Zeiss ZF 21mm now in hand
Please see previous comments.
I have the Zeiss ZF 21mm f/2.8 DIstagon in hand. It’s a beautifully-built lens, with a narrow barrel compared to its flaring “business end”, quite similar to the 18/3.5 Distagon. The lens hood is moderately large, and looks almost weapon-like.
Initial (very limited) image quality impressions are of a very highly corrected lens, with excellent control of lateral chromatic aberration (color fringing), very high sharpness throughout most of the frame. Corners are a little weak, but so too with the Nikon 14-24 zoom, and it doesn’t get any better than that so far.
Tomorrow I plan to make the first direct comparison as well as some more extensive field shooting. I also have a second sample on the way to compare lens-to-lens variation, which tends to be minimal with the ZF line compared to Nikon and Canon. Click the image to buy one at B&H Photo.
My findings will be posted in detail in Zeiss ZF Lenses, but a full evaluation will take at least several weeks.