Sony Zeiss Sonnar® T* FE 55 mm F1,8 ZA

Resistant to dust and moisture and with anti-reflective coating Zeiss T *, which produces well-contrasted images, the Sony Zeiss FE 55mm f / 1.8 is undoubtedly a lens built with quality in mind: the barrel is made of metal, as is the ring fire, while the lens hood is made of plastic, but of good quality and with the inner part (and also the final part of the petals) covered with an opaque film to limit the reflections. The same goes for the bayonet which is also made of metal and with an impeccable construction precision, in fact once the lens is mounted on the camera body, there is no play between the two systems.

The focusing ring rotates smoothly and uniformly making the operation very pleasant. The weight and dimensions are average, considering that it is an AF lens, even with the lens hood attached.

The AF does its duty and is fast enough, but for the kind of lens, lightning-fast focusing times are certainly not required. Aesthetically, the lens is pleasant to look at, even if not at the levels of the Batis series by Zeiss ...

The optical performance of the lens is nothing short of exceptional: already at TA (which means Whole Aperture of the diaphragm) demonstrates a disarming clarity, closing then a few stops further improves the situation, and this to the benefit of the creativity of the photographer who can take advantage of the high aperture (maximum aperture f / 1.8) to obtain very interesting blurs without sacrificing the overall image sharpness, as often happens with other lenses that on the contrary offer much softer images at TA. In the panorama of native optics for the Sony A7 series this is a must and I think it should never be missing in every photographer's outfit. The destination of the lens is quite wide: portrait, street, still life and even landscape. With a minimum distance of 50cm it is suitable for close-ups, but certainly not for the macro, but this is not its intended use. The 9-blade diaphragm determines a beautiful bokeh with a soft and gradual blur. In general I was really impressed by this lens, both for the materials used and for the "performance": the definition is really good and very contrasted and "three-dimensional" images are returned; the only flaw that I find is the presence of chromatic aberration in some cases (but it could be a problem of my copy), but easily solved in post-production so I consider it a non-problem.