I was merely stating that I felt like the Zeiss lens would be better at 2.0, 2.8, 5.6… Or most any aperture simply because of the amazing glass that Zeiss uses. I am only commenting because I’ve used this lens for 10 years and have never found another macro (or any other lens) to be more sharp - I’ve used Canon, Nikkor, and Tamron macros in that time as well.

My best guess for the CA that went away… Maybe the lens wasn’t seated perfectly and wiggled it’s way into position after a few shots. This shouldn’t happen with machined parts designed to fit ‘perfectly’ but we all know there’s lemons from any manufacturer. Just a guess though.

Also, I am biased when it comes to Zeiss since I’ve had nothing but good luck with them so my opioion should probably be discarded as and outlier.
The only thing that matters in the end is that the images are what they were meant to be… sharp or soft or good bokeh or whatever!

These are great shots in my (biased) opinion!

Odd that it only goes to 1:2 though for such high quality glass. Do you think you’d crop further to achieve a false 1:1 or just deal with it?

I rented this lens for the sole purpose of fun and I’ve only give it a go of a couple of hours at this point. So I can’t make any final say of whether or not I would run right out and purchase it.

So after I give it more of a test run, I will come back with a more concise review.

Macro photography is one of my biggest interests and this lens is tailored specifically for that use. It is strictly manual focus so if you use autofocus a lot and want it for additional purposes, this lens is probably not for you. I rarely use autofocus for any of my photography and since I do a lot more macro work than most stock photographers, the idea of this lens is intriguing to me.

However, I disagree that this lens is more about the glass than the aperture. I think that the two qualities go hand in hand. All of my macro photography is generally done from f/5.6 to wide open. Those wide apertures are extremely important to me and many other macro photographers. There’s no point in having a fast lens if you’re not going to use it for that reason. I’ve used lenses where the images are hazy or have chromatic aberration at wide apertures, making the image completely useless to me. And I’ve seen it happen on supposed “high quality glass”. I agree that Zeiss and Leica are well-known for their high quality lenses, but I try to keep an open mind. You can only imagine how much my heart sank when I opened the first image and saw horrible CA (which I do plan to report on later). But basically what I’m trying to say is that you can’t have a good quality image at f/2.0 unless you have good quality glass to go along with it. The image is sharp as a tack, but that CA is definitely a downer. Every lens has its faults.

Great review!

All that said, the results are quite dreamy.