StevenPA wrote:
but I don't see it as being all that distinct from, say, an EF 24-70 or 24-105,.

I owned a 24-105 for a while, and it was the most "un-Zeiss-like" high-end Canon lens I ever used. My copy produced sharp pics, but flat, lifeless, dull, boring. So if your 24-85 is not better than that...

I don't want to pick apart Wayne's excellent images, but the ihop guy is at ISO800, which kills much of the fine detail and adds a lot of high ISO artifacts. Personally, I see the image as having excellent edge (macro) contrast but a notable absence of micro-contrast in tonal gradations. Most lenses can produce this kind of look. I see no reason why the N50 is superior here.

In the flower shot, again, excellent pic, but my monitor is displaying it as having more painterly qualities (Philber mentions Leica, and maybe I would too). Maybe it's the post processing, which is beautiful in its own right, but not quite what I would call Zeiss punch. As a comparison, Jordan Steele's (I think) C/Y 85/2.8 of the flower patch screams Zeiss punch. That's the look I'm speaking of, and I don't see N lenses producing that.

I don't want to bash N lenses, but am I out in left field thinking that Zeiss N is visually different than Zeiss C/Y or ZF?

zombii wrote:
I have to disagree with your comparison to the EF 24-105 at least. When I got my N 24-85, it was so much better than my EF 24-105 that I sold the 24-105 which I thought I'd never do. The only thing I miss is the extra 20mm but I rarely ever used the lens since it just didn't do that much for me. On the other hand, first time out with the 24-85 and I got images that I really liked and didn't have to tell myself "oh well, it's a zoom". I used the 24-105 a lot in Hawaii last summer and really wish I'd had the 24-85 instead.

Fair enough. I don't like the look of the 24-105 either. There's a flatness about the colours, and the contrast is heavily biased towards edge contrast. If we're talking portraits, the 24-105 produces nice contrast along the jawline and around the eyes (maybe too much), but the more subtle tonal gradations found on cheeks and forehead are flat and boring. This was my major complaint with the EF 85/1.8 too. And to talk again about the N24-85, I really wish it would performed better, like other non-N Zeiss lenses do, on these and other types of gradations of colour.

To keep the pics coming, here's another N24-85 image. 5D, 1/125s f/6.3 at 86.0mm iso100

N 50 f8

Nice images, Apollo13!

No kidding, very nice!

N17-35, N24-85, N85 plus 5DII do architecture ...

N50, N400 plus 5DII love indoor sports:-)
(Muay Thai boxing in Chiang Mai, Thailand; Six Days bike race in Munich)

3 very delightful shots, grasmuc. I was gong to write "delightful" only, but then thought of what Steven might write...
Where were the first two taken please?
And your indoor shots are superb as well. 6400 ISO with a 400 lens, and a useable result!

philber wrote:
3 very delightful shots, grasmuc. I was gong to write "delightful" only, but then thought of what Steven might write...

My thoughts exactly. Why so worried?

grasmuc, lovely night images.

Thx philber and steven
The night shots are from Brasilia, Oscar Niemeyer buildings, the 85 shot is from Munich, Museum Brandhorst, by architets Sauerbruch and Hutton.

Lotusm50 wrote:
philber wrote:
It would go some way towards the Zeiss-50-shootout we have been talking about.


Yes, a ZE 50/1.4, N 50/1.4 and c/y 50/1.4 comparison would be interesting. I suspect that you really won't find much difference.


OK. I've done a quick comparison between the Zeiss c/y 50, the N 50 and the ZF 50. Nothing special, not even fancy studio set-up. Just a few camera set up on a printer lit with a Lowell Tota light and bounce card for a little fill. All the were shot at the same exposure 1/40 sec at f4. Camera, on tripod, was not moved during lens changes (even still there are slight registration differences). All were focused on the same point (white lettering on the middle camera shutter). All were converted in DPP, with tungsten white balance and "neutral" picture style in Adobe RGB color space. Slight apparent exposure differences between them were equalized in DPP and are not significant. In PS CS4 they were just converted to sRGB, and reduced in 1000 pixel width and saved as jpeg. That's it. No sharpening no further adjustment. But the histograms are remarkable consistent. Can you tell them apart? Does one have more "pop" than the other? I don't think so. What do you think?

The second and third have more pop than the first (higher contrast) and I think the third has both higher contrast and resolution than the second but they are pretty close. The first is just a bit flat.

Curious ... how do the 100% crops compare of the either the middle camera or the right camera (with reflections)?

RustyBug wrote:
Curious ... how do the 100% crops compare of the either the middle camera or the right camera (with reflections)?


100% crop show that I hit the desired focus point with only the third sample. Not sure if that biases the results, so I'm going to do another comparison. I'm not sure it has any effect on the issue at hand, however.

Not so much concerned about hyper-critical focus point. The objects have sufficient dimensionality that the 3D should reveal itself anyway. What I've noticed in some of my shots is that when I've shot something I expected to produce 3D and it came up short from my expectations ... when I cropped, it revealed greater detail / changed viewing perspective / or something ?? and the 3D seemed to come out more so than the original image.

I'm guessing this might have something to do with the relationship between FL, shooting distance & viewing distance ... ??

Alright everyone, that's quite enough.

You've talked me into Oly, Zeiss, Nikon & Mamiya ... got me thinking about Voigts & Leica, while dreaming about APO's ... now I'm drooling (again) over N's.

Nice stuff everyone. It's such a sweet torture.

Here are some new samples. With focus closer to infinity, these are closer to optimum for these lenses. Got the focus right on all three of these (all three manually focused). It's on the stupid added facial features on the tree near the center. Again, as before, not added processing, only the minimum necessary to get them to jepgs for the web (I hardly ever use "Neutral" in DPP normally). Sorry for the drab image. It's cold and raining here. Does one of these have more "pop" than the other? I don't think so. I notice one difference, and it is consistent between the 2 groups of samples. Again these are Zeiss c/y 50, the N 50 and the ZF 50 (not necessarily in that order):

N Wins! (just my worthless opinion)

I think the third one is a little richer than the first two; but it also looks a little darker. btw what was the order of the lenses in the first test ? Also i think it is important to compare but near and far focus since these lenses don't preform uniformly for both near and far focus.