I have one on its way to me. Yahoo
That’s excellent news Guy :grin: I really do hope you enjoy it.
It’s a great little lens IMO that helps offset in your camera bag some of the larger faster lenses (just as you have mentioned previously with your CV15 III).
Very nice photos. So now that a few of you have had a chance to use this lens do any of you care to do a review of the strengths and weaknesses?
John, I won’t do a review but I will list some quick Pro’s and Con’s which I hope will be of help to you.
Pro’s
Small, compact and reasonably light with solid build quality.
Excellent IQ IMHO, with low CA and distortion, with nice star effects on highlights when stopping down.
Decent quality bokeh WO (It’s a 21mm f2.8 with a nice OoF rendering) and it works great also for doing close-ups...Razor sharp in the centre and on stopping down (I personally prefer to choose f/8 generally with my 21mm as opposed to f/5.6) the corners are bitingly sharp with no smearing as long as you choose the correct point for the hyperfocal distance.
Vignetting is about what you would expect for a compact 21mm....In camera jpgs are well corrected but the raws need a profile to get the best from it.
Flare is well controlled but watch out for it when not using a hood.
Buttery smooth focusing and click stops that actually click unlike some of my more recent Leica M lenses.
An engraved DoF scale is always welcome on WA lens like this...In fact it’s critical IMO
Lens hood is included free (unlike the Zeiss ZM range).
The lens hood can be reversed to keep the lens compact in your camera bag and it can also be fitted (rotated at 180 deg) so the overly bold writing “Loxia 2.8/21” is on the underside.
It has a nice snug fit on the A7R2 with the blue rubber weather proofing band acting as a good seal...I have been out in extreme rain and it seems to work very well!
Con’s
Price is high for many.
The petal lens hood is a bit of a pain in that it does not have a very good fitting IMHO...I have already had one experience of it being very slightly offset twisted where the petal hood showed up in my images in the corners (I’m sure Guy won’t bother with the Zeiss Hood).
Not enough not rotating meat on the lens to grab hold of when attaching or dismounting the lens to the camera (especially fiddly with gloves on in the cold)...Your default settings (Aperture ring and focus point) will get knocked out of place every time.
Some Pre-Testing is “DEFINITELY” advisable to find your hyperfocal point for keeping everything sharp near to far when doing stopped down landscape photography.
The focus throw between 2m and infinity is way, way too compressed and needs spreading out IMO, it rotates only about 5mm and this is where most people will probably be using this lens I expect.
I still haven’t tested properly for coma and also if my lens reaches infinity, as still too many cloudy nights to see any stars.
Bottom line is I really love this little gem of a lens, no real need IMO for AF on a FF 21mm lens, that’s if you are into doing landscape photography, It’s a definite keeper in by books