Sony Carl Zeiss 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM II Vario-Sonnar T* A-mount lens reviews
reviews found: 3
 Dave18#47030 date: Sep-11-2024 | |
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sharpness: 5 color: 5 build: 5 distortion: 5 flare control: 4 overall: 4.8 | tested on:
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| ownership: | I own this lens |
| compared to: | Tamron 28-75mm e-mount |
| price paid: | £335 |
| positive: | Excellent sharpness and colour |
| negative: | a little heavy on my A7 bodies |
| comment: | Picked this up on Ebay for £335 used it on te a73 with an LEA-3 adapter, AF was as fast as my emount lenses also on my A74 with an LE-A5 adapter same result a real bargain when you think this lens was £1800 new |
; 36MP| PLLD69#43010 date: Feb-9-2018 | |
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sharpness: 5 color: 5 build: 5 distortion: 5 flare control: 5 overall: 5 | tested on:
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| ownership: | I own this lens |
| compared to: | Tamron 28-75 f2.8, Minolta 24-105 |
| price paid: | £1419 new |
| positive: | The usual silky heavy build quality, lovely operation of controls. Fast, accurate AF. Lovely colour rendition and a realistic representation - not fake-looking. Good '3D' effect. Weather sealing. |
| negative: | Virtually nothing but see comments |
| comment: | OK it's probably only 99% as good as the pro equivalents from Canon and Nikon but, if you're an A mounter, it's the best |
| dfwatt#36807 date: Mar-30-2017 | |
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sharpness: 4.5 color: 5 build: 5 distortion: 5 flare control: 5 overall: 4.9 | tested on:
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| ownership: | I own this lens |
| compared to: | Sigma Art 25-105 f4 Tamron 24-70 f2.8 SP Minolta 28-135 f4-4.5 |
| price paid: | $1650 |
| positive: | 1) Great build quality, and undeniable cache value in that blue badge. Substantial and nicely damped zoom mechanism. 2) Decent performance and sharpness, particularly if you stop down to f4. Very strong from f4-8. 3) Prime like performance at 40mm, which is its best FL. 4) Weather sealed and dust resistant. 5) More speed than the Sigma Art (but both lenses are very close at f4) |
| negative: | 1) No updated coatings to reduce CA at wider end - which is still rather significant. Not much of an update? 2) Weight - this thing is a 'chunky monkey' of a lens. 3) Short on reach at the long end. Not enough for portraiture unless you are on top of your subject. 4) Bokeh is somewhat disappointing at 70mm and 2.8. Not bad but not great. 5) Might be overpriced for what it offers - both Tamron and Sigma might offer better values if not better lenses for less $. |
| comment: | This is a classic Zeiss lens – big, heavy, expensive, and with great build quality, and with a very smooth and substantial feeling zoom mechanism. It’s been very recently updated, likely in anticipation of the release of the new Sony A99II, and its predecessor, version 1 was a classic with good reason. But the updating included only a slightly faster SSM and not better coatings. No changes in the optical formula whatsoever. But this lens (just like its predecessor) has some modest issues keeping it from being consistently superb, where, for example, at 35 mm it never gets critically sharp in the corners, even stopped down, and wide-open at 50mm, it’s even worse in terms of corner sharpness, and with somewhat reduced central sharpness as well. At 50mm, by f4, things dramatically sharpen up, and at 70 mm (where a lot of 3x zooms are starting to fall apart) the lens is a bit soft wide open but sharpens up nicely by f4. At f4-5.6, the lens is pretty close to critically sharp corner to corner at all focal lengths, except at 35mm where the corners never quite get tack sharp. Is this lens your best overall walk-around zoom option for full frame in Alpha Mount? No – but it's a finalist in that competition, with the Sigma Art 25-105 and the Tamron 24-70 SP. If the Zeiss 24-70 V2 were slightly lighter, somewhat less expensive, or if it was fully the equal of the Canon L2 in terms of optical performance, then I think it would be a five star lens. It’s close to a home run, but just not quite. Very good, and still a classic with good reason. Anything with that blue badge is likely to be – at worst – very good, but this lens doesn’t quite get to the “best in class” status of some other Zeiss Alpha lenses, such as their stellar primes, the ZA 85 1.4, and especially the ZA 135 1.8, which is simply and unquestionably the best lens of its type. In that sense this lens is a little bit like the ZA 16-35 2.8 – another expensive and heavy Zeiss zoom lens, which could be sharper. Very good, but falling shy of great. Perhaps version 3 will be the homerun. |
reviews found: 3
rating summary
- total reviews: 3
- sharpness: 4.83
- color: 5.00
- build: 5.00
- distortion: 5.00
- flare control: 4.67
- overall: 4.90
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