Zeiss Touit E 12mm F/2.8 For Sony

The Zeiss Touit E 12mm f/2.8 is a high-quality wide-angle lens designed for APS-C Sony E-mount cameras and camcorders. Key features include:

• Great for landscape and architectural photography

• Total compatibility with Sony E-mount camera features

• Distagon optical design for high-quality images

• Durable metal construction

Wide-Angle E-Mount Lens. With a 35mm-equivalent focal length of 18mm, the Touit 12mm is a great option for landscape and architectural photography. It features full electronic compatibility with Sony E-mount camera features, including autofocus, exposure control, and EXIF data.

Optical Design. Based on the classic Distagon design, the Touit 12mm features a floating-element construction that uses two aspherical elements and three partial-dispersion elements. This provides images with low chromatic aberrations and distortion while offering increased sharpness and even illumination. Each element has Carl Zeiss T* anti-reflective coatings to help minimize reflections and boost image clarity and microcontrast. A nine-blade, nearly circular aperture renders out-of-focus highlights.

Durable Build. The Touit line of lenses is constructed with durable metal barrels that feature rubberized control rings for improved manual-focus performance over most available E-mount lenses. Its all-metal bayonet mount ensures a solid camera/lens connection.

This is an expensive lens, but the best wide-angle lens available for E-mount. That doesn’t make it perfect, though. The corners are a bit distorted and soft even when you stop down a bit. It’s sti…

This is an expensive lens, but the best wide-angle lens available for E-mount. That doesn’t make it perfect, though. The corners are a bit distorted and soft even when you stop down a bit. It’s still better than anything else available and superbly sharp across most of the field. But if you were hoping this would be like the Zeiss 21mm for SLRs, you’ll be a bit disappointed by the corners.

Also, for videographers, note that this lens is ‘fly-by-wire’ focusing. The manual focus ring simply actuates the electric focusing motor, so you can’t focus without power, and the focusing motor will be audible on sound tracks made with in-camera microphones.

June, 2013