Krispy's Photoblog: Some impressions of the Zeiss Touit 32/1.8

Morning in De Rijp 1
(Sony a6000, Zeiss Touit 1.8/32, f4, 1/750s, 32mm, ISO 100)
also on flickr

Just got my first serious lens for the a6000 the other day: the Zeiss Touit 32mm F1.8 (or 1.8/32 as Zeiss calls it). A fast prime? Well according to Lightroom Analytics, I shoot a majority of my better pictures around 35mm anyway. I got lucky and found a completely new copy on Markplaats (Dutch eBay) for the price of second hand one. That, for me anyway, fixes one of the biggest cons many reviewers agree upon (here, here and here): the price level.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn't resist taking it out the moment I had my greedy little hands on it. So I went to the picturesque town of De Rijp, not too far from where I reside. Here are some of my first impressions.

TL;DR The lens is well built and balanced, superb image quality, acceptable autofocus (hurry up with that firmware update Zeiss), slightly softer wide open, but razer sharp otherwise; shoot at f2.4+. Also: lovely unboxing experience ;-)

Built quality

I'm not going to do a review (there are loads out there done by people way better at it than me), but I will say that this lens has a better unboxing experience than the camera it is currently mounted on. The packaging really is that nice.

BOX! (premium version)

The lens itself feels really well build, the focus ring works really smooth like you would expect. The lens itself is a lot lighter than you would expect from a mostly metal lens, though it is still a good deal heavier than the kit 16-50mm lens I am used to.

The Touit mounted on the a6000

In practice, this means that the camera feels rather well balanced, but that might also have something to do with the extra L-bracket I have attached to my camera. All in all, the package felt really nice while walking around for a couple of hours, so no complaints there.

Speaking of walking around: I got double lucky the day I picked up the lens. Not only with the lens itself, but also with the weather that morning. It started foggy but cleared up really nice as you shall see in the pictures below.

Autofocus

On thing that did disappoint me a little was the autofocus speed. It is not as snappy as Sony's kit lenses (the 16-50 and 55-210), my standard for comparing these things. Moreover, in continuous AF, the lens seemed to hunt quite a bit at times.

I've come to understand that this is because the lens only uses the contrast detection AF rather than the faster (hybrid) phase detection used by Sony's own lenses. Apparently Zeiss is working on a firmware update to solve this, so I'll reserve judgment until then.

Image quality

As for the image quality: it is superb. On thing I did notice though was that wide open at f1.8, it seems to be a little soft. Check out the test shot below.


Boat (Sony a6000, Zeiss Touit 1.8/32, f4, 1/1000s, 32mm, ISO 100)

I took a picture of more or less the same scene at f1.8 and the highlights seem to be "blooming" quite a bit more, as I've shown in the comparison below.

Now this is by no means a scientific comparison (notice the difference in perspective), but something I noticed and was surprised about a little. Stopping down a little (f2.4) fixes this and the image looks sharp all across the board.

The last things I want to mention are the color rendition and how this reflects on RAW processing. May it's because I am used to kit lenses, but the colors this lens produces really impresses me. They are rendered so much richer which in turn means the RAW files need fewer adjustments.