Why we decided to go against Batis line Zeiss now(updated3):
Recently, I encountered a very interesting thread in some camera forum discussing about QC of the major E mount lens brands ; Sony, Zeiss and Cosina (Voigtlander), some even talked about their CN and Sigma experience as well.
In that thread many extreme Zeiss brand fanboys defending Zeiss and telling other brand lens users how much better Zeiss QC is in comparison(all crazy emotional arguments or simple plain lies). In the middle of the thread , some rational ones chimed in and told the Zeiss fanatics about actually Zeiss is worse than Sony when it comes to QC, I think it is true , sad to admit it , though , as I was a huge Zeiss fan (the initial reason for me to choose Sony mount was the Sony Zeiss line).
IMHO, Zeiss has quite a good QC record on the Batis series , I never got a decentered Batis. But their Loxia has a terrible QC record. I needed to go through 5 copies to get a decently centered Loxia 21 (IMHO, the most overrated lens in E mount).
I returned my first and second Loxia 25mm f2.4, my third one was great. My first Loxia 85mm f2.4 was great, but I sold it and bought another one which was badly decentered and I had to return it.
So my honest impression about Zeiss QC is not very good, maybe I have to say worse than Sony and Voigtlander.
Honestly, I have never got any bad Sony lens other than the infamous FE35mm f1.4ZA.
Sony seems to be on a roll, everything they have released since about 2016 is really good in terms of QC and actual lens performance.
FE85mm f1.4GM, FE50mm f1.4ZA, FE16-35mm f2.8GM, FE12-24mm f4G, FE24-105mm f4G OSS, FE85mm f1.8 , FE50mm f2.8 Macro, FE 70-200mmf2.8GM, FE24mm f1.4GM all were great and none of these suffered from serious QC issues(unlike many of Zeiss Loxia and Sigma, Samyang primes).
Another serious issue when it comes to discussing lens QC issues across the major E mount lens brands, is that people do not know how to assess their copy of a certain lens , but claim it has issues......or decentered when they do not know what exactly decentered lens means. They also exaggerate the issues they think they have and repeat it forever once they get a bad copy from a certain brand.
When people get a Batis or a Loxia lens softer than a Sony GM or G zoom or a GM prime , many of them just erroneously presume it is a bad copy. But in case of the 18mm Batis and 25mm Batis , it should be less sharp than a decent copy of the Sony FE16-35mm f2.8GM or the FE12-24mm f4G, so it is not a QC issue, but it just tells you how good the Sony zooms really are.
But many prime-only fans cannot accept the scientifically proven fact because they evaluate their lenses with their heart rather than with their brain when it says Zeiss or Voigtlander.
Anyway, going back to the original point, there are many bad copies of all lenses, no doubt about it, but I think some people are really get too obsessed with getting a perfect copy, or expect too much from any lens they test , or their testing methods are completely wrong. I know many so called lens testers use IBIS when they test lenses and tell you all his/ her lenses have bad corners or decentered. Well if you use the IBIS the lens is always soft in one or two corners and that is perfectly normal, that is the biggest con of having the IBIS.
And chances are, even with those a bit decentered lenses, in a print, I bet most won't notice "issues" at all. That is not to say that decentering couldn't be a problem. Sometimes it is. However I can't believe that the good copies are in the minority, esp. when we deal with Sony, Tamron, Zeiss and Voigtlander. If we are talking about Sigma, Samyang , Laowa,etc, it is a totally different story, though.
Honestly, I've never had any Sony lens with any serious issues, I've seen almost one hundred different copies (A and E mount from about A350/A700 era) in my long Sony E and A mount history.
Seriously, Sony lens QC issue is blown out of proportion, it is not any worse than any other brand, in fact, I've found it usually a bit better than most including Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Zeiss(Loxia) and Sigma.....I think only Leica and Fuji and some MF lens makers are better than Sony in this regard.
I'd expect perfect QC every time for a manual lens at the Loxia price point, but the reality is the Loxia series is not really great in this regard. So I think the Loxia line is really overrated by those who really love so-called sunstar and obnoxiously contrasty blocked shadow unrealistic look produced by the monstrous amount of vignetting these lenses produce.
Sure, these Loxia( when you get a great copy) lenses are very sharp , but in terms of over all optical quality , these are just above average. I mean most of the loxia lenses (besides the 85) suffer from a high mount of axial CA, a bit heavy(for a MF prime) distortion, a monstrous amount of vignetting, etc, although these lenses are very sharp, as I already said it.
In case of the 35mm and 50mm ones, these are even bad in sheer resolution department until f6.3 or maybe f8. And these are very old film era lens designs but some love the so called 'look' and justify the extreme high price for how they actually perform in a lab. In other words , Zeiss is spoiled and even their bad copy to copy variations or terrible resolution characteristics are forgiven as a good 'LOOK or character'.
My Sony 12-24 and the two my work owns are better than the Batis 18mm f2.8, Laowa 15mm f2 and CV15 (and CV12) in terms of resolution across the frame.
