Poll: what is your preference? 24-70 II @28mm or Zeiss 2/28 ZF

kewlguy wrote:

Having used 24-70 L II heavily as well as a number of Leica R lenses on my 6Ds, I can tell you that the new zoom is in the class of its own (provided you can get a good sample, as mine now is the second one after the first got decentering issue).

I had to return my first copy too. I would say about 25% of the right side of the image from top to bottom was soft to the point of there being no denying something was wrong, I presumed decentered too. But, the non-soft areas were extremely encouraging and I have since been rewarded for my patience.

I don't like 28/2 ZF, heavy vignetting (typical Zeiss wide) and field of curvature. If the price is lower it might be a different story

I don't notice CA that much from any lens because I have my ACR defaulted to Auto in the lens correction tab and the default correction usually does the trick. For this test, that function was turned off. But, since you brought this up, I boogied over the Digital Picture website and loaded up the Zeiss 28/2 ZE test chart and it does have significant CA even stopped down to f8. Of course, to be fair to Zeiss owners, myself included, this is fairly easy to defeat.

Field curvature is a bear and Lloyd Chambers goes on to mitigate the effect (I won't put a "d" in front of this word) by suggesting the the use of field curvature creatively. In fact, before reading Lloyd Cahmbers, I returned my first copy because I thought there was something wrong with the lens. This was a few years back. I bought my 2nd copy used off FM for a reasonable price and I have been happy with it overall and I believe it beats my Nikkor 24-70G, good for when I need the absolute best IQ. Good to have this option when my Canon is tied up with the TSE-17mm. Since there is a fellow Leica user in the house, I should say that the Zeiss does not beat my Leica 28 R for overall IQ but I can't use the Leica on my Nikon gear.

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