Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 Review – Test results
Resolution
As our Applied Imaging tests show, the centre sharpness at f/2 is excellent. Stopping the lens down to f/4 improves overall edge-to-edge sharpness, with f/5.6-f/8 delivering the best results. Users shouldn’t be afraid to close the lens down to f/16 to create a large depth of field, and although f/20 and f/22 are perfectly usable, diffraction does start to hinder sharpness and the finest details at these settings.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/2
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/2.8
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/4
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/5.6
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/8
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/11
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/16
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 at f/22
Shading
It will come as no surprise that the lens exhibits most vignetting when it’s used wide open, but things improve very quickly when the lens is stopped down. Vignetting is obvious at f/2, but closing it down to f/2.5 sees an improvement. By the time you reach f/3.2 and f/3.5 it clears up almost completely. With the correct lens profile installed in Lightroom 6, Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC, vignetting can be easily removed in post-processing.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 shading at f/2
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 shading at f/2.8
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 shading at f/4
Curvilinear distortion
A close inspection of our distortion lab results revealed there’s low-level barrel distortion, although this isn’t a great cause for concern as it’s very difficult to trace in real-world images. Enabling the aforementioned Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 lens profile in Lightroom 6, Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC is the fastest way to remove the low-level barrel distortion from raw files.
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2 distortion TV SMIA = -0.3%