Well, then, those prime fanatics say colors are better with a Zeiss or a Voigt.
But colors are subjective at best, I prefer Sony colors to Canikon and Sony lenses to third party like Samyang, Laowa(terrible color with too much green bias in my opinion), Sigma(most overrated lens maker). Also, the sunstar thing is not needed for work, and the quality of it is evaluated very subjectively as well.
The Batis 18mm is big, heavy, expensive for what it is and still a third party lens which means we have to jump through hoops if we have a warranty issue, which Zeiss suffers from(terrible customer service revealed by their recent issues with the new 40mm Batis).
The CV's are a bit better for repairs and for quality control, but even they refuse to fix some simple lens centering problem or stiff focus ring issue and blame it on my Sony body.
Despite of Sony's terrible reputation for decent lens quality control , none of our dozens of Sony lenses have been decentered or had any other issues, and if any of these had any issue , Sony would fix it very quick- especially when you buy it directly from Sony or Sony authorized shops.......
Still, do not get me wrong, I am not saying the other wide lens options like Sigma 14mm f2.8 Art, Zeiss 18mm f2.8 , Voigtlander 21mm f3.5 or 15mm f4.5 are all bad, far from it.
I am sure I enjoyed them, it's just that a zoom is much more versatile in the UWA range, those gaps are huge, I mean, the difference in perspective between 15 and 21 is massive, it's very difficult to make a 21mm look like a 15 and sometimes a 21mm just simply cannot capture what the photographer is after, and swapping lenses often in the field is really not safe.
Also, have a couple of FE16-35mm f2.8G master zooms, but often times, the 16mm end of that zoom is not wide enough for me.....if 16mm is not wide enough, then is 15mm or 14mm wide enough? Probably not.
So , in case of this Sony ultra wide debate , I think the only one real rival to the excellent FE12-24mm f4G is the Voigtlander 12mm f5.6.
Then, we have to say the Sony zoom is much sharper , much more versatile and much more friendly to the E mount Sony cameras.
The convenience or versatility(I tend to prefer the latter term better)of having 12-24mm range in one small lens is very practical, often prime fanboys dismiss any zoom and trash it just as it's a convenient lens. But there are times we need it to get the shots we really need.
When I first bought the FE12-24mm zoom, I expected it would disappoint me and it would force me sell it, so I calculated how much money I would lose if I sell it(before actually placing the order). I also did the same for my Batis 18mm f2.8 and the other primes in that 12-24mm range.
If the Sony zoom really sucked(as I expected ), I'd say grab a couple of primes, instead, but it really wouldn't. I honestly say it is superb, even better than any prime in that 12-24mm range.
And, we shoot interior and architecture for most of our paid work here, also sometimes shoot events that really require an UWA lens. So we can spend lots of money into this 12-28mm range. We literally tried almost every wide lens- from Zeiss 15 distagon to the Loxia 21 good(but not great), to the B18( was just OK).
The Sigma 14mm f2.8 was great resolution wise but terrible distortion and flare performance. The CV 15 was good when we finally got a good copy of the 15mm Voigtlander (but it was just too limited in real life use). I must say nothing we tried was as good as the 12-24 or the FE16-35mm f2.8GM zoom in over all performance......that is why we've decided to keep the two fabulous Sony wide zooms and sell all the primes in the 12-21mm range.
To be honest, we still have the Loxia 25mm , the Sony FE24mm f1.4GM and Sony FE50mm f1.4ZA, but these are not in the 12-21mm range.
In retrospect, just a several of years ago, we had serious problems finding great native lenses , and most of us either had to adapt legacy lenses or CN lenses or M mount lenses , or just go all thirdparty lenses.
Now we do not have that 'no native lens' issue any more, Sony has launched so many really great zooms , primes and bodies in the last 3 years. Now we have no issue finding great native E mount lenses in any focal range.
So I think we should consider a bit more seriously about supporting Sony, not some obscure third party, if you buy a Sigma, a Laowa, a Samyang, etc, you are not supporting the camera mount system. Your money does not go to Sony.
So even if Sony E mount fails , you will not have any right to complain about it(if you do not buy any Sony lens).
Honestly, when the lens quality is so similar or even identical across the available brands for the E mount, there is no reason to choose anything else than the first party Sony lenses unless there is very specific quality such as excellent manual focus feeling, or tactile feeling in specific range of third party lenses.
So I think some Loxia, Tamron and Voigtlander lenses are still viable choices , but the Sayang, Sigma, Batis ,etc are really hard sell products now and losing a lot of their resell value these days.
I mean the suddenly plummeted resale value of the Batis line primes just proves it.
On top of that, Zeiss mishandled the Batis 40mm f2CF ' automatically stopping down a couple of stops in close to mid focus distance' issue.
There are too many issues with the Batis 40mm f2CF ,and Zeiss' terrible slow response to those filed complains and issuing any fixing FW revealed their actually very indifferent and apathetic nature of customer support policy. When our boss complained about the "automatically stopping down in closer than ten feet focus range " issue of the Batis 40, Zeiss support here called him a complainer.
