Zeiss Makro-Sonnar T* 100mm f/2.8 Lens

Zeiss is renowned for their Makro-Planar lenses, such as 60/2.8 and 100/2.8 in Yashica/Contax mount, 120/4 in Contax 645 mount and others in Nikon F, Hasselblad V and other mounts. This lens is however a radical departure from their proven winning formula. Here, Zeiss is creating a macro lens which does not change length during focusing, with a much more complicated optical design than before.

The result speaks for itself. We expect unsurpassed sharpness because we are spoiled by Zeiss. That is a given, and we get it. Bokeh is very good. Colour rendition is great, all colours are equally well represented, unlike other brands where some colours are better than the others. The colour separation is also great, very subtle colour gradations are discernable. Above all, there is a special three dimensionality to the images - I know that term is abused and overused to the point that people stop believing it, but it is in fact true for this lens. The images are very life-like.

I took a lot of pictures of a green-cheeked conure called Joey, and most of those images were taken with this lens.

Even the best lens is not perfect - the AF of this lens is very slow and very noisy. It takes several seconds to hunt from infinity to closest focusing distance. There is a limit switch to avoid a full hunt so that the lens remains in either the macro range (0.32m to 0.5m) or the non-macro range (0.5m to infinity). Focusing is much better with the zone limit switch. This is, after all, a macro lens, and Zeiss made the right compromise here - you would rather have outstanding optical quality and below average AF speed, instead of the other way around.

This lens fits natively on the Contax N1, NX and N Digital camera bodies. It is not compatible with the manual focus Contax cameras such as Aria, RX and AX. The N-mount and the Yashica/Contax mount are mutually incompatible because the aperture of the former is electronically controlled. However, a conversion is available to turn N-mount lenses to Canon EF mount. A lot of photographers use the manual focus 100/2.8 Makro-Planar on Canon EOS bodies via adapters, but you would have to use stopped-down metering if you go that route. Now we have a newer autofocus macro lens from Zeiss which is a lot cheaper on the used market than the manual focus version. This lens is a best kept secret!