Carl Zeiss Touit Distagon T* 12mm f/2.8 Lens Review

Carl Zeiss Touit Distagon T* 12mm f/2.8 Performance

Sharpness in the centre of the frame at maximum aperture is already outstanding, and clarity at f/2.8 towards the edges of the frame is good. Stopping down the aperture dramatically improves clarity towards the edges of the frame. Stopping down to f/4 results in outstanding sharpness across the frame and excellent sharpness across the frame is maintained until the aperture is stopped down beyond f/8.

Resolution at 12mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Sony NEX-F3 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations towards the edges of the frame are very well controlled and shouldn't pose issues for most images, even with high contrast areas towards the edges of the frame with levels remaining below half a pixel width towards the edges of the frame.

Chromatic aberration at 12mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc. to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Sony NEX-F3 using Imatest.

Considering the wide field of view this lens offers, falloff of illumination towards the corners of the frame is incredibly well controlled. At maximum aperture the corners of the frame are only 0.8 stops darker than the image centre and visually uniform illumination is achieved with the aperture stopped down to f/5.6 or beyond.

Distortion is also very mild for a an ultra wide lens. Imatest detected 2.53% barrel distortion, which may occasionally pose issues. Fortunately, the distortion pattern across the frame is uniform, which should make applying corrections in image editing software relatively straightforward.

The anti-reflective T* coating applied to this lens does a grand job of suppressing flare and retaining contrast, even when shooting into the light. The petal shaped hood does a reasonable job of shading the lens from extraneous light that may pose issues also.

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