Carl Zeiss has announced two very sweet lenses for Sony NEX: the Zeiss Touit 12mm f2.8 wide angle lens and 32mm f1.8 normal lens. Zeiss lenses are my favorite lenses both for Sony Alpha and medium format. They’re sharp, smooth and very well made. If you haven’t shot with a Zeiss glass you have no idea what you are missing.
The Zeiss Touit 12mm f2.8 lens has a 99 degree angle of view and makes a perfect lens for landscapes, architecture and those that love wide angle shots. In order to create a lightweight lens, Zeiss has used a combination of materials including a durable plastic, yet the bayonet and parts that require accuracy are made of a rigid metal. The lens is constructed of 11 elements in 8 groups. When the angle of view becomes extreme, the retrofocus design of the Distagon lens can also be the ideal choice when the camera is not an SLR.
The Zeiss Touit 32mm f1.8 lens has a 48 degree angle of view making it a perfect ‘normal’ lens for Sony NEX shooters especially portrait and street shooters. The lens is constructed with the same materials as the 12mm lens making is lightweight. The lens has 8 elements in 5 groups. The lens has a 9 blade iris creating a near perfect circular aperture. The lens is constructed of 11 elements in 8 groups. The Planar lens type is the most successful – and the most frequently copied – lens design of all time. It offers lens calculators numerous opportunities for almost complete correction of all optical aberrations, and is therefore even today the basis for the design and construction of modern, high-performance lenses. Modification of this proven, six-lens, basic design can achieve significantly improved performance for use with today’s image sensors.
Zeiss Touit lenses are designed and constructed specifically for use on Sony NEX and Fuji X Series cameras with APS-C sensors. The lenses are fully-compatible and support all camera functions, including autofocus.
The lenses will be available in June
Order: Zeiss Touit 12mm f/2.8 lens $999
Order: Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens $720
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith photographs portraits of Hollywood A-List and Fortune's 500 for magazines, corporations and advertising. He's a Sony Artisan of Imagery, Profoto Legend of Light, Adobe Influencer and X-Rite Master Coloratti.
