Carl Zeiss lens appreciation thread

James J

James J

James J

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Howdy all,

Thought I'd start a thread on the Carl Zeiss lens line up, as I know some people own them, so would be a good place to share images and mini reviews. Doesn't matter what camera system its on, its the lens I'm interested in!

I'd like to see some Sony A7/A7R and Fuji X users results especially! Film shots are also most welcome.

So far I've got 1 Zeiss lens, but I'm looking at another for the not to distant future. Zeiss are well known for their 3D appearance, superb bokeh and pleasing colour tones.
 
Beautiful lens characteristics don't just rely on sharpness and how well the lens handles distortion. Lenses like these are often built for specific jobs, such as the 50mm being a portrait and photo journalist lens. Being slightly soft in the corners means nothing in that regard. Stick with the clinical lenses from canikon if you don't want the look of a zeiss prime.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I've heard this term before, when they describe a Zeiss lens as soft, they call it "Zeiss soft".

What does that mean?
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Probably something similar to how a Leica 50m noctilux F1.0 renders its images wide open. Not super sharp by todays "standards", but has a nice glow characteristic that makes it stand out.
 
Raymond Lin said:
It's hard to get my head round the worlds Soft and nice glow is actually a good thing.

I am sure a soft image stands out, I just find it difficult to imagine that it is good, unless it is intentional, like buying a soft focus lens.
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Very similar to a soft focus lens. Retains a lot of detail but not to the point of the clinical sharpness that people seem to get a boner over nowadays. Some of the best photos ever taken in the last 100 years where taken using lenses that weren't super sharp of had sharpness throughout the entire frame etc. People who crave such pointless things as that need to get a life tbh and take more pictures.

As for my new 50mm, it's extremely sharp in the centre (more than the summilux in fact) and has softer edges. This is on a sensor without an aa filter so the sharpness is easily noticed. Can't tell the difference in this in terms of sharpness compared to my fantastic leica 35 f2, which also produced stunning results wide open.
 
So, somewhere, we said that Zeiss = professional? I don't know whats worse, justifying why you like a particular brand/item or justifying why you don't lol.

The fact is, those L lenses you love so much are enormous compares to ZM mount primes especially. They are also fitted onto a body that isn't exactly pocketable and requires a decent sized bag to stick it in on a trip out somewhere. Where as you gain autofocus, I gain the convience of size. Walk around with a DSLR around your neck and take some photos and you get noticed in no time, do the same with my camera and people don't even bat an eyelid.

As for the lenses (and a bit more ontopic), the build quality of my 50mm F1.5 C Sonnar ZM feels near enough the same as my leica lenses. The entire thing is metal with no plastic apart from the little blue dot (compared to the red one on leica lenses). No tacky plastic that creeks when you hold it :P

I'd recommend getting hold of something like a fuji x system and have a play with one in full manual mode. You'll get a vague idea of what its like to shoot a leica M series if you do that. Theres something far more interesting and fun about having to do everything yourself, especially when its so tactile. Makes the results even more fun to achieve. Compare that to most DSLR users now relying on auto iso and keeping the aperture at its widest for everything, resulting in turning their expensive setup into a glorified point and shoot. Where is the fun in that?!
 
Raymond Lin said:
Andy, that jumping shot is just an example. Look at both threads and you will see that almost all the Zeiss shots are full of things that don't move, and the thread is seriously lacking in any commercial work samples. As that that jumping shot, sure enough if you set it up and ask the guy to jump you will do it, but its another matter to do it looking through the viewfinder, turn the barrel to get it in focus after you see him taking a run and about to jump. That is a totally different ball game.

I am not saying you NEED an AF lens for professional work, or people never used MF stuff in the past or that they don't do it now. MF has a place still. All I am saying is from what I am seeing on those threads, evidence in front of you, as opposed to taking a stab as the whole wild world out there. It's not a theory, it's just what I see right there.

James

As above.

