Zeiss 55mm f/1.4 Otus APO Distagon T* Lens
Yes! You have read the price correctly. It is indeed a breathtaking Rupees two lakhs seventy nine thousand nine hundred fifty only! That makes it one of the most expensive ‘normal’ lenses on the market today ( the others being made by Leica). Before we go into the review here is a brief introduction. This lens like other Zeiss lenses for D- SLRs are designed in Germany but are manufactured in Japan. Uniquely, each Zeiss lens is individually tested and is supplied with a signed inspection certificate. This particular model is available in Canon and Nikon mounts.
Design And Build Quality
Like all German lenses this lens has a name and is called APO Distagon ( APO stands for an apochromatic design). The lens also has an additional name “Otus”. Otus incidentally is the name of a sub- species of owls which have excellent night vision! The Zeiss 55mm f/ 1.4 Otus APO Distagon lens is built like a heavy main battle tank. It has all metal construction ( except for the rubber covered aperture and focusing rings) and looks beautiful in satin black. The lens flares out in the front ostensibly to accommodate large diameter front elements. The supplied metal lens hood too is very well made – strong with good flocking. This is a manual focus only lens but with electronic contacts. So, apart from focusing it manually ( and as you will see, carefully) it behaves like an AF lens with focus confirmation and compatibility with all exposure modes and meter patterns. The lens is unusually large and heavy for a normal lens. It is far closer in dimensions and weight to a 24- 70mm f/ 2.8 lens! The filter diameter is a huge 77mm.
Key Features
The Zeiss 55mm f/ 1.4 Otus is based on an unusually complex design ( for a normal lens) with no less than 12 elements in 10 groups. Of these, one element is aspheric and six elements are made of special anomalous partial dispersion glass. It also uses Zeiss’ famed T* multi- coating to reduce reflections. Zeiss says this lens has been designed and made to make the present generation high pixel count D- SLRs ( like Nikon D800/ e, D600 and Canon 5d MkIII) achieve medium format performance at a fraction of the cost. We did not have an opportunity to verify this claim but there is no doubt this lens belongs to a totally new class hitherto not available, even from Zeiss. Zeiss has specifically stated that this lens has been built with finest of ( optical and mechanical) materials and is for all practical purposes free of chromatic aberration. They also
claim that the lens resolves consistently with excellent contrast over the entire frame without any aberrations or distortion, even fully open. One Zeiss engineer told us that this lens is optimized to give outstanding performance at full aperture and if you need more depth of field ( DOF) you should use focus stacking! Zeiss simply claims it to be the best standard lens in the world. The aperture has 9 blades and has a very circular opening to aid the smoothness of bokeh. All numbers and markings are engraved ( not screen printed) in very legible bright yellow colour. However, both meters and feet on the distance scale are marked in the same colour and this may sometimes confuse the user.
Ergonomics
The lens supplied to us came with a Nikon mount and we tested it on a Nikon D600 body. The lens/ body combination was a bit front heavy. Adding a battery pack to the camera made the balance better. As it employs an internal focusing system the length of the lens does not change when you focus and so the balance does not shift either. The front element does not rotate thus making it easy to use graduated and polarizing filters. Both the focusing and aperture rings
www. smartphotography. in are rubber covered. There is no pattern on this rubber cover but is made of very soft material and hence prone to scratches. However, it provides a very good nonslippery grip. Manual focusing was a delight due to the very wide and easily graspable focus ring. The damping was excellent and movement of the focusing ring was silky smooth. You need to turn the focusing ring as much as 248 º to focus from closest focusing point to infinity. This large turn greatly helps in precise focusing which is essential for this lens. The aperture ring ( only for Nikon mount) engages at half stop intervals with very positive clicks and is marked from f/ 1.4 to f/ 16.
Performance
As you would expect this lens is an exceptional overall performer. There was no chromatic aberration visible. Nor could we observe any noticeable distortions. The contrast was excellent and the colours were very vibrant straight off the camera. All this was maintained throughout the frame. The most important aspect was that the lens was absolutely amazing when used fully open. It was sharp corner to corner even at f/ 1.4 with only very slight degradation on the corners. Vignetting was minimal. To get most of this lens you need to focus it very very carefully ( at f/ 1.4 DOF is wafer thin) in live- view with zoom in ( magnification). Using focus confirmation is just not accurate enough! There is simply no point in buying this lens and hoping to cover up sloppy focusing with DOF. A tripod is a must to get the best of this lens. The bokeh is buttery smooth and guaranteed to make even the most cluttered background creamy.
Value For Money
Now for the sticker shock! This
lens is priced at a whopping Rs. 2,79,950/- ( MRP). That is an extraordinarily high number for any normal D- SLR lens. We are not aware of any normal lens that costs even half of this. In fact most normal lenses of this speed and focal length are only about 12% as expensive as the Otus! So, is it worth it? This largely depends on what you are looking for. If you are planning to use it as a “normal” normal lens then this is just not worth the money. However, if you are a very contemplative photographer or a studio/ landscape shooter ( or someone else who just wants the highest quality money can give) then this may even be considered as an “economical” alternative to a medium format system. In any case, remember that a lot of care ( especially in focusing) is needed to extract the best out of the Otus.