Introduction

About a year after the release of the Zeiss Otus 28mm 1.4 Distagon – to the surprise of many – Zeiss released this Zeiss Milvus 25mm 1.4 Distagon. Almost as complex optical design, almost as big, almost as heavy, but “only” half the price – making it the most expensive lens of the Milvus lineup. What are you giving up in terms of performance compared to the 28mm Otus? Let’s try to find out in this review.

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Specifications

The EF-mount (ZE) version of this Zeiss Milvus 25mm 1.4 Distagon has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 96 mm
  • Field of view: 81.2° (diagonally)
  • Length: 117 mm
  • Weight: 1140g (without hood[g], without caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 82 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 15/13
    
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.25 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:4.6 (measured)
  • Mount: Nikon F (ZF.2) | Canon EF (ZE)

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Handling/Build quality

The Milvus lenses feature the same casing design as the higher end Otus lenses (and also the Batis and Touit lenses), but not everyone was happy with the design choices made by Zeiss here, let me tell you why.

The lens features a big rubberized focus ring. It rotates 172° from infinity to the minimum focus distance of 0.25 m. For me the resistance of the focus ring could also be a bit higher, but that is a matter of personal taste to some degree.

I am not a big fan of the rubber used for the focus ring (and aperture ring of the ZF.2 version). It already doesn’t smell particularly nice and I have severe doubts about its longevity. It also attracts all kind of debris.

The casing seems to be made of some kind of metal and is a bit shiny and slippery. All the markings are engraved and filled with paint.

The lens ships with a bayonet type lens hood but I bought a used one that came without it. The lens certainly looks nicer with the hood attached, but it makes the whole package even bulkier and harder to carry around.

The lens also doesn’t feature a tripod foot, considering its weight I would have liked one though.

The 82mm filter thread is surely more manageable than the Zeiss Otus 28mm 1.4‘s 95mm one, but it is still bigger than that of any other 24mm 1.4 lens (Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM: 77mm, Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM: 67mm).

This is a review of the EF version which can easily be adapted to E-mount and Z-mount cameras.

Vignetting

light falloff

This is another one of those cases, that clearly shows: a huge lens does not equal low vignetting figures. In fact these are the highest vignetting figures I have seen from a ~24mm 1.4 lens yet. The Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM show about 2/3 of a stop less vignetting at the maximum aperture as does the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus. The Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II shows similar but still slightly lower vignetting figures. 

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

The fast 24mm 1.4 lenses I reviewed didn’t encounter severe issues in this category and that is again the case here – they all perform similar here.

However, one thing that caught me by surprise are the pronounced onion ring structures. The Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II are hardly better, but the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus featured aspherical elements with way smoother surfaces and I would have expected the same here. Not the case.

Sharpness

MTF-Graphs

The MTF graphs promise an impressive performance at f/1.4 in the center of the frame and the inner midframe, in the outer midframe and the corners we do see a notable amount of astigmatism though. Stopped down to f/4.0 the astigmatism is significantly lowered.

It is interesting to compare these graphs to those for the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus. In the center of the frame this 25mm Milvus actually shows a higher performance at f/1.4, the Otus has a more even and therefore higher performance farther away from the center though. Stopped down to f/4.0 they look similar with the Otus showing a bit higher resolution in the outer midframe and the corners.

Sadly Zeiss does not publish graphs showing the performance at 20 times the focal length for the Milvus lenses, they only do for the Oti.

Most MTF-Graphs show calculated values that do not take into account manufacturing tolerances and sample variation, so the actual performance in the field may vary.

Focus Shift

I don’t see any focus shift here and we can also see that this lens is better corrected for closer distances than the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II.  

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

Generally the performs I see here in the field matches what I see in the MTF graphs: the center looks good from f/1.4, but midframe and corners are a bit soft and it takes stopping down to f/5.6 for optimal across frame performance.

The Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G looks a bit worse in the corners at wider apertures, but by f/5.6 looks pretty much the same. The Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II I tried never looked great in the corners. The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM looks pretty great already from f/1.4 though.

As this is lens features a floating elements design the correct flange focal distance is crucial for optimal performance. I tested this lens with a metabones as well as a Sigma MC-11 on the Sony A7rII and both gave the same results. The Sigma MC-11 is generally closer to the correct length than the metabones.

portrait distance 0.9 m (42mp Sony A7rII)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

This is what I did here, I refocused for every shot and aperture to get the best possible result at different locations in the frame (center, inner midframe and outer midframe).
Focus distance was roughly 0.9 m and the circle of the dollar bill is more or less the size of a human eye.

f/1.4 <————> f/2.0

In this category I would have hoped for an improvement over the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II, but this is not really the case.

This Zeiss 25mm 1.4 shows very high contrast and resolution in the center of the frame, but already the inner midframe area and especially the outer midframe area is noticeably softer. Also stopping down to f/2.0 doesn’t really cure this.

