More CY 35-70/3.4. Note the slightly soft edge acutance with powerful fine texture and deep rich color palette; in these days of huge Sony DR, it's hard to imagine how such lenses would fare used on the premium landscape film used back when it rolled off the assembly line - Velvia 50. A great travel lens, these are off a 24Mp Sony but the 20 year old slow zoom is fully 'a7r plus' ready. ;-) Shot in winter at one of the only places in Tibet where jet contrails blight the skyscape. The autonomous region is huge, perhaps half the size of Western Europe, yet sees less than 100 flights a day, most over just 3-4 routes.
These are a couple of images that I shot over the weekend at Columbia Hills State Park on the Columbia River Gorge in Washington. It was windy, so the images are not as clean as I would have liked.
mysh wrote:
Can anyone recommend a good polarizer filter for the zeiss 15mm zf.2? 95mm
Prefer not to spend hundreds on it. If anyone can recommend one of the cheaper brands I would appreciate it.
Also has anyone had experience using a CPL on this lens? Is it not worth trying?
Unless you are using the lens in portrait orientation, I doubt that the results using a polarizer with a 15mm lens would turn out very well. I have the same lens, but did not get a polarizer for it because it is so wide.
A friend asked me if I was going to visit 'the big white building'. Frank Lloyd Wright kept a print of the 1,000 room Potala Palace on his office wall. Here are a couple of views through the Contax 21mm, on a Sony a99.
Recently I purchased a lens on eBay. The person (camera shop) who sold the lens described it as without any fungus or haze. Once it arrived I noticed something which looks to me but I am not a specialist like a part of inner lens (just below the first element) has been scratched on the edge which seems unrealistic. It is inside the lens not on top of the glass. It looks like it is where the second glass element is touching the inner part (metal part) of the lens just at the rim. Like if you had a piece of glass and scratched it just at the rim. So now am thinking what this may be. Unfortunately I can't check now if the issue has any impact on the photos as I sold my camera a week ago and I am moving to a different system.
I can return the lens and I have few more days to test it out but I want your professional opinion what this may be.
As you will notice on my horrible photos that the issue has some sort of a colour gradient which looks like a rainbow, maybe it is the coating? The lens is Zeiss 28mm f2 and I don't really want to return it as I got a pretty good price but maybe I should?
Has anyone found a ND filter for the Zeiss 15mm that doesn't vignette or at least keeps it to a minimum? Preferably a stronger ND filter 8-10 stops.
I bought a Bower 2-8 stop variable ND filter. The way it is designed just doesn't work well with this lens.
mysh wrote:
Has anyone found a ND filter for the Zeiss 15mm that doesn't vignette or at least keeps it to a minimum? Preferably a stronger ND filter 8-10 stops.
I bought a Bower 2-8 stop variable ND filter. The way it is designed just doesn't work well with this lens.
As far I'm aware of ZE/ZF-series 15mm Distagon is supposed to work with one filter and any normal ND filter should not cause vignetting.
I would stay very very far away from the cheap 8-10 stop ND filters. They tend to add ugly color casts (sometimes not correctable in post processing) etc. I have had good experience from B+W &Heliopan NDs as well as Hoya ND400 has been working pretty well. I can't see much point on buying most expensive non-Otus Zeiss SLR-lens currently on market and then trying to put cheapest and crappiest filters in front of the lens.
On situations I have needed 10 stop ND filter, there usually has been water, and that usually means that I have needed polarizer as well. I don't think you can put two filters to 15mm Distagon without vignetting, but I don't have first hand experience. Personally if lens would not work with polarizer and ND at same time, I would not invest to ND filter.
If you shoot nature polarizer is essential to remove sky clare from ground/grass/undergrowth/leaves/water/etc. I use polarizer all the time with 21mm Distagon. However I remove polarizer to take landscapes as the blue sky goes weird with this wide lens and polarizer - or I combine two exposures; one with polarizer for ground, and other for sky polarizer removed. However in flat country like Finland there is extreme rarely any need for wider than 35mm lens in landscape photography. I don't think I have ever used 21mm for landscape this far in Finland and <10 times in photography trips to less flat countries.
