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PRELIMINARY INFORMATION - THESE ARE SIMPLY MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS, AND PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THEM TOO SERIOUSLY. THREE DAYS WITH A BRAND NEW LENS ISN'T THAT MUCH, AND THIS FOR SURE ISN'T A IN-DEPTH REVIEW. I WILL ADD NEW INFORMATION AS SOON AS I HAVE ACCESS TO THE LENS AGAIN.
The first tests I did here in Lugano. Later I went for two days off to Florence (Italy) to shoot in the ancient city, and in the Battistero near the great Duomo "Santa Maria del Fiore". I took with me my alpha 900, the Zeiss 2.8/16-35mm, the Minolta AF 3.5/17-35mm G (thanks to Pascal Häusermann!), the Minolta AF 2.8-4/17-35mm (D) and the Sony 4.5-5.6/11-18mm DT with an alpha 700.
The Zeiss 2.8/16-35mm SSM is a heavy (900g) and big lens - very similar looking as the Zeiss 2.8/24-70mm. The lens barrel is obviously made from metal, while some of the surface is made from high grade plastics. The overall haptics are very similar to the Zeiss 2.8/24-70mm.Yet I clearly prefer the mechanical construction of the 16-35mm: Its length remains constant while zooming (the 2.8/24-70mm extends and becomes simply too long for a 2.8/70mm lens), and zooming has become much smoother.
Autofocus is very fast and reliable - same as the Vario-Sonnar 2.8/24-70mm. Reflexes and flares are very well controlled. Even with bright light sources in the image I had never problems, even at f=16mm. Vignetting is surprisingly low, even at 16mm and wide open! Very well done. Distortion seems to be quite low as well (slightly wavelike). This is just my feeling when shooting architecture pics. I have not done systematic test, but I think it's better than the Minolta AF2.8/20mm.
Image above: Restaurant at Piazza S. Spirito, Florence. Zeiss 2.8/16-35mm @ 16mm f5.6, 0.7s handheld (with image satbilizer), ISO 200 for best dynamic range of the alpha 900 DLSR. JPG straight from the camera, resized and slightly sharpened.
Detail resolution (16mm, center): In the center all three zooms are close to perfect, even wide open. Yet the Zeiss seems to be slightly better.
Detail resolution (16mm, extreme corners): the Zeiss is well ahead of the former Minolta professional superwide zoom, the Minolta AF 3.5/17-35mm G from 1997. The Miinolta AF 2.8-4/17-35mm (D), a re-badged Tamron lens from 2004, is even worse. Be aware that these problems partly are resulting from image field curvature. Also the Zeiss has its problems; in addition the field curvature is wavelike. This causes an odd valley in the MTF graphs at a distance of about 10mm from the image center - of course only if you shoot a flat object (architecture, landscape). Usually one will use the f2.8 only for reportage, and here the image field curvature will not disturb at all. As a landscape / architecture photographer I am not completely satisfied with this approach, however I do agree that the Zeiss is much better than any previous Sony/Minolta superwide zoom (including the 4.5-5.6/11-18mm for APS-C DSLRs). It seems that Sony has adjusted the AF for best overall resolution (thus leading to a tiny inaccuracy of AF in the center), I myslef have adjusted the AF to best center performance at f2.8, thus leading to lower mid-field resolution.
The Zeiss improves to very good values when stopping down to f5.6. Only the outermost corners are still soft, but that's less than 0.1% of the entire image - and these parts of the image will be lost when printing A3 double pages in magazines (due to the bleed while printing). When shhoting slides they will be covered by the frame.
At f11 the Zeiss is still clearly better than its competitors.
Below some 100% crops on the Sony alpha 900 (full frame, 24MP). All images are JPGs directly from the A900. Sharpness was set to "0", DRO was set manually to "Level 4", and no further corrections were applied (apart from cropping, of course).
Information on detail resolution (20mm, and 35mm): scroll down!
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