Both, the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II, have slightly lower performance in the center of the frame, but look better in the midframe area which is something I would prefer for my kind of shooting. 

close 0.25 m, 1:4.6 (42mp Sony A7rII)

As I already prediced in the Focus Shift section this Zeiss lens does perform very well at closer distances. Here the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G is pretty soft and needs to be stopped down to f/2.8 to match the Zeiss’ performance and also the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II is softer at its maximum aperture.  

Flare resistance

As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot. The late Zeiss lenses I tried have generally been pretty good performers here though – especially the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus.

At f/1.4 we can only see some minor artefacts and shooting directly into the sun also the contrast stays on a high level.

Stopped down some issues arise, as we may encounter rather big artefacts and also veiling flare with a strong point light source close to the corner of the frame can be an issue.

From a modern high performance Zeiss lens I expected a bit better in this category, it is still better than what I have seen from the  Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G or the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II, but also clearly worse compared to the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM and the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus.

Coma

Correcting Coma in a fast wide angle lens like this is a really difficult task. As this Zeiss 25mm 1.4 Milvus features a more complex design than either the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G or the Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II, I was hoping it would perform noticeably better in this category. It does in fact perform a bit better, but then not really enough to write home about – especially taking into account this Zeiss lens shows the highest vignetting figures.
If you are looking for a fast ~24mm lens with good Coma correction best have a look at the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM, which performs way better than all of these DSLR designs.

Distortion

The Zeiss 25mm 1.4 Milvus only a low to medium amount of barrel distortion. A correction profile in Lightroom is available, but in many cases I found its correction too strong, setting it to 70% worked better for me.

Bokeh

These fast wide angle lenses are a bit tricky to use for shallow depth of field photography, as you need to be close to your subject for that and then you often have to work around their perspective distortion.

Close Distance

In close focus scenarios the bokeh is generally nice, similar to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G. All lenses in this class also focus similarly close.

Mid Distance

Mid distances are what I like to use lenses like this for the most, because you can show your subject (e.g. a person) but also its slightly out of focus surroundings (see: How to: Create Environmental Portraits). The bokeh looks again similar to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and also the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM. The Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM II looked a bit busier in my testing.

Long Distance

At longer focus distances a wide angle lens will simply not yield as much bokeh as a longer lens with the same maximum aperture, meaning it will be difficult to create a shallow depth of field. Here with complex backgrounds the bokeh also doesn’t look that nice anymore.

If you want to use this lens at wider apertures e.g. for shooting interiors without a tripod you also need to be careful making sure that all the things you want to be in focus actually are.

Sunstars

Just like the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus also this Zeiss 25mm 1.4 Milvus features an aperture diaphragm made of 9 rounded aperture blades. The alignment of the blades is pretty good, so we see decent 18-pointed sunstars with rays of even length from f/8.0 to f/16.
If you want to learn more about this topic have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

Similar to the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus also here we see a medium amount of lateral CA here. This is still easily corrected in post by just one click, so nothing to worry about. 

Once again we have to talk about expectation managment here.

Going by its optical diagram, size, price and release date, I was hoping this Zeiss 25mm 1.4 Milvus would be close in performance to the Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus. Having used both lenses under the same conditions in the same scenarios, I have to say that is not entirely the case.

Despite only featuring one more lens element, the Otus corrects Coma better, has lower vignetting figures, better flare resistance, better sharpness and also creates a nicer bokeh with higher quality aspherical elements. The Otus being even bigger and heavier and – not to mention double the price –  that might not be that much of a surprise though, so how does it compare to the now much cheaper DSLR alternatives from Nikon and Canon?

Generally, this Zeiss 25mm 1.4 Milvus performs a bit better in some of the categories, but enough to warrant double the weight and price while not featuring auto focus? I have my doubts about that.

This Zeiss lens also only somewhat makes sense if you need a lens with EF or F-mount. There is a huge advantage to designing lenses like this for mirrorless cameras and this becomes very obvious when looking at the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM, which shows a better performance in pretty much every category while being cheaper and less than half the weight and size. 

buy from amazon.com | amazon.de | B&H | ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for $2400 (new) or starting at $1300 (used)

If you also consider a 28mm lens as an alternatives, the Sigma 28mm 1.4 Art, the Nikon AF-S 28mm 1.4E, the Nikon AF-D 28mm 1.4 and the Laowa 28mm 1.2 Argus are all part of my Fast 28mm Comparison, so best have a look there first. I also reviewed the Zeiss Otus 28mm 1.4 Apo Distagon.

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• All Zeiss Lens Reviews
• Guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses for Sony FE cameras
• Review: Zeiss 16mm 8.0 Hologon
• Review: Laowa 28mm T1.0 Argus Cine – The World’s fastest 28mm lens
• Technical Knowledge

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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