The manual-focus Zeiss Otus 55mm is far from your average lens, not only in terms of price, but also in size and weight. At over two pounds of metal and glass, the Zeiss has total of 12 elements in 10 groups, including 1 aspherical element, as well as 6 elements made of a special glass with anomalous partial dispersion, which are designed to significantly reduce any chromatic aberrations. Furthermore, the 9-bladed rounded aperture helps ensure pleasingly smooth background blur.

At 55mm, the Zeiss 55mm ƒ/1.4 Otus is slightly longer than your classic 50mm focal length for the full-frame shooter, but still gives you a nice, fairly standard field of view. The competition for a fast 50mm lens is a crowded space, not only from the new Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art, but also from Zeiss's own 50mm ƒ/1.4 Planar T* lens, and not mention the handful of other manufacturers. The alternatives from Canon and Nikon include relatively average 50/1.4s on the low end, with Nikon offering the slightly longer, more portrait-specific 58mm ƒ/1.4 Nikkor on the high end, and Canon the brighter 50mm ƒ/1.2 L.

However, this Zeiss 55mm lens is in a category all its own. The Otus line is intended to be Zeiss's premiere, high performance series of optics, of which this 55mm lens is the first