Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of test-driving the new Batis 2.8/18mm prime lens courtesy of perennial glass manufacturer Carl Zeiss. Previously, the German based company hit the ground running with the first auto-focus lenses for the Sony Alpha series. The Batis 25mm f/2 and 85mm F/1.8 won accolades and dire hard fans alike… deservedly so. Both lenses worked seamlessly with Sony’s auto-focus technology and there was no reason to believe the latest Batis line would perform any differently.
Carefully packaged in a pleasingly streamlined designed box (somewhat reminiscent of Apple’s approach to branding), the lens itself comes with a detachable hood and two caps (one for the lens and the other for E-mount screw-in).
It fit easily on the Sony a7r II I used for the purpose of this shoot. The first thing I noticed was how intuitive the lens was to Sony’s AF technology. Just point and shoot without waiting to adjust by pressing the camera’s shutter button halfway down (or anything like that). I was also immediately impressed by how much image I could pack into the frame. This is a very wide lens. If you take a look at the image below, I managed to capture the graffiti displayed on an entire wall – with space to spare – and I was standing no more than six feet away.
For the heck of it, I pivoted my camera to the left and took this shot, just to give the reader an idea of where I was standing in front of the wall:
Here is another example of an image I took of another wall while standing near the edge of the sidewalk in front of it.
And, again, the same wall as I stood approximately six feet away:
I then took this image of a blue building set against what was a vibrantly blue sky:
Now, it’s one thing to point your lens at the top corner of a building and capture maybe half of that building along with the sky. But, again, I was standing no more than six feet away. And below the frame there was no less than the concrete beneath my feet.
If there is a drawback to a lens like this, no matter how far you can open that aperture, it is pretty challenging to capture shallow depth of field shots and blurred motion even if you took advantage of the Alpha series ability to turn the ISO down to as little as 50. Especially when you’re dealing with brightly lit conditions like I did on this particular day. I tested this with different settings: I pushed the F-stop to 2.8 with the ISO at 50, 400, even 2500. Tried doing the same with the f-stop at 7 and the shutter as low as 1/30. Unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately for everyone else) it was a beautifully sunny day and the results were consistently sharp with almost no motion blur. Just like this image I took of random people walking to and fro in a park:
Clearly I would have to wait until nightfall so that I could really test the lens’ effectiveness under low light conditions. Setting the ISO at 800, I took these two shots of my pet cat Spike. I intentionally focused on him in one shot while directed the focus on my girlfriend in the next.
So under the right lighting conditions, you can achieve a pretty effective shallow depth of field.
Finally, I decided to test the lens/sensor compatibility by pushing the a7r II to an ISO of 25600. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Venus.”
I had one, small desk lamp providing the only illumination emitting from the far left of the frame. Granted, there is some noticeable grain (which is to be expected with an ISO set so high). But the Batis 2.8/18mm didn’t bat an eye… although it did effectively manage the aperture and shutter speed of the Sony a7r II. Which leads me to another pleasant surprise I encountered with this lens. Its ability to remain stabilized (even if this is aided by Sony’s technology) is pretty impressive. Neither of the shots I took at night required the use of a tripod. None of them. But also keep in mind this is not a “close up” lens. You can only have so little distance between the 2.8/18mm and your subject before your Alpha camera decides “this close is too close,” especially under low light conditions.
The Zeiss Batis 2.8/18mm lens will make a welcome addition to any photographer’s Sony Alpha cam kit, particularly those who enjoy landscape photography. Or those who want to pack almost everything they see into the same frame without any loss of depth of field. You can place a pre-order for the $1,499 lens at Adorama.
