Taken with a Contax 400mm f/4 N-AF Zeiss Tele-APO Tessar T* AF on 1DS3 @F/4.0

how heavy is that lens?

Very nice! Must be an expensive beast!

A

Paul, the lens weighs in at 3580 g according to Zeiss.

Anden, less than the Canon DO and significantly sharper!

andrew, can you show 100% crop?

This is an unsharpened crop:

oooohhhh.... sweet !!!

And how many of these were made.... ?
I can already feel the prices on these rising as I type this.

I'm trying to decide if I should sell my 300/2.8 to get one of these rare babes.

Bad move or not? The 400 lens plus the cost of conversion will run about the same as a good quality used 300/2.8.

God above, I just bought one, why did I ever register on this forum...

You can't buy a lens on just 2 pictures....
you have to see at least three pictures.......

You mean a 100% crop doesn't count as a third? Nooo!

Okay....I'll give it 1/2 point....

really...that looks like an amazing lens.
I'm still debating whether I should get the Mamiya Apo 300/2.8....
I wish I could make a decision as fast as you...

Lust is a bad thing.

Buying an out of production expensive camera lens is a bad thing.

Paying someone a thousand dollars to take it apart sounds like a bad thing.

All three together sounds like a very bad thing.

So what am I waiting for ?

Here is a crop of the second image, again at F/4.0 hand held with a little sharpening

Notice how nice the transition to OOF is...

DocsPics wrote:
I'm trying to decide if I should sell my 300/2.8 to get one of these rare babes.

Bad move or not? The 400 lens plus the cost of conversion will run about the same as a good quality used 300/2.8.

Get em while they are cheap, you can buy a 300/2.8 anytime

Looks like the focus was slightly in front of the ducklings, or on the first ones elbow.
Well either way, in about three months time or so I'll have a few shots of my own to compare.

Oh, and that 100% crop completes the required three shots to buy a lens!

I probably moved the lens while shooting hand held, I was using one shot AF BTW.

The lens is significantly sharper than my 400mm DO, it rivals my Canon 500mm for image quality with better bokeh. The AF is slower.

I will have more images to post soon.

Keep em coming!

This thread is going to cost me some seroius money.