This terrible support team of Zeiss really helped me decide go against Zeiss regardless of their lens quality or internet reputation.
Now , we are discussing about what lenses to replace our Batises and Loxias.
I guess we will get the 85mm f1.4GM back and sell the Batis 85 and 135mm APO.
We just sell the Loxia 25mm f2.4 and replace it with the Voigtlander 21mm f3.5.
We will just return the Zeiss 40mm f2 CF while we still can.
We already replaced our Batis 25mm f2 with a Sony FE24mm f1.4GM.
Finally, there is no glaring difference in QC across the brands and the bad copy thing is greatly exaggerated by those fanatic perfectionist lens forum denizens: Roger Cicala of LensRentals explains it super clearly below:
R Cicala: "Another point that I’ll expand on in a future post is for those who spend a lot of time and effort in ‘getting a great copy.’ Some lenses have such variation that you probably will have to go through at least dozens of copies if your definition of ‘great copy’ is ‘near perfect copy.’"
"Out of the box, our failure rate for lenses (pretty high standards) overall is just under 2%. With low variability lenses it's 1%. Lenses we think of as bad are, at most, 5%.
Let's do some quick math. If 2% of lenses fail, that suggests that you would need to, on average, buy 50 copies of a lens to find a truly bad one. So when someone says "I've owned 50 lenses and none of them were bad", I'm not surprised. Half of the people who own 50 lenses should never see a truly bad copy.
What about the guy who has 4 out of 5 bad copies? Very often on the interweb people claim that's BS. It's not. That guy isn't looking for an acceptable copy, he's looking for a near-perfect copy. There are 'as perfect as I can detect' lenses out there, but it's not 98%. On a good, reputable, high quality prime lens it maybe be 65% or 75%. There are most definitely lenses that, by my standards, less than 1 in 10 are perfect. When I see someone who tried 4 copies and all weren't perfect, I'm not surprised - for a lot of lenses I see the same thing in evaluating hundreds of copies. They're mostly acceptable, they're mostly not near-perfect.
So, back to the point, 'acceptable copy' is a very poorly defined term, so when we discuss it, we're often comparing our apples to their oranges and calling it all fruit. "
I think always shooting for the perfection is just silly, unless you are willing to pay a Leica price for every lens. But as Roger says a real acceptably bad copy rate is just around 2 percent. So it may not be as bad as many forum lens experts make it out to be.
UPDATE1: I returned my copy of the Batis 40mm f2CF and asking my dealer to exchange it to a good copy of FE85mm f1.4GM, which I broke a few weeks ago in Osaka.
At this point, I really think it is wasting of our time to try a non-Sony AF lens on our Sony E mount fullframe cameras.
Many thirdparty lenses really make it much more difficult and complicated than it should be without it.
All Batis , Sigma, Samyang, lenses have some sort of compatibility issue and it is hard to fix since they do not get to know any minor AF protocol improvements or changes in advance.
The MF thirdparty lenses like Loxia , Voigtlander ,Laowa , etc, are all just fine, but many AF thirdparty lenses really have some sort of AF or close focus, or reliability related issues.
UPDATE2: Now Sony has the best f1.4 class prime kit and most of Sony GM and ZA primes outperform their dimmer Batis rivals, and as most of Batis lenses were released before GM series primes, usually the GM line lenses are optically better corrected without any silly mount communication protocol issues that most of Batis and Sigma art line primes do have. As I concluded a few weeks ago, not it is safer to deliberately avoid any Batis lens unless we already own it and its resell value have already plummeted to the point it is not worth selling it.
So I think I am selling all my Batis primes except my 135mm f2.8 APO(as I sell it I will lose just too much money on it now).
I just returned my 40mm f2 CF Batis and I think I will sell my 18 and 85mm Batis as I do not use them any more as I already have my GM lenses cover that range.
But do not get me wrong, I am not entirely against Zeiss , I actually love their Loxia line and I will keep my 25, 85 and 35 mm Loxia intact, they are lovely lens without any silly mount communication or focus related issues that my Batis lenses have.
I am not against Zeiss, I am against Batis. I love the Loxia and the Milvus line lenses, which are lovely and optically much superior to their Batis equivalents.
UPDATE3: Today I sold my Batis 85mm f1.8 and Batis 18mm f2.8 Dsitagon, they were even cheaper than last time I sold them in this September. I think the resell value of the Batis line lenses have really really plummeted down to the unacceptable level now, it was already near unacceptable level in this Photokina September, but after that it has even further went down to the truly unacceptable level, the 18mm f2.8 was 88000yen, which is roughly equivalent to 730USD.
It is a really bad price considering its brand new price was about 178000 yen or 1500 USD just a couple of months ago.
I was lucky I returned the Batis 40mm f2CF before it'd get too late. If I had to sell it online here , I would immediately lose about 600 USD although it is still a pretty new lens even here.
