By many considered to be the ugly duckling among the Loxia lenses, but I really like my Loxia 35.
It is small, decently fast, well built, has very low distortions and beautiful colors and sunstars.
It's a bit hazy (but not low resolution) wide open and the bokeh is often quite structured, that are its main drawbacks.
I've read about the field curvature on this lens vs some others. With a thick sensor stack of Sony, I believe a lot of wide angle (prime?) lenses may be optimized either for the corners or mid field at mod apertures and require stopping down to f8 for across the frame sharpness.
Fred had a much better write up on his Voigtlander 21/1.4 review I believe.
tuomkok wrote:
It is nice lens, and at best the results are spectacular. Especially I love the sunstars and overall rendering. But I have some problems with the focus plane. To get consistently sharp images I need to stop down more than with my other lenses. This one is shot at f/8 - I am sure f/11 would have given slightly better results.
I agree -- the Loxia 35 is overall my favorite 35mm lens for outdoor and architecture. It is a great storytelling lens, with overall low distortion, coupled with pleasant mild vignetting and wonderful color/contrast.
I would like to have a Sigma 35/1.2 Art (or maybe a fast CV 35), but I am always impressed with how the Loxia comes through for me. It's one of those magical lenses that seems to produce even better images than I had planned when pressing the shutter button! It responds extremely well to PP in LR.
A7RIV, Loxia 25mm. Shot some northern lights that failed to do much. They were visible, but stuck around the horizon and didn't move or get very bright. No selective editing, just a long exposure which made it a bit more visible than real life.
I must say that these Christmas conditions for lighting and color are really where the Loxia lenses shine! Not that other lenses can't perform competitively, but it is my experience that the Loxia glass and coatings (really, all the latest Zeiss lenses) help with such high contrast, colorful situations. It is always an eye-opener for me getting the files into PP and seeing the results come forth.
Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Fuji, and Sony are also vastly improved these days, but I like the overall "look" of the Loxia best.
We are blessed with a wealth of superb tools these days!
I'm a Fuji shooter now but I will always own Loxia glass. Just waiting for the a7C to either get "much" cheaper or an a7cII with better specs i.e. a7SIII EVF, dual slots and 42MP.
The Loxia 85 is my favorite lens of all time for Sony.
I wish Zeiss makes more but anytime they go more than a year without a new lens, chances are they have lost confidence in the line up, like Touit.
worldexclus1ve wrote:
I'm a Fuji shooter now but I will always own Loxia glass. Just waiting for the a7C to either get "much" cheaper or an a7cII with better specs i.e. a7SIII EVF, dual slots and 42MP.
The Loxia 85 is my favorite lens of all time for Sony.
I wish Zeiss makes more but anytime they go more than a year without a new lens, chances are they have lost confidence in the line up, like Touit.
It’s three years since the last Loxia lens, two years since the last Batis and seven years since the last Touit. I don’t like this trend.
