Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 Hands On Lens Review Does this "older" lens design stand the test of time?

In this video, photographer, Christopher Frost, takes a look at the Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 for APS-C cameras (both Sony E mount and Fujifilm X mount).

Build quality is good and the lens feels nice in the hand and the focus ring (which is fly by wire) and has a nice rubber on it turns nicely.

The AF system of this lens is outdated, it isn’t slow but it tends to hunt a bit and you can definitely hear it. For stills, this might be sort of acceptable but we would not recommend it for video based on Frost’s tests.

Sharpness wide open in the middle of the image is good by contrast isn’t very good and the corners are also not great. At f/2.8 image quality becomes very good and it stays that way up to f/11.

The lens seems to have a lot of barrel distortion and quite a bit of darkening in the corners (so turn on the in-camera correction when using it. Close up focus wide open is not super sharp (at 30cm) so you need to close down to f/2.8 to get some nice sharp images. This lens also seems to have a lot of flaring against bright light. Bokeh is also not amazing.

This is a relatively old Zeiss design (for an E-mount lens) and it shows, both in terms of image quality and AF capabilities, there are better and certainly cheaper options around (including Sony’s own 35mm f/1.8 APS-C lens which is both stabilized, has better AF and cost about 2/3).

As for pricing the Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 sells for $720.

You can find many more previews and reviews on our Photography review section here on LensVid and you can find more of Frost’s videos here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *