Howdy folks, today we’re looking at a rather unique and special lens: the Zeiss Loxia 50mm F2.0.
Why You Can Trust Me
Chance (that’s me) has been practicing photography for 10 years and has been a paid professional for most of it. I bought my first Sony camera in 2018 so this site is a culmination, so to speak, of 6 years of Sony experience (full site history). For this lens in particular, I got it about a year and a half ago and have taken it out every so often (read how I review/test gear).
Personally, I managed to pick this up for an absolute steal on Facebook Marketplace. I bought it with the intention to resell it (I do eBay full time outside of this website/channel) but I ended up keeping it for a couple months instead.
In this review, I’ll be sharing my impressions of this cool little manual focus lens along with dozens of sample photos. Let’s hop in!
Pros:
- Sharp w/ great images
- Beautiful bokeh
- Very small
- Fun manual focus
Cons:
- Premium (high) price
- Heavy flaring
Verdict: Although priced very high (given that it’s a manual focus lens), this Zeiss is frankly a work of art. If you’ve got the money to throw around and are interested in a fabulous macro lens, you can check it out here (affiliate link). Check out the bottom of the review for budget-friendly alternatives.
Build Quality
So first off, I want to talk about how rediculously premium and beautiful this lens is. Like you’d expect from a $700 (!!!) manual focus lens, this thing feels like the Lexus of camera lenses.
It’s incredibly solid, extremely well built and sturdy, and it’s just absolutely beautiful. It balances perfectly on my a7iii and looks damn good doing it (love the blue ring around the lens mount).
Aperture & Focus
So, one cool thing about this lens is that, unlike most manual lenses, it does actually have electronic contacts. This means that, although you still have to adjust focus and aperture by hand (more on that in second), the lens is able to transmit metadata to the camera. This might not be a huge deal to most, but as a camera reviewer, it’s nice to not have to manually tag the photos I’ve taken with this.
Now, the aperture ring: it feels GREAT. It’s nice and clicky and nearly perfectly dampened, so I didn’t find myself often bumping it out of place. The focusing ring is similar, it feels near perfect. If you’ve ever used a manual lens where you’ve thought, “damn, this is as good as it gets”, that’s how I felt using this one.
Image Quality
Next up: image quality. My lens tests don’t get very scientific, you won’t see any MTF charts or convoluted graphs or anything like that. Instead, I’ll just share a bunch of sample photos.
So, at F2, we already see near perfect sharpness across the entire frame. No complaints from me there, and stopping down makes everything look even better.
Bokeh also looks incredible with this being an F2 lens. Here are a few samples for your consideration.
Optical Flaws
From an optical flaws standpoint, we don’t see much. No distortion really. Same with chromatic aberrations, they’re handled quite well.
The lens does, however, suffer from quite a bit of flaring. Here are a few samples (but hey, look at those sunstars!).
Conclusion
So yeah, in case I didn’t make it abundantly clear, this lens is a masterpiece. It’s also incredibly expensive for what you get…
Now, I’m going to be completely honest. If I was spending a pretty penny on a premium lens, I would instead buy the new-ish Sigma 50mm F2.0. It does everything this lens can but also offers autofocus and a cheaper pricetag.
A much more budget-friendly alternative (if you’re just looking for a 50mm) would be the bog standard Sony FE 50mm F1.8. It feels like a plastic toy, but it’s dirt cheap and produces some nice images.
But hey, if you want to drop over $700 on a manual focus lens, then you literally can’t get any better (or any more expensive) than the Zeiss. Thanks for reading, and if you want to support the website, purchase through this link. Thank you!