Zeiss 100mm f2.0 ZE Makro-Planar: Initial Impressions

This summer, I treated myself to the Zeiss 100mm f2.0 ZE Makro-Planar Manual Focus lens.  This completes my "holy trinity" collection, as I have -- and absolutely love -- the Zeiss 25mm f2.0 and Zeiss 50mm f2.0, too.

As for my initial impressions of the lens:

Sharpness/Clarity:
It has state-of-the-art performance and is one of the sharpest lenses in the world.  This is one of the reason I was attracted to it.

For example, here is a photo that is completely unedited, sooc (straight-out-of-camera):

This image at full resolution is 5,616 x 3,744 pixels.

Did you happen to notice the bee in the center of the frame?

Just cropping the center, we get an idea of the sharpness of the lens:

I was roughly 5 feet away from the bee, yet without a tripod, I was able to get an in-focus shot which is clear enough to show tons of dust in the bee's wings!  This would even be a challenge for auto-focus lenses, especially in terms of yielding this level of clarity.

Color Rendition:
In short, I love the warm colors/temperatures that the Zeiss lenses tend to render.

Build:
The lens is entirely metal; no plastic, as is the case with all other Zeiss ZE and ZF lenses.  It feels like a tank and is heavier than Canon L series lenses.

Manual-Focus:
Aside from the price, for most people this is definitely the most off-putting feature of Zeiss ZE/ZF lenses.  I find that the lack of auto-focus makes photography more fun for me -- it makes me think about shots more, and it challenges me.  Sure, every once in a while I'll miss a shot, but I'm willing to make this sacrifice for all of the other benefits Zeiss lenses yield.

Nonetheless, I admit that this 100mm lens is more difficult to focus with than the Zeiss 25mm and Zeiss 50mm.  All 3 lenses have a very long throw, which is incredibly useful for manually focusing.  However, it's only due to the nature of the shots that makes the 100mm more difficult to focus properly.  For example, when shooting at 25mm, you are usually taking landscape photos.  Thus, it's easy to focus at infinity or near-infinity and have all of the landscape in focus.  At 50mm, you're often focusing on things up-close (a la macro shots) or landscapes -- pretty easy.  However, at 100mm, you're often focusing on things that are between 5 and 20 feet away, so you have a much smaller target/range for focusing properly.

Yet, the throw is buttery smooth, and it's enjoyable to use.  Plus, I've swapped out my internal focusing screen with the EG-S screen, which helps make focusing easier, and the Canon 5d Mark II allows for an focus-notification whereby the focus points light up and a beep will sound when I focus on something that is recognized as being in focus.  This helps a lot.

tl;dr
I love the Zeiss 100mm, it's insanely sharp, and I aim to use it much more than I was using my Canon 135mm f2.0L.