Photo above: To make this image of a nautilus shell on black velvet, I stopped my Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 down to f/16 and used a shutter speed of 1/8 of a second with the camera mounted on my tripod.

Few (if any) lenses have been introduced with the significant marketing hype that accompanied the Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 Distagon T* Lens announcement.

This lens is amazingly sharp throughout its f stop range. I test each new lens for its sweet spot for maximum resolution. This one is sweet throughout. Paired with a Nikon D800E, it gives even better results than the Makro-Planar 2/100 ZF.2.

Consistent Output; Durable; Strong Construction

Heavy

The performance of this lens is second to none. Overall image quality is exceptional...only minor vignetting wide open (disappears after a stop down). I've yet to see any serious color fringing.

The Zeiss Otus APO Distagon T* 55mm f/1.4 ZF (Nikon) and ZE (Canon) large-aperture, full-frame normal lenses are the largest and among the most expensive lenses in its class. While the $3,999 street price induces sticker shock, it calmed us to recall that it still costs several hundred dollars less...

You can't complain about the lack of classic 50 mm f/1.4 lenses, available currently on the market. However, all of them seem to share the same problem: while their performance near the maximum relative aperture can rarely be considered decent, the edge of the frame is often weak, even dismal.