Zeiss Distagon 15mm/2.8 ZM and Leica M11-P

 I have been eyeing this Lens since 2014 but, for one reason or another, I have been giving myself excuses not to purchase it. When I explored recently in eBay and with other retailers for a used copy, I found a nicely maintained copy and bought it.

Things I like:

• It reminded me of my Distagon 15mm/2.8 Zf.2 on my Nikon system. Because of the diligently designed optics, it yielded very nice color saturation, crisp delineated lines and resolution that presented itself as a "touchable" image, so to speak. Absolutely thrilled to have this on my M11-P.
• A wider perspective than my 21mm 'Lux ASPH (when I need it)

Things I do not like:

• Not rangefinder coupled: this meant that I do not get the zoomed-in peak focus aid; albeit, I still get focus peaking. This is really not a big deal because, in general, the giant DoF covers almost everything, except for one situation when you are around 0.3m away from the subject and the aperture is at f/2.8

Nuances:

The Lens was designed and built during the earlier digital days when stacked CMOS is not a common occurrence; so, it came with a center-weighted ND filter to fool the exposure meter into reducing the vignetting. This specialty Zeiss T* coated filter listed for around $600 during its release time. As of 2025, we have stacked CMOS sensors which are able to siphon off very oblique light rays coming in from this lens. 

This meant :

1. no more color cast
2. no more grotesque vignetting

I have played around with it and here is what I discovered: to get the best image if you have the sky broadly across the frame, you may

1. either use the provided ND filter and a adjust vignetting manually in LR  (with no Lens profile chose) or
2. remove the ND filter and use the Lens Profile (for this Lens)  provided by LR

Do NOT use both or you will get patchy skies. Based on my own discoveries, it is best to use option [2] as it provides the best sky image. Looks like the newer sensors have made that ND filter irrelevant. Below are a few sample images tracing my discovery process.

 

Using BOTH the LR Lens profile and the center-weighted ND filter yielded a patchy sky due to cross interference between the two corrections

Using the filter WITHOUT Lens Profile in LR but adjusting the vignetting manually in LR. It's decent.

Lastly, with filter removed and choosing the Lens Profile in LR for this Lens. Sky looked like it came from a regular lens.