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28, 55, 85. A pretty versatile core set for pretty much any purposes. And now fully filled out by the latest in the Otus series, the recently-announced 1.4/28 APO-Distagon. Advance warning: this is not a general purpose lens, nor is it the kind of thing you can deploy casually. That is merely the nature of steeply diminishing returns; there are no gains without significant incremental effort. And we’re really talking about pushing the last 1% here. If you’ve not felt anything lacking in your images, then I suggest you stop reading here and save yourself a lot of money, because chasing perfection isn’t cheap…



Sorry for the gratuitous p***, but it really deserves a place amongst the legends.

Disclaimer: I have been testing the 28 Otus for the last couple of months courtesy of the folks at Zeiss. The sample I have is not 100% final, and I’m told the units that ship will carry further performance improvements. I plan to update this review accordingly when I have access to those lenses. In the meantime, I’ll be uploading images (including 100% screen shots from various parts of the frame) to this flickr album as I shoot with it more. The full data sheet including block diagram and MTF is available here from Zeiss. Additionally, Lloyd Chambers also has an ongoing detailed technical analysis which comes to much the same conclusions as I do.



Extreme corner crop. Note highlight handling and complete lack of chromatic aberration. It’s also worth noting that whilst not all subjects have high frequency detail that shows off the resolving power of the lens, you still need a high degree of transparency to accurately render the small tonal transitions in a low contrast subject like mist or cloud and avoid it looking flat and ‘dead’.

Regular readers will know that I have reviewed the 1.4/55 and 1.4/85 Otii in the past, and have been impressed to the point they now serve as reference lenses for anything approaching that focal length, regardless of subject distance (!). They match or better my macro lenses when used with extension tubes. However, you’ll also know I never carry more than one of these things at a time: it’s just not practical in the field unless you are in a studio environment, are shooting somewhere with direct car access, or you can use a rolling bag.

I also make no secret of the fact that I’m a very big fan of the 28mm focal length – wide enough for context, long enough to still be plausibly natural in rendering. There have been a few lenses that satisfy for various reasons – but optical perfection has never been one of them. Zeiss’ own 2/28 Distagon has been a favourite because of the 3-D rendering caused by serious field curvature; however it suffers from noticeable violet fringing wide open and both longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberration on high resolution cameras. It is fine from f5.6 onwards, but that limits applications quite noticeably. The field curvature and violet fringing make it difficult to focus accurately, too. The Leica Q has a solidly-performing lens that’s great in the centre, but weaker in the corners til f5.6 or thereabouts and relies on fairly heavy software correction to moderate distortion; on top of that, there’s some focus shift. The Ricoh GR and GRII is good out to the corners, but tops out at f2.8 and is fixed to one camera body (with attendant limitations).

Whilst all of these lenses excel at a specific purpose, I find I’m often left wishing I’d also had one of the others in the bag when other opportunities arise. I haven’t mentioned other methods of getting to 28mm-e simply because none of them are particularly noteworthy – I’m sure there are probably some lenses I haven’t tested (like the 28/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH) which might fit the bill, but these aren’t exactly practical, either. Until this point, there hasn’t really been a truly reference-grade versatile 28mm offering that can really be used for anything.

Enter the 28 Otus. Because in reality, nothing is perfect, I’m going to start with the warts first: some are obvious, some are not.

At 1.35kg, a 16/13 design and a 95mm front filter, the spec sheet reads more like a 70-200/2.8. (In practice, it takes up about as much space in the bag, too.) That is a lot of glass, which aside from weight means potential QC and alignment issues – especially for corner performance at large apertures. My sample is remarkably symmetric (as is the other sample I am aware of in the wild), so perhaps this is not likely to be an issue in practice – the level of QC achieved with the other Otii has been remarkable thus far.

This is not a lens you carry trivially: you need to know you a) need 28mm, and b) need the performance envelope that other lenses cannot deliver. It is not a lens that is quick to shoot, because precision in focusing is required (more on this later). It is not a lens that is easy to carry, nor does it balance well on small bodies – the D810 really benefits from having the vertical grip attached, taking the full weight of your rig into the 3kg range, and that’s before you add an LCD magnifier for precise focus, too. It does not balance well on mirrorless bodies – don’t even think about using this on the A7RII without the vertical grip, because your fourth and fifth fingers will cramp very quickly as they try to counteract the torque from the lens on the small grip. And thanks to the adaptor, all of the weight is very far forward. But at least you’ll get stabilisation and a true DOF representation.

Focusing on the fly is not easy. It’s not as bad as I expected it to be with a wide angle lens (read: shallow DOF transition between in and out of focus) and the D810’s optical finder (albeit modified with split screen and realigned mirror) – but it’s not easy, either. And you still need to do a bit of focus bracketing to get it right. Naturally, live view with an LCD magnifier is much easier, but slower since you have to go to 100% at your point of focus to ensure critical sharpness. It’s not quite so simple, however. The 28 Otus has a relatively flat plane of focus with some curvature towards the edges; it’s flat enough that center-focus-and-recompose will not work, and fast enough at f1.4 that you will not have enough depth of field to cover the effective shift in subject distance, either. This means you must focus at the subject’s final position in your composition. On top of that, the nature of the field curvature changes slightly as you stop down – ‘uncurling’ is perhaps the best description – and the plane of focus itself seems to have a larger sweet spot in the centre of the image than towards the edges. For work where you need critical sharpness from corner to corner across a range of distances, I’d focus at the near corners first and then tweak for the centre afterwards. If your scene topography isn’t concave towards you, then focus as normal.

