1\/3 stop increment. \u00a0For video use, the lens can be switched to clickless aperture, to allow for silent and continuous diaphragm adjustment, which is a great feature to have.<\/p>\n

The lens comes with an included metal lens hood that is small and provides good coverage. \u00a0That sounds nice, but in practice, I absolutely hated the hood design. \u00a0For some reason (likely aesthetics), Zeiss thought it would be a good idea to put the bayonet mount for the hood a bit inside the hood itself. \u00a0This makes the hood cover the front part of the lens slightly. \u00a0This wouldn’t be a big deal except that the front element (and thus the hood) extends during focusing.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The lens hood is compact and looks great, but can get in the way of the focus ring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Too often, I’d change focusing from close up to further away and suddenly the hood would be pressing into my fingers as the lens shortened, and the hood starts covering the end of the focus ring. \u00a0With such a small lens, the more room for my fingers on the barrel, the better, and having the focus ring effectively shorten itself due to the hood during focusing was annoying. \u00a0It also caused annoyance if I took the hood off for more than a few seconds, as the hood looks like a simple cylinder from the outside, and unless you look at the logos or the interior construction, it’s easy to accidentally put the hood in its reverse storage position when putting it on for shooting and vice versa. \u00a0It looks nice, but otherwise, I found it frustrating.<\/p>\n

Operation<\/h3>\n

Being a fully manual lens, there’s no autofocus capability to discuss, but I thought I’d discuss how things work in general operation here. \u00a0I use a lot of manual focus lenses on my A7 II (In fact, the FE 55mm f\/1.8 is the only native lens I own for the camera at this point). \u00a0I’m used to focusing, then stopping down the aperture to shoot, and the same things apply here.<\/p>\n

\"Beautifully<\/a>
Beautifully damped focus ring and nice clicky aperture ring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lens utilizes fully manual focus, and the electronic contacts on the lens are used solely for EXIF recording (and thus also passing focal length to the A7 II’s IBIS system) and telling the lens that the focus ring is being moved. \u00a0This allows the camera to auto-magnify the view for more precise focusing: a nice touch. This makes manual focusing on static subjects fairly easy. \u00a0However, focusing for moving subjects or candid shots of your kids is much more difficult, given the shallow depth of field at f\/2 and the lowered precision when focusing stopped down. \u00a0Which leads to my biggest gripe in operation:<\/p>\n

I’m unsure why Zeiss couldn’t have allowed for electronic aperture control here. \u00a0The mechanisms aren’t large, and it would make things a lot easier. \u00a0For a dedicated E-mount lens at this price point, it’s frustrating to be saddled with fully manual aperture control. One really needs to focus at wide apertures for the best precision, but then you need to stop, hold position, adjust the aperture to shooting aperture and take the shot. \u00a0Simply having the aperture remain wide open for focusing and electronically stop down to the set f-stop when shooting would make the lens much nicer to use in the field. \u00a0Again, I’m used to this behavior from my adapted manual focus lenses, but it stands out a bit more on a native E-mount lens that has electronic communication with the camera.<\/p>\n

Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Image Quality<\/h3>\n

Of course, the reason you would spend $1,300 for a manual focus lens boils down to a handful of things: smaller size than an AF lens, improved manual focus feel, and, of course, image quality. \u00a0I have very mixed feelings overall on the Loxia 35mm with regards to image quality, so you’ll notice a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde reaction here. \u00a0Let’s dive in.<\/p>\n

Sharpness<\/h4>\n

The Loxia 35mm f\/2 is generally a very sharp lens. \u00a0At f\/2, the lens produces images with good (though not great) central image sharpness and decent borders. \u00a0The edges and corners do have some smearing of detail and a general hazy look to them, but it’s not bad at all. \u00a0Stopping down brings the edge quality up quickly, but the corners take to around f\/4-f\/5.6 to sharpen up. \u00a0At these smaller apertures, the Loxia 35mm is capable of very high levels of detail across the image frame.<\/p>\n

