Zeiss are very proud of this lens and would be very confident indeed about its ability to stand up to all sensors into the foreseeable future.
If it does not, there will be an epidemic of photographers complaining about those useless and unneccesary 36Mp DLSRs (or whatever we get next), because few optics are better!
The real challenge happens if the A77 is in fact 24Mp - on APS-C...it will be fun.
Thank you Uzay. Very kind. You can see more on my flickr, there are 3 sets from Ethiopia, but most are digital and I still have to develop about 500 raws and I am waiting for another two rolls of film from the lab.
I doubt that this lens will be as sharp, or sharper, than the famous Canon 70-200/4L. But having said that, and being a Canon user, I'd say this lens is pretty terrific for the money, and I'm quite happy for the time being at least.
There are ridges inside the hood and the cap clips in, just like filter threads. It is larger diameter than 55, maybe 58mm. It's pretty slick! This way I can leave the hood on and still protect from dust or other elements. The cap did have a plastic loop on the edge that I cut off.
I just ordered a shorter version for Contax 50mm 1.4 T*.
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PS (5/31/11) -- Yes, confirming the cap is 58mm.
Obviously, the addition of the lens hood lengthens the whole affair, but the benefit of the hood is worth the slight awkwardness.
I just mounted the lens back on the 1Ds2 and after attaching/reattaching several times, I got the diaphram working properly -- still need to figure this out. Anyway, once it was working, it provided spot-on exposures throughout the range of f/4-22, with only the f/4 being slightly dark on the extremities due to vignetting.
Here's a shot hand held, 1/125 @ f/16, ISO 200. No adjustment to exposure or correcting of the image -- straight from RAW to jpg.
Below is a detail showing high contrast central area. Granted that many aberrations are reduced with smaller aperture, still, the performance is very good, especially considering its resistence to diffraction effects of softening or reducing contrast. All in all, very good performance, pushing excellent. Again no adjustment, other than resizing from the jpg pulled off the RAW file.
My "new" Contax Zeiss 50/1.4 T* arrived yesterday, as well as my order for the ubiquitous hood I've been rattling on about -- a shorter version of the hood/cap. I like this arrangement very much.
I'm so impressed with the sharpness and color of this lens! I recently had a ZE 50/1.4 that unfortunately had severe back-focus and focus shift. The good news for me is that this lens is free of that problem and turns in tack-sharp images throughout the aperture range (f/1.4 and f/16 being the poorest, as expected). This lens was roughly $250, vs. $600 for the used ZE -- a much better value.
The only "defect" is extreme stiffness in the focus ring at mid-distance range -- it is smooth at long and short distance. Does anyone know a reliable/cheap service (So. Cal. preferred) for CLA that might fix this?
Here's a quick 8-shot handheld vertical pano from yesterday. I'll post some other panos on the Alt thread.
The colors and tones are just fantastic.