The focus ring isn't connected to anything; it's just an encoder which hopefully will be interpreted properly by your camera to drive the electronic focus motors. Wide aperture lenses tend to have an advantage in this regard and this lens is capable of producing good quality stars. In the real world, lens defects do not exist in isolation with spherical aberration and spherochromatism generally found, at least to some degree, along with axial CA. In the examples below, look at the fringing colors in the out of focus specular highlights created by the neutrally-colored subjects.

The FE 2.8/35 shows some barrel distortion. Lightroom has a profile which corrects the distortion very well. Sony a7II | Zeiss FE 2,8/35 | f/8 | LR default settings | full resolution Chromatic Aberrations If you’re unsure of how big the differences between 35mm, 40mm focal length are, here is the angle of view that the Sony FE 35mm f2.8 ZA covers on a full-frame body compared to the Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF: The lens focuses in around 0.5 sec on a Sony A7R II from infinity to 0.43m (1:10 magnification), which is fast. The Sony FE 35mm f1.4 ZA lens is equally fast while the Zeiss Batis is even faster at 0.35 sec. The focus ring is 16mm wide. It moves very smoothly and can easily be operated with one finger just like other mirrorless lenses with focus by wire operation. This is a very useful lens and it is certainly going to be worth that price to many but ... the FE 35mm f/1.8 having the same street price and lower list price is sure to give buyers pause. I saw no ghosting at all but in critical situations you will se some veiling flare. Sony a7II | Zeiss FE 2,8/35 | f/2.8 | developed with default settings in LRAbove: Moving sideways for a closer look at the rendering shows a reasonable degree of subject separation and while the effect can be attractive, there are fairly defined edges to some of the blurred elements. We already discussed the focus ring and a prime lens with no switches or other exterior features leaves this discussion short. Landscape photography is one photographic discipline that has frequent scenarios requiring sharp corners. Sigma has the 35mm f1.4 Art for 750 EUR / 900 USD. It’s an optical design from 2012 for DSLRs which is also available in E-mount since 2018. See my Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art review where it came Highly Recommended when tested on a 36MP Nikon D800. As you’d expect for an f1.4 lens though, it’s fairly large and heavy. With a 7-blade count aperture, point light sources captured with a narrow aperture setting and showing a sunstar effect will have 14 points.

At f/2.8 vignetting is severe at close to 2.5 stops. At f/4 it is reduced only a little to about 2 stops and by f/8 it is still at 1.5 stops which is about the highest value I have ever seen at f/8. This lens and the Tamron 35mm f/2.8 Di III Lens being simultaneously reviewed are the first lenses I've used with this hood design and I'm finding reasons to like it. Sony FE 4/16-35 ZA OSS–At f/4 the FE 2.8/35 is a bit sharper across the frame. At f/8 I see a quite small advantage for the 16-35. The 16-35 is of course a very big and heavy zoom lens. One stop of shading is the amount often used as the visibility number, though subject details provide a widely-varying amount of vignetting discernibility.Above: Taking a closer look at the Sony portrait shows pin-sharp details on my eyeball as driven by the Alpha 1’s eye-detection, and across multiple portrait tests every single eye was equally sharp. One nice touch is that all the markings are engraved and filled with paint. Not just printed on the hull like with the FE 2/28. The Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF is only available for E-mount and costs around 1300 EUR/USD. The lens is relatively light and offers very good close-focus capabilities up to a magnification of 1:3.1. It delivers a field-of-view that’s 6 degrees narrower than from the Sony (57 vs 63 degrees, see comparison below) and has a one stop better light gathering power. See my Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF review where it earned a Highly Recommended. Vignetting is the nearest thing the 35mm has to a weak point. It reaches 1.8 stops in the corners wide open, although to be fair this is pretty typical for a compact F2.8 prime. However the vignetting never quite goes away on stopping down; even at F8 there's still 1.3 stops falloff. The good news is that the falloff profile is quite gradual, which makes vignetting less noticeable, and the camera can correct for it automatically too. To visualize where 35mm fits among other common focal lengths, I'll borrow a focal length range example from a zoom lens review.

There are almost no lateral color fringes, at least as shot on the A7R II. There may be a fraction of a pixel of blue-yellow, but you won't see it outside the lab. The Sony Zeiss 35 2.8 has no visible distortion as shot on the Sony A7R II, which is probably correcting it. It is more a filter adapter to use 40.5mm filters instead of 49mm; it offers very little light shielding.

Focal Length

Above: In terms of minimum focusing distances, Sony quotes 28cm with autofocus or 25 with manual, and here’s what I could achieve when manually focusing – reproducing a subject size of 14cm, and even with the aperture wide-open the details are pretty sharp right up to the edges. Manual focusing is electronic, as this lens is a focus-by-wire design. The large singular focus ring on the lens will therefore rotate indefinitely with no stops at minimum and infinity focus distances. Also a consequence of the focus-by-wire design, there are no focus distance markings or window on this lens. That this moderately wide angle of view invites a subject distance (perspective) that creates a natural perspective and makes the viewer feel present in the image is one reason. The effect of different colors of the spectrum being magnified differently is referred to as lateral (or transverse) CA (Chromatic Aberration). Weight: 132g (4.7 oz.). The Sony FE 35mm f1.4 ZA is 660g, the Zeiss Batis 394g, and the Samyang 108g (all specs including lens hood). [+]

Focus accuracy and repeatability is critical to consistently produce sharp shots especially with large aperture lenses. Repeatability (the accuracy of focus on the same subject after repeated focus-acquisition) of this lens is very good (measured 99.3% in Reikan FoCal) with no outliers over a series of 40 shots. And there is almost no focus variation whether the lens focuses from a closer distance or from infinity. With only one focal length to be designed for, prime lenses often show low amounts of lateral CA and while not absolutely perfect, this one is showing a low amount of color separation in the corners.In terms of autofocus for movies, the 40 2.5 is smooth, quiet and confident. In comparison the Sigma 45 2.8 also refocuses smoothly and quietly in movies, and now that it’s in AFC mode, the distracting hunting seen on the AFS test earlier has gone. So effectively a draw here.