\"Green<\/a>
Green Wall – Sony A7 II with Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 @ f\/8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I do have to say, that given the price of the lens, however, I expected more. \u00a0For $1,300, I expected very sharp images right from f\/2, and you don’t get that with this lens. \u00a0In fact, after shooting with the lens for a while, it reminded me a LOT of my Canon FD 35mm f\/2 in terms of sharpness. \u00a0I even did a tripod mounted comparison which confirmed my findings: \u00a0The Loxia and Canon FD were similar at wide apertures, with the Loxia holding a very slight lead at the edges, especially at closer focusing distances. \u00a0However, the FD is actually sharper on the edges and corners when stopped down to smaller apertures. \u00a0A bit disappointing that a lens $1,000 cheaper and 30 years old more or less matches the Loxia in this department.<\/p>\n

Bokeh<\/h4>\n

The Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 has a very split personality when it comes to bokeh. \u00a0Like all fast lenses, focusing close up at wide apertures will yield smooth backgrounds simply due to the amount of blurring that occurs. \u00a0However, focus a bit further out and the true nature of the lens starts to be revealed.<\/p>\n

At f\/2 and other wide apertures, the bokeh on the Loxia 35mm is frankly terrible. \u00a0It’s got severe bright ring outlining, can produce nervous double line behavior that is very unappealing and can easily display longitudinal CA on specular highlights. \u00a0Towards the edges of the frame at f\/2, specular highlights take on a rather ugly gumdrop shape with a bright outline on the curved portion that fades on the straighter edge. \u00a0In some cases, this look adds a bit of character. \u00a0In other situations, it can be downright offensively ugly, as seen in the shot below.<\/p>\n

\"Yellow<\/a>
Yellow – Sony A7 II with Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 @ f\/2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thankfully, stopping the lens down starts to soften out these issues, and the 10-bladed aperture maintains a circular aperture shape all the way to f\/22. \u00a0By f\/4, the bokeh is actually quite pleasing, and if you’re focusing closer up and stopping down to get more of the subject in focus, it can yield very smooth and beautiful backgrounds with round and evenly illuminated specular highlights, as seen in this photo, taken at around 0.4m and f\/8.<\/p>\n

\"Hyacinth<\/a>
Hyacinth at Sunrise – Sony A7 II with Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 @ f\/8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Again, the bokeh follows a similar pattern to that of the Canon FD 35mm f\/2, which is also harsher at f\/2 than it is at f\/4 and beyond, though that lens is a bit more nervous wide open, but lacks the gumdrop shape of specular highlights.<\/p>\n

Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n

Zeiss continues its tradition of creating lenses that have excellent color and contrast with the Loxia 35mm. \u00a0Wide open, contrast is good, but quickly ticks up as you stop down a bit. \u00a0Color saturation remains high throughout the aperture range, with a tendency to render tones a bit on the warm side. \u00a0This looks great for portraits, though you may want to cool the white balance a bit for a more accurate green rendering. \u00a0Overall, the color and contrast are what the make the lens and give it that Zeiss look to the images. You will want to watch out near minimum focus distance, however, as some spherical aberration can cause some gauzy blooming and reduction in contrast when focused at wide apertures up close.<\/p>\n

The Loxia displays some minor lateral chromatic aberrations as well as some visible longitudinal CA that shows up as a magenta or green fringe in front of and behind the focus point. Overall, these aberrations are fairly well controlled and don’t have a major effect on overall image quality.<\/p>\n

\"Sunrise<\/a>
Sunrise – Sony A7 II with Zeiss Loxia 35mm f\/2 @ f\/11<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h4>\n

The Loxia 35mm controls distortion very well. \u00a0For all intents and purposes, you can consider it negligible in the field. \u00a0This makes it a good choice for shooting moderate wide-angle shots of architecture or other subjects with straight lines.<\/p>\n

Vignetting is also relatively well controlled, though it’s still present. \u00a0Wide open, there’s some visible shading at the edges of the frame that improve upon stopping down, though it doesn’t completely disappear, even by f\/5.6. \u00a0As I often add slight additional darkening at the edges of my images, this doesn’t bother me at all.<\/p>\n

The Loxia does OK against flare. \u00a0the lens is able to resist most major ghosting artifacts, except in cases where a bright light source is in the very corner of the frame, but even then it’s predominantly white. \u00a0The biggest impact is a green smear that goes away from the light source. \u00a0With the sun, it tends to show up as a general green tint. \u00a0Smaller lights will produce more pronounced green blobs outside of the light source, so watch it when shooting at night.<\/p>\n

Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

Pros<\/h4>\n