Sony was darn smart to enlist Zeiss to produce their lenses...
Not enough to switch to Sony for me, though. I can use tons of Zeiss lenses on my Canons and the Canon 135 f/2L is just as good (I can live with the 1/3 stop speed loss), should I decide to buy it again (I owned it for 8 months and sold it because it was just a bit too long for me.)
So far, all ZA lenses are pretty amazing. Good job Sony and Zeiss.
If they add a wide prime (21mm), normal prime (50 makro?), and some sort of 100 makro to the ZA lens lineup, that would be a system that would become more attractive than Canon and Nikon! Ahh!!
RobertP wrote:
So far, all ZA lenses are pretty amazing. Good job Sony and Zeiss.
If they add a wide prime (21mm), normal prime (50 makro?), and some sort of 100 makro to the ZA lens lineup, that would be a system that would become more attractive than Canon and Nikon! Ahh!!
It's a very attractive lens, no doubt – and of course it's new and shiny and lustable, but it's some way off being a system yet: the wide angles will make or break it, and they're the hardest to get right. The promised 'fast wide prime' and 'fast wide zoom' are crucial.
But offer me (in September?) a 1Ds III + 135/2 L, or a 24.6MP Sony + Zeiss 135/1/8 with 2-3 stops IS and it's a no-brainer. I don't understand why Canon has been so slow to equip their fast lenses with IS, but it will hurt them soon enough, I fear.
Though I'm very glad Zeiss are on board the Sony Express, Zeiss and Minolta actually make a real monkey's wedding in terms of imaging characteristics: typically the lenses draw completely differently. But at 135mm, Sony full frame users are spoilt for choice: the fast, AF, super-sharp Zeiss, or the limpid qualities of the manual focus Minolta STF – all stabilised . . . neither Canon nor Nikon can compete at that focal length.
The Sony ZA lens collection is becoming more attractive day by day. But I'm not going to switch yet. I love manual focus and this is the main reason why I use the Canon/Contax combination. Will still be waiting for Zeiss to release the ZF lenses in Eos mount, and perhaps add the 135mm and 24-70mm, though I believe this would be difficult as they must have some exclusivity contract with Sony. My photography got much better after I sold all my AF lenses, so I'm not going that way again, unless the A900 is equipped with good focusing screens. I'm not sure how suitable are the ZA for MF, anyone with first hand experience?
Never said that Photozone's "test" was ideal. It is far from it. I made no comment about the test itself. I never said that the performance of this lens should be good based on the Photozone test. The performance of this lens is far from "proved", in my book. Any initial thoughts on this lens that I have formed are due to the published MTF's and data by Sony (with appropriate compensation for the exaggerated way they measure MTF's)
Only 2 points on an APS camera for a full frame lens is inadequate. Subjective measurement in uncontrolled environments and conditions is fraught with potential errors and inaccuracies. The standard measurement error of these types of tests is huge. The value is even further reduced if you average your measurement across different focus distances -- the resulting numbers don't tell you anything about how the lens will perform in a given situation. I'm sorry, but taping a few test patterns to the wall and photographing them and running some software, doesn't make for an accurate or reliable test. There is a reason why optical companies don't do it this way, there is a reason why they make significant investments in laboratories, test beds, and measuring equipment -- so they can eliminate sources of bias in the test, so they can adequately control for the range of factors that can influence the the result, remove subjectivity and human fallibility, and be confident in the accuracy and reliability of their measurements.
But this is the internet. Anyone can put up a website and sell it as more than it is. There is still the implicit perception in the general public that if someone has a website it must be right. That fallacy is exploited everyday, every minute and every second on the internet. Certainly some are more explicitly fraudulent than others, but these rinky-dink, home-brew, un-trained and ill-equipped, pass-yourself-off-like-you-know-what-you're-doing lens test sites (of whatever scale) are no exception. It all about driving people to your site and collecting ad revenue. Most people don't know what is accurate, or reliably and appropriately done. Feed them any sort of makeshift "test", masquerade as an authority, advertise your commercial website in all the appropriate forums (like this one) and drive the sheep to click over to your site and then collect the advertising. Sorry. You brought it up.
Lotusm50 wrote:
It all about driving people to your site and collecting ad revenue. ... advertise your commercial website ... and drive the sheep to click over to your site and then collect the advertising.
really? ad revenue? that's the reason people put lens reviews up? are you serious?
jabog6 wrote:
Makes you wonder how competitively they are planning to price their flagship, if the lenses are priced at a premium.
Yep, I don't understand their strategy at all. They should be selling the camera body for at least 30% less than the equivalent Canon so get people into the system. If they only 'match' Canon's quality and price, they have no carrot to attract people over to a new system.
I for one enjoy lens reviews that are subjective....since our craft is subjective, it is sometimes easier to quantify a lens' strengths and weaknesses from simple observation, with limited lab testing than it is from strict lab testing only.
Also...I really like eosslr's site...one of the few sites around that takes a good close look at the alternative lenses we all love here.
foto-z wrote:
Yep, I don't understand their strategy at all. They should be selling the camera body for at least 30% less than the equivalent Canon so get people into the system. If they only 'match' Canon's quality and price, they have no carrot to attract people over to a new system.
my guess is that for sony it's all about economies of scale at this point. the logic is same as with playstation or their lcd tvs - the costs of production for most products, including electronics goes down with volume and over time, so they are trying to maximize the profit not for the immediate time but for some future point, let's say one or two years from now. hence the initial price, which can be quite low, in reality becomes quite profitable over time. the problem with them is that slr business is relatively new to them, so the costs are probably quite high at the moment.
then there's the issue of mount wars - price for most electronics, including cameras, goes down pretty fast these days, while the price for lenses does not... like with computer gaming consoles for example where sony/microsoft make most money on games (and even loose a little bit of money on the console itself), camera companies make more money on lenses, hence the strategy to proliferate the market as quickly as possible to get the mount adopted and get the fat profits from selling lenses... so sony will definitely need to get that adoption going and price is probably going to be a major issue here.
I can tell you, this lens is all that these and some other tests say it it. Nearly made me switch over to the Sony A700... like really nearly. This and the 85 1.4, image stabilized , and I was wondering if it was time to go over.
There was a few other things lacking for me though at this stage. Never know, I may one day have one.
