ZEISS Batis 2/25 for mirrorless, full-frame system cameras from Sony (with E-mount) 000000-2103-750

What can you say, it’s another cracking Batis lens!When I moved from my APSC Sony a77ii I decided I was only going to buy the very best glass available to make the most of my Sony a7ii, So far I have the Batis 85mm 1.8, Sony 70-200 f4 and now this Batis 25 f2 and my god I love these lenses.To make this easy I will break it down rather than tell some long story.BUILD9.5/10There is mixed things about the batis lenses online, however as far as I am concerned they are fantastically designed and built. Yes the lens cap is not th best ever and the hood is plastic, but lets be honest plastic is the best materials for cameras. it doesn’t feel cheap, it feels solid and well weighted, all the batis lenses are well balanced on the a7 cameras, I find the 35 2.8 sony lens way to small and hard to use, although i do always have a grip only cameras. Overall I love the lens/s and can’t fault them… except that bloody rubber grip, it gets so dirty and offends my OCDs. wish it was a metal with a little texture.OLED SCREEN9/10I am glad they went for OLED with this as it does help disability, however its usefulness is down to the user… I think it makes much more sense on a landscape lens like this than my basis 85mm… But overall its a great addition.OPTICAL QUALITY9.5/10Being an f2 and a close focusing distance this is a really versatile lens. Great for low light, close up food photography and full body portraits if needed! the booked is buttery and very nice, not quite as smooth as the 85mm but that is too be expected. Overall this lens is razor sharp, from f2 down to f11 and starts to tail off at f16. Sweet spot I have found is f4 and f11 depending on your need. There is pretty much nothing I would change in this respect and it has that beautiful Zeiss pop that you just can’t explain.ABERRATIONS AND FALLOFF9.5For a wide angle with a f2 apperture aberrations are present in extreme situations, but in general are very very well controlled and are as far as I am concerned a non issue. Light falloff is minimal and virtually gone at f5.6. Distorition is very slight and easily corrected.OVERALL 9.5I have attached a few samples and please of ask if you have any questions

Excellent all purpose lens. Extremely sharp, close focusing, great contrast and colours.

The sharpness, the feel of it, everything is divine. Well done Zeiss.. But, I did not check, the focal distance, which should appear on the lease, does not appear! Do I do anything wrong?

The image quality of this lens is amazing along with the build quality and just the aesthetics of the lens as well

In my opinion this is the worst Zeiss lineup in terms of design, it feels and looks a bit cheap, the little display is stupid, the focus ring is also useless, but it’s a great lens otherwise.

I used this to film a performance in dark arena recently and was blown away. This coupled with the A7Sii in 4K full frame mode makes the lens roughly 16mm and in APS-C mode a 25mm. As for quality, this...alongside the Sigma 30mm 1.4 are the 2 sharpest lenses in my bag. And the autofocus for video is snappy and quiet.

Very good lense

ErgonomicsThe first thing you look at with this lens is the size. It's quite big for a 40mm lens. Having said that it's also quite light at a smidge over 360g. I do feel that it sits in the hand very easily when clamped to my Sony a7r mk3 or the mk4. It has a smooth surface and that unusual modern design that is a signature of the Batis line-up.Focus ringThe focus ring is also discrete and consists of a grippy but sleek rubber ring that sits flush with the lenses barrel. This makes it more difficult to locate at first and does take some getting used to. Most focus rings traditionally have a raised aspect to their design, making location by touch that much easier.Focus by wireWhen it comes to the manual focusing (by wire) I find this to be very well implemented on the Sony. The focus assist magnifier kicks in promptly on slightly moving the ring and the damping and smooth manual focusing is a delight. It's nearly as good as a true manual focus lens like the Loxia range.There is one design aspect that might not be desirable for some (especially videographers), which is the non-linier manual focusing. The focusing speed is dependent on the speed you move the focus ring; move it fast and the focus changes rapidly, move it slowly and the focus reacts with more precision. I like this way of focusing. When I'm manually focusing on some detail I feel that the precision is greatly increased when I'm naturally moving the ring gradually. If I want to focus rapidly on a distant subject I don’t have to rack the focus ring multiple times to achieve that; I just move it quickly and I'm at infinity! (Kind of like a warp drive).Auto focusThere's no AF / MF switch on the lens itself (as is with the rest of the Batis range), so you'll need to set the focus mode in camera or set up a button for this task. I do prefer buttons on lenses for such basic tasks but I can equally get used to setting up a button for this (my other Sony & Sigma lenses have proper switches so that's what I used to).The auto focus works really well. It's rapid and accurate. I've tested the lens on a couple of commercial commissions so far and it's spot on with focusing on the selected focus point. I've yet to try the eye focus (which was addressed in the latest firmware update).Latest firmwareI installed the latest firmware straight (v0.2) away which addresses some issues with the eye focus and the way the lens automatically stops down when focusing close.I can't comment on the eye focusing as I haven't used that yet but I did find the behaviour with the aperture closing down to be good. I have several macro lenses for the work I do and, apart from a couple of manual Zeiss macros, which are f2, they all have a maximum aperture of f2.8. So to automatically close down the Batis to f2.8 is perfectly normal.The only thing that I wish Zeiss would do is relay the actual aperture to the camera & metadata. I often work in the range where the Batis will be stopping down to some extent from f2 and I'd like to see that reflected in camera so that I can make the appropriate adjustments to my flash output. I used to work with a Nikon d810 which, although didn't physically stop down, did relay the apparent aperture when close focusing (a normal physical loss of light due to lens extension).When I see the metadata in Lightroom is set to f2 and the image is a close up I really don't know what the real aperture is (it starts to stop down from 0.65m in increments until the closest focus where it sets f2.8 - unless you've already set f2.8 or greater).I had an email conversation with Zeiss about this and they have no desire to implement relaying the true aperture to the camera / metadata.UsabilityThe dreaded blue dot!Unfortunately, Zeiss use a tiny dark blue dot to indicate the lens alignment position for mounting onto the camera. I'm not sure where this rationale came from but it's not helpful when trying to visually locate it. I've stuck on a bright sticker to highlight the position instead (not as pretty, sorry Zeiss, but more practical).ConclusionThe ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF is a welcome addition to the Batis family. My preferred focal length of 50mm made me hesitant to going wider but, having worked with both studio and portraits so far I have been happy that the virtually distortion-free focal length offers a very good focal length for me.The cost (in the region of £1000) is certainly a consideration when compared with other similar focal length offerings. I have bought the Sigma 45mm Contemporary and really like it, both in terms of its retro styling, excellent image quality and much cheaper price tag. However, its f2.8 to start with and needs to be closed down 1/2 - 1 stop for close focusing to overcome its spherical aberration (a design consideration which helps with a nicer bokeh. Still, the Zeiss with its close (1:3) focusing, excellent image sharpness, weatherproofing and that Zeiss 'pop' makes the extra investment definitely worthwhile for me.