Anyone has any experience of using this tiny little Tessar lens on the 1Ds or 1DMk2? On paper (MTF), it is as good as or better than the 50f1.7 Planar. This lens is so small that it is almost invisible .

Son says you have to stop down to about f/8 or f/11 to get zeiss resolving power.

Carson

Carson,
Thank you for the info. The lens is so tiny that it looks very funny on a 'big' 1 series body . I am just curious.

In the film days you the 45mm is an exotic lens and rare to get but now you can find this lens very easily in the time when Zeiss glass is in high demand and are rare to find. Thus, the conclusion of the market availability dictate the value of this lens now.

Like Carson said don't bother with it. The good thing about this lens is that it has no CA. All of my information that I gave out on the 45mm pancake should be credited to Michael Broomfield.

-Son

I recently got one for my AX and 20D. Haven't used it on the AX yet, but the balance factor on the 20D (without grip) is really weird. My next-lightest lens (a EF 50mm 1.8 II) is nearly 50% heavier (130g vs 90g), and the 50mm's longer length further helps with the distribution. Adding a 580EX to the 20D and 45mm Tessar is even weirder!

I haven't taken a lot of pictures yet, but I like the color & sharpness of what seen so far.

Bill

As Son said I did several tests with this lens and found it soft in the far corners unless stopped down. However it has absolutely NO chromatic abberation that I could find. Even on my 21mm Distagon I can find a very small amount.

I'm keeping mine as a tiny normal lens for my Rebel XT. I can fit it in a jacket pocket with that set up.

Mike

I'll let you guys know, I had to try it. It should be here by the weekend. It's alittle wider, so I'd expect it to be a good street lens, plus it's so tiny! It may look funny on the 1Ds, but not as funny as a 24-70L with the coffee can lens hood attached. With the 45 attached, the 1-series isn't too noticeable.

oh, great, now i'm tempted to buy a rebel XT just to slap a pancake on it...

-erik

Guy Mancuso wrote:
Mike I like the Rebel idea. Okay guy's Blair had one of these and the images were nice .....
I bought Blair's

I'll see if I kept the images, not sure if I did. If so I'll post some with the corner crops (from a 1Ds)...

Should be late tonight if I still have them

Yep, I bought E+ from KEH last night. I'm not expecting it to outpeform anything - it's strictly an ergonomic purchase. If it's decent at F5.6 on up, then life is good. The edges won't too be bad - it's 45mm, so hardly a feat of engineering.

It doesn't surprised me that there is no or with minimal CA as it is such a simple 4 element design. Whether you call it the pancake or eagle eye, it is such a weird little thing, which in a way is so cute. Yes, people will think you don't even have a lens on your 1Ds as it is so tiny. Thank you for the info, guys. I may have to test it out once I receive my Contax/EOS adapter.

I compared the Tessar to the 24-70L at 45mm setting even though they aren't quite the same. The corner crop is not identical in position, but there's loads of detail and it's obvious where the softness starts and where it begins to clear up (F16 in my opinion). This was done on a 1Ds (before I sold it). The raw files were processed using DPP, no CA correction done. I couldn't find any CA on the Tessar even at 200%.

I don't have anything from the L below f8. I will post a couple of center crops at the end, but I only have the full image at f8L vs f11Tessar and the exposure is not the same so fine comparison's are not possible, but just looking at the images it's obvious there's no clear winner.

Mike

L, F8 corner

L f11 corner

L f16 corner

Tessar 2.8 corner

Tessar F5.6 corner (not sure where F4 went )

Tessar F8 corner...getting better

Tessar F11 corner

Tessar F16 corner

Tessar F11 centre crop

L F8 centre crop

This was the whole image....45 T F11