And I have an MF lens, in fact, because of the tilting, the whole exposure system goes out of wack so I end up manual expose anyway on the fly. I've done it, i know how to do it. But, (there is always a but).

Traditional camera (or your Leica) has a split focus screen, even the Fuji has focus peek. Modern DSLR actually don't and most removed the options for you to change it (My 5Dii can, but only a 3rd party one. The 5Diii can't). So it has now become more difficult than it was 30 years ago to focus with a manual lens on a modern DSLR. The bodies and controls are not designed for it anymore so the user experience has gone out the window along wit hit. It isn't interesting or fun to squint your eyes into the viewfinder and having to guess whether it is in focus. The most you will get is the red square blink if you have it in focus....then again, that's just the computer saying so, rather than a visual confirmation from a split focus screen. Trust me, it is rather unnerving, not fun.

p.s. no tacky plastic on my 85L either or my 45mm TS or the 24L...apart from the red ring, I think the ring is plastic.
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Yeah I remember the focus screens could be changed on my old 5d mk ii. A lot of studio work doesn't involve moving targets, so MF lenses would be fine in that setting. Not all professional work is of a moving target.
 
Ksanti said:
That's not a valid argument against someone's credibility any more than saying "oh you bought it you must be fanboy". The decision to buy something or not is symptomatic of their views on the product not causal 99% of the time.

I take the build argument, sure, but the IQ just isn't there in a lot of the Zeiss lenses so it becomes spending up to 5 times the cost of that IQ just for the build and lack of autofocus. If I wanted something soft wide open I'd have bought a Nikon 50 1.4D, or gone even older. The MF experience is definitely better when I've used manual only lenses, but I think it's hardly surprising that people find it difficult to understand spending top-end DSLR money for the sake of middling image quality, MF and good build quality
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Which zeiss lenses are crap then? You seem to talk like an authority on their lens line up. The new 50 I've got is sharper in the centre at f1.5 than the Nikon 50 f1.4g is at f2 and has better bokeh. How do I know that? Owned both.
 
Ksanti said:
I'm talking primarily of the DSLR lineup not the M mount stuff which is completely irrelevant to my uses. As DP mentioned the Planar 50 and 85 1.4's are very average performers and very expensive with it. The Otus might be great but it goes completely away from your ideal of a simple optical construction and it's ridiculously expensive with it. There are a lot of gems in the lineup, sure, but they're almost all very expensive and compared to some of the first party and even third party options they look like very questionable value propositions. I'm not saying Zeiss has no merits I'm saying it's hardly surprising that lenses that cost as much as the best lenses in the Canikon lineups are then criticised for not matching up optically, so obviously questions such as Raymond's are going to come up and a simple of retort of "god why do people care about IQ get a life and spend £1k on a lens never mind the performance" type responses isn't really going to do much to convince anyone.
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Thats fair enough mate. I've never used a ZEISS prime on a DSLR so wouldn't know how they perform, but like Ray said, the manual focus on DSLR's now is just laughable as its pretty much not supported. Fuji X system did the right thing making the focus peaking, which is bringing manual focus back to users in a good way.
 
danoliver1 said:
If the thread was called carl zeiss lenses vs nikon and canon lenses then i would agree but its not, if you want to post about how good your nikon lenses are then do it in a nikon thread not a carl zeiss one. Iam only interested in zeiss and the thoughts of zeiss users.
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Soon! Its absolutely belting it down outside with thunder and lightning to boot. Not going out in that lol.
 
Due to the poor weather and truly awful schedule I have at the moment, I'm really struggling to find the time to put this lens through its paces, however I did nip out for a few minutes yesterday between the rain and took this:


In the way by jjohnson2012, on Flickr

On a complete tangent, I've stopped any major editing on my shots and started shooting jpeg. What you see is what my camera took. The black and white jpegs from a leica camera are stunning imo and provoke me to shoot more with it, which is nice!
 
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