Mr. Jones, You confuse me. One day you are waxing lyrics on theHollywood distagon and how they don't make it like in the good of' days and now you are batting for the "new pro standard". Which one of your pieces in your blog should I follow?
I only own one Sony autofocus Zeiss lens, the 55mm f/1.8. I've passed on any of the others, preferring to stick with my older glass with more "juice." I still own and use the 28mm Hollywood Distagon, which works on everything, including my Sony bodies.
The Batis lenses are both excellent from just a few mins of testing I got to do with them, and beautifully constructed. Build quality is at least as good as any lens Zeiss ever made in my opinion. But until the 25mm is sitting here to test side by side I can't say which is the better wide lens on Sony bodies, though I suspect the Batis will give the 28mm Hollywood a real battle, looking at image samples from both. Zeiss has promised a test sample as soon as a few more get into the country, so I will let you know on that one as soon as I know myself. The Hollywood though is manual focus only, where Batis is both manual and autofocus.
I can quite safely say that the 28mm f/2 will be the superior lens on my Olympus OM-D EM-5 II, Canon 5D III, and about anything else I want to put it on. It's the old apples and oranges argument thing Vivek, and yes, it is confusing. Batis is a SONY FE MOUNT ONLY LENS. Worthless on any other body, unless you care to try correcting that 3% distortion manually yourself and only if the flange focal distance would work, doubtful in both cases.
The 28mm Hollywood is in the same category as the newer OTUS lineup. Can be used with adapters on almost anything ever made. If you look around on my blog your also going to find that I own and use a Zeiss Distagon made by Rollei (40mm) which presently I would say is even better than the Hollywood wide open. But you think the OTUS is big and heavy, you should try the Rollei 40mm
So pick your poison, beautiful old tech with juice, though heavy, looks good and works on anything, or modern autofocus & tack sharp across the frame at half the weight and twice the size, but limited by software interconnection to Sony A series bodies only. Me, I never met a Zeiss lens I didn't love, so I see the two as complementary. You seem to see it as the anti-Christ, and you haven't even SEEN it yet.
But then neither has my wife. She'll just see it as yet another budget killer. And you know what? Of all of us, she is the most correct. :ROTFL: