Fast forward a few months and I have the FE 16-35mm f4 OSS lens in my hand. The FD lenses neither gave an 'old' rendering to match my other lenses or gave a modern rendering for commercial work. I'd given up on my search for 'old' rendering wides with decent IQ so went for broke and decided to invest in a wide angle that could do anything commercial that I could throw at it. I had been thinking of the Zeiss 18mm f3.5 but the FE Zeiss zoom was the same price, far more lens and just a 1/3 of a stop slower. I'll be testing it soon at my usual test scene, weather permitting.
My first AF lens for my A7r, the AF isn't as bad as I was led to expect, the ability to tune focus point size is nice and the spread and amount of focus points is utterly amazing, so very useful with an UWA lens. The only really annoying thing is that the back wheel/button arrangement is such that you're clicking the AF point around then the camera decides that you're rotating the wheel instead and you're changing AF point size. Not the only thing that makes this wheel/button combination so annoying to use, scrolling around a magnified image is as annoying. Heck Maybe I'll just gaffer the wheel to stop it turning.
The lens itself is smaller than I thought from pictures and balances nicely on the camera. The zoom wheel turns the nikon direction (which surprised me) and the knurling is extremely fine, to the extent that I'm going to stick a rubber band on it just to give more friction on my fingers. The fine knurling is also annoying in that it's hard to find the zoom ring without 'looking' compared to on a Canon/Nikon lens. The focus ring right next to the zoom ring, touching it almost. Far too easy to turn by accident when zooming. Honest opinion? It's a very sleek design aesthetically but not the most practical design. The zoom ring is very stiff, the focus ring too loose. I'm assuming the zoom ring will loosen with use but for the price I'd expected better to be honest. Lacking is both an AF/MF and OSS on/off switches and distance scale. All of which are accessed through the menu. Again aesthetically pleasing but not practical or ergonomic.
I haven't done any testing but one thing is immediately apparent even in the viewfinder. The contrast is on another level compared to any of my Pentax or FD lenses. So much clearer and sharper. This looks to achieve what all the reviews have said about it.