One of the best “bang for the bucks” out there.
Its strongest point is the colour rendition, tipically Zeiss despite the Yashica lineage.
The first weakest point is the relatively vast amount of flare when shot in backlight (otherwise it would have scored a full 4 stars).
Its second weakness is that the macro focus range starts at an odd distance – 1.7 meters! -, and because the focus is splitted between the normal manual focus ring and the macro one, that makes difficult to take pictures at typical reportage distances.
A solution is to focus near or at the minimum distance with the primary focus ring and then to use the macro one to follow the subjects. However this is more of a nuisance than a deal breaker.
Overall a great performer, pretty sharp at both ends, that you may buy used for the price of a Contax metal hood alone: 60 euro more or less.
At this price definitely a “must have”.
Rating: 
on Canon 5D Mark II
UPDATE: quite surprisingly this lens performs quite a lot better on the – supposedly more demanding – A7r sensor than it did on the Canon 5D Mark II. Go figure…
Rating: on Sony A7r