If this seems like a lot of hassle, it’s only because misses are noticeable: that is the nature of high resolving and highly chromatically-corrected lenses. What you get in return, however, is quite spectacular: impressive resolving power in the centre of the frame even wide open; equally impressive resolving power in the corners once you get above approximately 5m subject distance, and performance peaking around f4-5.6 across the field. By f8 you are assured of sufficient depth of field for a wide range of subject distances and effectively flawless performance; the corners are especially impressive. Subjectively, you’re already getting 85-90% of the maximum performance at f1.4. The lens reaches a full 10/10 across the entire frame even on the 42MP A7RII by f5.6. Note that whilst the centre remains strong to minimum focusing distance of 0.3m, the extreme corners are good by ~2m don’t really come on song til >5m as noted before.



Close range, f2, center crop

Resolving power of course isn’t everything – there are other optical characteristics that define the performance of a lens, some much more difficult to define but yet highly visible. Vignetting is of course present given the lens’ speed; this is a mechanical limitation on the size of the front element. There is around 1.5 stops in the corners and this is of course easily corrected. I notice some trace secondary longitudinal chromatic aberration on very high contrast edges, though much less than with any other wide lens I’ve seen. Lateral chromatic aberration is almost entirely absent. Distortion is also impressively low – a little over 1% – given the speed of the lens, and follows a simple curvature that is easy to compensate for in post.



Center crop, f1.4

Whilst I find the 28 Otus does not quite have the same ability to ‘slice a subject into planes’ as its longer 55 and 85mm siblings, I attribute that more to the nature of the focal length than the optics. Again like it siblings, it does have the nature towards somewhat nervous bokeh if you have a high frequency subject that’s very close to the focal plane – this is a consequence of the aspherical elements and an unavoidable tradeoff when attempting to maximise both speed and performance. If there’s one weak point in the 28 Otus’ performance, it’s with wide apertures, strongly backlit subjects and not much subject-to-background separation – this can exacerbate both visible fringing and nervous bokeh. In all fairness though, I cannot think of any wide lens that excels under these circumstances.

All of the Otus series lenses employ an elaborate layering of coatings and baffles to minimise reflections, maximise transmission – and thus both micro- and macro- contrast – and there is no question that Zeiss have been successful here. The 28 has the same ‘bite’ as its 55 and 85 siblings, and there is a very strong family rendering. It’s difficult to describe exactly, but I’d classify it as highly transparent, tending to slightly cool, with good saturation and a clean/sharp rendition rather than a smooth one. If this fits your style – it does for mine – you’ll probably never need to buy another lens in this focal length again. Assuming your bank and back can take it, of course.

Construction quality is first class, as with the other Otii; all mechanical movements are internal to the lens, which does not change external dimension when focused (nor does the front element rotate). There is no environmental sealing, but I’ve used all three of them under unpleasant conditions and not found any issues to date. Looking at a half-cut lens, there’s so much baffling and sun complex helicoid arrangements that I suspect water is going to have a tough time penetrating anyway. It’s also interesting to note that in places (specifically, towards the front of the barrel as it flares outwards to accommodate that 95mm filter – necessary to avoid vignetting) is some air space between the helicoid and the external wall; I suppose this will help for both impact protection and thermal expansion (!). Don’t laugh, if you shoot with one of these things in tropical sun for a few hours, expect it to get very warm indeed. Lastly, the focusing ring’s smoothness is revealed: the part rides on several teflon roller bearings, similar to the Master Prime line of lenses. That aforementioned focusing ring can be a little too featureless/smooth at times – I found adding a small indexing tab to it helped enormously in being able to instantly gauge the focused distance, as well as for something to grab. It’s also worth noting that the 28 – again, similar to the 55 and 85 – exhibits very little focus breathing; something which videographers will undoubtedly appreciate.



Extreme corner crop – it’s sufficiently well corrected to cause moire in the extreme corners of a relatively low contrast subject. Hats off.

Given the non-final state of engineering, I believe it is perhaps a little premature to form a decisive conclusion – however, it is clear that already the 28 Otus has no competitors – and at the expected price and size, it’d better not. The bit that troubles me is deployment: this is a lens that takes up two ‘normal’ slots in a bag (the 85 can still be shoved into one) and cannot be casually deployed with the expectation of reaching maximum potential. This is a deliberate lens, and I think the images I’ve shown here reflect that. That means attendant tripod, possibly LCD magnifier and DSLR body, further elevating weight. You can of course use it on an A7RII, the lens really needs a tripod mount (even for a D810) and the weight of the whole combination is putting a risky amount of torque on the camera body’s mount. I suppose this is also true of all of the other Otii: though the theoretical envelope of the lenses is about as wide as it gets – any aperture, pretty much any distance. Do we have a new reference king? No question. But like a formula one car, making the most of is going to require a little planning and skill. MT

Most of these images were shot during the Chicago Masterclass last month – I have one final place available for the Tokyo Masterclass in three weeks; booking and information here. Images in this review were processed using Photoshop Workflow II.

The Zeiss Otus 1.4/28 can be pre-ordered here from B&H.

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Ultraprints from this series are available on request here

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