Introduction

Ease of Use

Weighing around 735-850g, depending on the version, and measuring 110mm in length, the all-metal Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 is a big and heavy wide-angle lens. It does feel well-balanced, though, on the Canon EOS 5DS R that we predominantly tested it with.

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a Canon EOS 5DS R

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a Canon EOS 5DS R

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a Canon EOS 5DS R

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens alongside a Canon EOS 5DS R

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 boasts superb build quality. The lens’ all-metal casing is dust and moisture resistant and it features a metal mount. With no need for a zoom ring, the manual focussing ring spans a significant width of the lens barrel and is exceptionally smooth to operate, complete with a useful depth of field scale and hard stops at either end, plus an IR position dot.

The side of the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens

The front of the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens

The rear of the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens

The side of the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens

The side of the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 has 16 lens elements in 13 groups with four anomalous partial dispersion glass elements to help control distortions and aberrations . A nine-bladed rounded diaphragm, combined with the fast maximum aperture, helps provide smooth bokeh blur.

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens in-hand

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 lens with the supplied lens hood fitted

There's no optical image stabilisation, but the lens' wide-angle focal length and fast maximum aperture alleviate the need for it. A special sealing ring on the bayonet also protects the interface between the camera and the lens. A round metal lens hood is supplied.

Focal Range

The 21mm focal length gives an angle of view of 90° on a 35mm full frame sensor.

 Field of view at 21mm

Manual Focusing

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8's manual focusing ring spans a significant width of the lens barrel and is exceptionally smooth to operate, complete with a useful depth of field scale. It also has a large rotation angle which enables precise focusing and moves smoothly without any play, thus also supporting the intuitive interaction with the focal plane. The precise engravings in meters and feet, together with the depth of focus scale, help make manual focusing a veritable pleasure, although the Canon EOS 5DS R that we tested the lens with is not very well suited to accurate manual focusing.

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberration (purple fringing) is rarely an issue with the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8, so much so that we could only find a few very minor instances of fringing in our test shots.

Light Fall-off and Distortion

Light fall-off is noticeable wide open at f/1.4, 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 21mm

Macro

The Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8 is not a macro lens, but the close-focus point is a useful 22cm from the film/sensor plane and a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:5. The following example illustrates how close you can get to the subject, in this case a CompactFlash card.

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 Milvus 21mm f/2.8 generates smooth out of focus areas through its use of a 9-bladed diaphragm, which provides smoother bokeh than seven or five-blade designs. Bokeh is however a fairly subjective part of a lens' image quality, so check out these 100% crops to see the Zeiss Milvus 21mm f/2.8's bokeh quality for yourself.

Sharpness

In order to show you how sharp this lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following page.