Introduction

We were lucky to get Batis 135/2.8 for testing, prior to its official release. This comes at the cost however, since we had lens for less than 5 days, and we usually need three weeks for the full comparative review.

Batis 135/2.8 is one of the most anticipated lenses in the first half of 2017 however and thus there were no excuses, for not at least trying to put this review together.

I was lucky to get help from two friends, both very talented professional photographers – Petr Machan and Pavel Sinagl.

We made most of the images together and without their friendly help, I won’t be able to publish this article on time.

I also spent one great afternoon photo session with another friend photographer – Jan Tichy who reviewed Batis 135 too and has some great sample images on his review page – http://jantichyphotography.com/pages/clanek-carl-zeiss-t-batis-apo-sonnar-135mm-f28-neskutecna-skutecnost/

As I wrote above, Batis 135/2.8 was highly anticipated lens among Sony E mount photographers. It is so far, one of the very few tele-prime lenses, in fact the longest one with the full AF support of Sony E mount cameras. Going through few related forums, I have seen couple of questioning comments regarding maximum speed of f/2.8. In my humble opinion, for the focal length of 135mm f/2.8 is a great compromise between shallow depth of field and compact size. I won’t question speed at all, because with the recent generation of image sensors, High ISO performance pushed the limits significantly and it will be hard to find situation where f/2.8 won’t suffice.

More important I believe is how the lens perform. Does it have that unique combination of contrast, colors, sharpness and bokeh that creates its own look, sort of unique signature?

Let’s see what Batis 135/2.8 has to offer.

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