Review by Klaus Schroiff, published March 2014

Introduction

In the very theory, mirrorless cameras allow an improved lens design compared to DSLRs simply because they don't have the constraint of having a mirror in between the lens and the sensor. However, that's only the theory. In practice, the shorter lens to sensor distances has been more of an obstacle because of the usual sensor characteristics (recessed photo diodes, sensor micro lenses, various filters in front of the sensor). Thus from a real life perspective, wide-angle lenses had a difficult time here so far. It'll be interesting to see whether the Zeiss lens can overcome these issues.

The Vario-Tessar is a comparatively big lens for a mirrorless design - especially considering the small size of the Sony cameras. In fact it is almost as large as the mentioned DSLR counterpart albeit it's somewhat more light-weight. The build quality is superb thanks to a tightly assembled metal body and smoothly operating focus and zoom control ring. The lens extends when zooming towards the long end of the range but there's no wobbling whatsoever. The lens also features weather sealing. A petal-shaped lens hood (plastic) is supplied as part of the standard package.

We tested the lens on a Sony A7R which is not exactly renowned for its AF speed. However, unless you are into sports the performance is adequate. AF operations are also essentially noiseless. Typical for E-mount lenses, manual focusing works "by-wire". The implementation is really good and allows very fine grained focusing. The lens also incorporates an optical image stabilizer which provides a equivalent gain of about 2-3 f-stops in real world situations.