Last week I tested the sharpness of these two lenses on a brickwall. You can find the result here:
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/859679/0#8044847

I was criticized for to many brickwall shots and a useless test.
Some people also wrote that these two lenses are not comparable. I will use the 100 MP mostly for landscape shots, portraits and for isolating objects. The same things i do with the 1.2/85L. So in my opinion they are comparable.
What I really like of the 1.2/85L is the bokeh. So the question is, is the bokeh of the 100 MP at least 95% as good as that of the 85L. If this is the case my beloved 85L will probably stay at home when I travel to foreign countries.

Today I did some shots to test the OOF-rendition. All shot were handheld with a 5DII at ISO 100.

Summary:
1. In my opinion the bokeh of the 100 MP is comparable with the 85L.
2. Contrast is significant higher on the 100 MP shots (this is sometimes good and sometimes bad, for portraits I prefer lower contrast, for landscapes mostly higher contrast)
3. Manual focus with the 100 MP at 2.0 is as difficult as with the 85L at 1.2 (though no problem with live-view from a tripod) => on <50% of the handheld shots was the focuspoint at the right plane
4. In some situations I still prefer the look of the 85L and will therefore for the time being not sell this lens.

If anybody wants to see any 100% crops of these pictures just tell me the picture and the place in the picture you would like to see.

Boris

100 MP @2.0:

It appears that 85L's bokeh is better.

Very interesting test, Boris, thanks for taking the time...

Better will always be a matter of taste.

Bobu,

This is fabulous, thanks.

However, for you uses, and to best compare to the Canon, you should probably use the Zeiss 100/2 Planar, not the MP. The latter has been shown to have edgier bokeh. This is it's only flaw, but for me (sadly) it's a deal-breaker.

Thank you so much for your effort! I assume you treated both images
the same way. 85L seems much flatter... I used to have it, but it was
very slow, I felt AF was pretty much unusable and the lens wasn't designed
for MF, so I really hated using it.

Cableaddict wrote:
Bobu,

This is fabulous, thanks.

However, for you uses, and to best compare to the Canon, you should probably use the Zeiss 100/2 Planar, not the MP. The latter has been shown to have edgier bokeh. This is it's only flaw, but for me (sadly) it's a deal-breaker.

Thanks for the advice. The pictures of the 100/2 Planar I have seen on the net look really great.
What makes the 2.0/100 MP so attractive for me is the possibility to use it for the occasional macro shot. Probably less then 5% of my pictures, but nevertheless important in some situations. Otherwise I would just use the 85L, which is a fantastic lens.

Boris

Definitely smoother bokeh from the 85L, but IMHO a much nicer rendition of the in-focus areas from the 100MP. In comparison the 85L looks washed out.

snowboarder wrote:
Thank you so much for your effort! I assume you treated both images
the same way. 85L seems much flatter... I used to have it, but it was
very slow, I felt AF was pretty much unusable and the lens wasn't designed
for MF, so I really hated using it.

I adjusted only the brightness (gamma) of some images. Otherwise the 2.0/100mm images would look significantly darker than the 85mm@2.0 images. Blackpoint, whitepoint, contrast, curves, color etc. were not adjusted and are all on the LR default settings.

Boris

mawz wrote:
Definitely smoother bokeh from the 85L, but IMHO a much nicer rendition of the in-focus areas from the 100MP. In comparison the 85L looks washed out.



In my opinion that's just the result of a lower contrast of the 85L. This helps in the OOF areas to create a smoother bokeh and leads to a washed out look in the in-focus areas (which is by the way not at all bad for portraits).

Boris

Then you could have upped the contrast on the Canon lens to get the resulting images a little closer, assuming that is your goal. You could give the CZ a little more exposure in post also. And cropped the 85mm images to match.

The Canon images simply look uniformly insipid; but of course personal preference is all in this arena. The Canon 85mm manages to present less convincing in-focus details and depth against a 100mm lens - quite an achievement...and even the dirt renders poorly - looks more like the stuff one finds at the bottom of fish tanks than on the ground. Thanks very much for presenting these, very informative.

I have owned 13 various Canon lenses, and 7 Zeiss lenses of various types. This feeling that the Canon-based pictures look somewhat "washed-out" compared to the Zeiss-based ones is consistent with my experience.

With both at f2.0 its clear that the 85L has better bokeh than the CZ100/2 but what I find is supprising is that the bokeh of the 85L seems identical at f1.2 as it is at f2.0!

85L's weakness is on landscape shots....

Looking at the last 3 shots I see that the 85L has more (ugly) double lines in the bokeh WO than the 100MP WO. Stopping down the 100MP to 2.8 or so would probably improve the bokeh a bit? Looking at the samples I find that comparing the WO shots of both lenses is more fair actually (despite difference in max. aperture).

Thanks for the test, much appreciated!!

Paul Yi wrote:
85L's weakness is on landscape shots....

It depends ...

If you stop down, the contrast of the 85L gets better. I have some landscape shots with the 85L, that I really like, but nearly all are shot stopped down to at least f/4.
Here are two examples:

Why are you sharpening lens samples?

You've added a lot of sharpening to all of these. How does that help anyone?


If I sharpen and stuff my $200 P&S can compete with all of these. Pretty close!

from these photos... I'm not so sure... the lack of contrast from the 85L makes the bokeh features duller... I don't know about *better*...

kjrain wrote:
It appears that 85L's bokeh is better.

Sorry for OT post.

The subject is about the lenses listed here and my question was just why sharpen.

bifurcator is just on a "my $200 p&s"-rush these days.. hide user and avoid the ensuing trollfest.

Thank you for posting your test results! Much appreciated. I have been saving up for the ZE 100/2, but now when the samples (not just yours) are starting to come in I'm less sure that I really want one. I have found that I'm not so fond of high contrast lenses, so maybe it's best that I save the money for something else. It's too early to decide though.

I've posted this in other threads but it does show the bokeh from this lens. Shot with D3S, ZF100 Makro at f2.8, minimal processing.

http://polemics-poems-pictures.blogspot.com/

The appeal in the bokeh for the 100/2 ...is both the preservation and transition in detail. Agreed that for some its a matter of taste and I hear that some even like tinned spagetti.

The 1st pic was enough ...look at the separation of the subject from the BG ...and especially note the canons on the left. For the L this has become a distraction as it lacks detail but is still in the scene.
In the next round Im looking at the door on the right, its still in scene but on the L its already turned soft.
The anchor pic was the clincher for me ...the windows are still a part of the composition but too much detail is lost to the L. I think that if your taste is for completely mashed backgrounds ..then maybe you should have a jar of vasaline in your bag ...along with the pantyhose.

For my taste the 100/2 has greater appeal. For Nikon owners we have the choice of the 85/1.4AF if we want to turn our backgrounds to mush, I challenge anyone to endure a bokeh thread of exclusively 85mm portraits, its like eating too much ice cream ...must be why they call it the 'cream machine' It is the preservation of detail that is the mantle for this 100/2.

Its also the case that regardless of taste you can soften an image but try going the other way.