My offer to test the ones you have against Canon prime glass remains open
Yeah, yeah, I kinda expected a message from you here about now
When a good time (that I for sure won't need my lenses for a while) comes I still want to do that. I'm also waiting to see if someone (maybe Michael) will test the 1dsMKII with Zeiss lenses and his Canon ultrawide(s). That would take care of two issues at once (Canon vs Zeiss and 1ds vs 1dsII). In the meantime, it's a little hard to disregard a massive body of test results and reviews, including Photodo. Your Canon 17-35mm Photodo 3.2. Distagon 28mm Photodo 4.3. That's not a small difference and Photodo testing is not to be casually dismissed. There's also the matter of my own tests. They're not so comprehensive and also not super precise, but all my test results have made sense and not been totally out of line with everybody else's. How do YOU explain that everybody else got it wrong about Zeiss???
We all want our own stuff to be the best and no doubt my views also get distorted by this phenomenon, but the fact remains that yours is a lone voice about poor quality Zeiss distagons and your report of extremely good Canon 17-35 all around sharpness at 17mm is also pretty unique.
I think the only way I could really feel totally settled with this is if I come to your house some time with my stuff and we both oversee the testing to be sure we're both happy about methodology. I'm serious about that. Once I get my camper done (slow tedious project) I could head your way from Yosemite some time and do a little seashore shooting on the way home. I think whatever conclusions we come up with that way would be pretty rock solid and worth sharing with everybody. I don't even mind if the results make me look like a dummy. Nothing new there. I want to learn and not necessarily win points for having the "prettiest" opinions on the forum.
Hey, do you know anyone that will be getting a 1ds MKII? It would be really cool to do a full on lens and camera "test-a-thon", even if it turns out that some other folks will be doing this too. You can never have too much information. Maybe we could even scrounge a copy of that supposedly ultra fabulous new Tamron 17-35mm.