Zeiss’s T* coating is well known in the photography community to be highly effective in dealing with flaring and ghosting in backlit situations, but come to think of it, is this really true?
I’m certainly not a Zeiss-guru per se, but I’ve had various Zeiss lenses come and go in my kit. I’ve always thought of the T* coating as just an advertising gimmick, but this might just be me. This notion of mine comes from experiences shooting against the sun and getting lens flare and ghosting on my pictures that I normally don’t get on, let’s say, pictures shot from my Nikkkor lenses. (Not to say I don’t like flaring and ghosting here, though.)
I’ve come a long way from shooting T-coated Zeiss Opton-Sonnar 50mm F1.5 to lenses that are more recent like the Sonnar 35mm F2 on the RX1/RX1R and other Sony-Zeiss lenses on my A7’s, and I do recognize significant improvements that Zeiss has made in the digital era. However, I really don’t get the hype whenever something’s being advertised to have been coated with Zeiss T*.
Lens coating technology is getting so good these days that I might just be nitpicking here. These Zeiss lenses are certainly better (in an objective way of thinking) than those super vintage lenses that tend to produce low-contrast and foggy images.
So is it better than the past? Hell yeah, but this doesn’t say much though.
Should people give into the hype of T* marketing? Yeah… Probably not.