85-90mm is my most used focal length, so I'm glad to see the Batis lens. I may even buy one. But I have reservations, too. I think it'll be perfect for portraiture, or for anybody who shoots wide open. But I use this focal length mostly for urban landscape, and the Batis' pincushion distortion looks pretty bad.
As Lloyd Chambers says, it seems like that's a trade-off Zeiss intentionally made to keep the lens small and sharp in the corners while building in auto-focus and stabilization. Similar to what Sony seems to have done with the 28/2. But 85mm lenses don't normally have a big issue with distortion.
Correction in post-processing? Hmm, okay, up to a point. Wave of the future and all that. But distortion correction will have some impact on both sharpness and precise cropping. It's hard to know how much impact. For me, it's one thing to depend on a major post-processing solution when using a journeyman $450 wide angle lens like the 28mm. Another whole thing with an $1100 Zeiss 85mm.
Meanwhile, the Sony 90mm G macro is about to come out. It's larger, heavier, and slower. But it's starting to get good reviews. It looks to be very sharp, even stopped down to f11. (Which is common for me.) Very flat field, minimal distortion. All good things for cityscapes.
I really would prefer to go lighter and smaller. Unfortunately, I'm kinda thinking that the 90 macro might be the better lens for my application.
I guess I have to wait for test reports, and for the opportunity to handle the lenses myself.
--d