Very nice shoots with 35 1.4, Grenache and Rodluvan.

@Grenache: I extremely love mine .

stitched 100mp pano

Really nice! 3 shots with a D800?

Im just going to open up to anyone who wants to take a chance of talking me out of this.

I am in all likeliehood selling my M2 and ZM planar. I like the camera (like, I LOVE the camera but no budget for Lux ASPH means I will just buy another one later) but I'm not sold on the lens. For what I can get from that I will probably get an F3HP and the 50/2 Makro-Planar [well, sometime later].

here is what I think I get out of the MP:
1. better performance before f4; important to me since I have a phenomenal 50/3.5 macro which I can get copies of for 100 dollars a piece. so I need a lens for when that is not fast enough.
2. more IN YOUR FACE look. the ZM50P is subtle and gentle and I want a lens with crunch.
3. I can adapt it to my Canon for when I want to shoot digital. granted this is rarely but I have a relative with a FF Nikon too.

can anyone give me a legitimate reason I shouldn't do this? I realize the Nikon will suck compared to an M2 (yes Ive had Nikon film cameras before) but I feel like I have an awful lot tied up in a lens I just dont get along with. Some people like Starry Night. I like First Days of Spring at the Strait of Hormusz, and I want a lens that reflects my counter-normal views of what good lenses are.

oh and here is an image from a Zeiss for your troubles:


Untitled by redisburning, on Flickr

carstenw wrote:
Really nice! 3 shots with a D800?
he uses a 5dmii i do believe

Red, this one is easy. Hands down, the 50MP and Nikon, provided you can deal with camera stillness - MUP, etc.

Technically (i.e. macro/micro contrast, detail definition, MTF) it's better at f2 but neither of these are great there, to be expected. By f4 the 50MP is a veritable powerhouse, many believe it is the sharpest 50mm made, I am of this view also, until the 55mm Distagon steals the crown. It's very well behaved out to 15mm IH.

It is also a beautifully clinical lens, and has much less distortion than the M equivalent you mention, around half the level of distortion in fact. It is the only ZF lens I would find a use for (Contax guy), and it's quite versatile, fine for objects as well as landscapes. Bokeh is personal but you see many great examples from the MP.

Overall its best aperture performance is around that of the 21mm Distagon. These can both crunch with the best of them ;-) It's the kind of lens large format shooters treasure, if I can put it that way. Your 50/3.5 may not seem so phenomenal if you get one.

It is such a good lens a lot of people dislike it. For reasons that remain a mystery despite their arguments. I believe some lenses are held to higher standards than others. What type of film do you have in mind might matter, this is a very high contrast lens...more difficulty with tonal control unless B&W.

philip_pj wrote:
It is such a good lens a lot of people dislike it. For reasons that remain a mystery despite their arguments.

No mystery:

- The extreme corners wide open are utter junk. Dark, smudgy, unattractive.
- The boke is very iffy on occasion, nervous.
- It handles specular highlights ungracefully too frequently for my taste.
- It has "fat" depth of field. This is strictly speaking not a negative, but it isn't always what people look for.
- It doesn't really have a look, it is quite clinical. I might make an exception for portraits, where it shines.
- The "feature" which leads to the junk wide-open corners is dramatic field curvature, which can lead to in-focus far away stuff in the corners. Very annoying.

Zeiss should have made the optics of this lens 5% larger and had a fantastic lens with no compromises (except the rendering style).

The 50P:

- It is soft and a bit hazy until f/2.8-f/4. From f/5.6 it may be sharper than the 50MP.
- The look is gorgeous.
- The boke is very graceful.
- It handles sparkly highlights nicer more often.

I own both and am not planning to sell either, but the 50P is clearly my favorite.

very helpful guys.

iffy, nervous, ungraceful... sounds like a perfect lens for me. especially since I know it's wickedly sharp in the center which works for rangefinder guys like me.

for closeups I will be using the same metal Bogen tripod+head I use for my Sinar and film is going to be 100 speed b&w which I develop myself. I just shoot digital for color so being able to put this on some of them seems fine.

gonna miss the M2 a lot tho =[ still as film production winds down it's probably better to have my limited budget in lenses.

carstenw wrote:
Really nice! 3 shots with a D800?

yes 5d2 (although since i now own zero canon lenses, just all mf zeiss I am tempted to go d800)

heres another one

Carsten this might be a big ask but is there any way you could take some direct comparisons? Doesnt matter if theyre on different cameras. Boring subjects you find around are fine, what Im really interested in is seeing how the transition to OoF differs and how severe the rendering in the plane of focus is. anything you could do in the f2-f4 range below 3 meters would be spectacular.

I do have some other options... crons, maybe the 35/2 biogon? could keep the body and sell only the lens in those cases.

I can't offer you much for your trouble, but if you find yourself in Texas I could buy you a beer or two.

I did do a whole bunch of comparison shots, and they are in this very thread. I think they are around page 100, but I am not certain.

Carsten I found your comparison between the slr 50P and the 50MP which was very informative, but I don't have the SLR version of the 50P. I have the ZM 50. Did you also do a comparison between those earlier in the thread?

I was wrong: I bought my 50MP on page 341.

There are lots of 50P shots in the following thread, and my opinion is better in that one; ignore what I wrote in this thread and read what I wrote in that thread; I must be in a bad mood now or something; the 50MP is obviously a great lens, but there are definitely very valid reasons for preferring the 50P. Even Philip agreed with that back then

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1163096/0

Here are some comparison shots by Samuli:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/860134/71

Here is one of Ryan's shots which shows the worst possible results from the 50MP:

Ah. No, I have never tried the ZM50P. I hear it is a very nice lens, but somewhat different (stronger?) than the ZF50P.

A couple of shots which show some of the problems I had with the 50MP when I first got it:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/860134/349#9487621

Another shot with weird corners:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/860134/352#9493885

Boke problem with 50MP:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/860134/354

50P vs. 50MP comparisons start here:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/860134/357#9504948

Carsten, appreciate the resources.

But given what Im looking for, what Im seeing is the drawback of the MP for me are the weight and that someone has to buy my stuff first.

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