Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 Review
Introduction
The Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 is a manual-focus wide-angle prime lens for Sony Alpha 35mm full-frame mirrorless cameras. It features an aperture range of f/2.4-f/22 and a ten-bladed circular diaphragm for smoother bokeh blur in out of focus areas. It's comprised of 10 elements in 8 groups, has a precision-engineered full-metal casing with a weather-resistant gasket at the lens mount, weighs in at 393 grams, and can be de-clicked using a supplied tool for movie-making. The Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 is also able to focus as close as 25cm and it takes 52mm filters. The Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 retails for €1299 / $1299 / £1189.
Ease of Use
With a maximum diameter of 62mm and an 75mm length, the Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 is a wide-angle fixed focal length optic that's well-suited to Sony's full-frame mirrorless camera bodies, such as the new A7 III that we used for testing. Weighing in at 393g it's also not too heavy, making this lens perfect for hand-holding as well as life on a tripod.
The Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 boasts superb build quality. The lens’ all-metal casing is dust and moisture resistant and it features a metal E-mount bayonet. A special sealing ring on the bayonet protects the interface between the camera and the lens.
With no need for a zoom ring, the Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4's manual focussing ring spans a significant width of the lens barrel and is exceptionally smooth to operate, complete with useful depth of field scale and distance markings. It has a large rotation angle of 90 degrees which enables precise focusing and moves smoothly without any play.
The precise engravings in meters and feet, together with the depth of focus scale, help make manual focusing a veritable pleasure, especially in conjunction with the excellent Peaking and magnification features offered by the Sony A-series cameras.
Behind the focussing ring is the aperture ring, with 1/3EV stops ranging from f/2.4 to f/22. A small adjustable screw on the bottom of the bayonet lets you select whether the aperture ring clicks into place at each aperture stop or rotates smoothly for silent operation during movie recording.
There’s no built-in optical image stabilisation, but the lens’ short focal length and fast maximum aperture alleviate the need for it, as does the camera's in-body image stabilisation system.
A high-quality metal petal-shaped lens hood is supplied in the box.
Focal Range
The 25mm focal length gives an angle of view of 81.25 degrees on a 35mm full frame sensor.
Field of view at 25mm
Chromatic Aberrations
Chromatic aberration (purple fringing) is rarely an issue with the Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4, so much so that we couldn't find any instances of fringing in our test shots.
Light Fall-off and Distortion
Light fall-off is noticeable wide open at f/2.4, though this is to be expected for such a fast lens and can easily be corrected in Photoshop. Stop down to f/4 and the vignetting is already less prominent, but it is still visible when shooting pale scenes that fill the frame.
Light fall-off at 25mm
Macro
A 25cm minimum focus distance makes the lens useful for shooting reasonably close subjects.
Close-up performance
Bokeh
A major appeal of fast, wide-aperture prime lenses is their ability to produce an eye-catching separation between a sharp subject and a very soft out-of-focus background.
The Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4 generates exceptionally smooth out of focus areas through its use of a ten-bladed diaphragm, which provides smoother bokeh than nine, seven or five-blade designs.
Bokeh is however a fairly subjective part of a lens’ image quality, so check out these images to see the Zeiss Loxia 25mm F2.4’s bokeh quality for yourself.
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| f/2.4 |
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| f/2.8 |
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| f/4 |
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| f/5.6 |
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| f/8 |
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| f/11 |
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| f/16 |
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| f/22 |
Sharpness
In order to show you how sharp this lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following page.