Bohemien wrote:
We went hiking along the river Rhine yesterday. We got some rain, but I like the photos I got in that weather.
The first picture shows the view over the village Lorch, with Rheindiebach and castle "Fürstenstein" (something like "The Duke's Rock" ). The second and third show more castles and villages along the way to Assmannshausen (yep, that's really the name of that village ). On the second picture you can see the rain approaching... I just love the way the 58G rendered that one.
I also got some nice portraits of the family, but I'll have to ask if I may post anything here.
Ok, I understand we have to shoot this lens at 1.4 and ONLY at 1.4 but come on, these landscape shots at 1.4?!
Especially since I see the shutter being at 4000/sec? I would never do this...
Look at the mountains/hills far away on the first shot...Full of CA.
I understand if you are at ISO 8000 and shutter is at 1/60, yes, 1.4 should be fine...
No seriously, of course you are right about the CA, I could've stopped down. But at f/1.4 the lens renders differently (you know that of course ), in shots like #2 it just adds to the mood. And it's really amazing how (relatively) sharp these shots are when viewed at 100%, given the large aperture.
I'm still experimenting how to use it (or not ), and I'm so glad I bought it after reading through this whole thread, the 58G is something different. It rarely leaves my camera now, maybe I need a second body... (On Sunday I also had the 105/2.5 AI-S though, which is also a gem.)
Bohemien wrote:
I didn't dare to post a stopped down shot here...
No seriously, of course you are right about the CA, I could've stopped down. But at f/1.4 the lens renders differently (you know that of course ), in shots like #2 it just adds to the mood. And it's really amazing how (relatively) sharp these shots are when viewed at 100%, given the large aperture.
I'm still experimenting how to use it (or not ), and I'm so glad I bought it after reading through this whole thread, the 58G is something different. It rarely leaves my camera now, maybe I need a second body... (On Sunday I also had the 105/2.5 AI-S though, which is also a gem.)...Show more →
The CA's pretty terrible in no.1 but absolutely agree about no.2. At 1.4 the lens just renders differently and I love the feel of the second.
Also at 1.4, the lens behaves very differently when focused at infinity as you already know.
Maybe I should convert the first one to bw and see how that looks. I'll do that later.
In the meantime, can somebody guess a reason why it's so bad in the first picture? I checked them at 100%, the other two have the CAs too, but not that bad. Is it because of the contrast between the ridge and the sky (but the other two pictures have these transitions too)? The direction where the sun was behind the clouds?
So just for the hell of it, I took the 58G out on a landscape hike yesterday, and I don't think the classic landscape lenses will be shaking in their lens caps anytime soon! I also had the 24 PC-E and Zeiss 2/135 APO Sonnar with me so I could make comparison photos under similar lighting and environmental conditions.
The lens isn't really sharp until you're at least 10 meters out (maybe more) even at f/8. f/2.8 is sharper at distance than f/8 at less than 10 meters. It was kind of shocking. Landscape does have somewhat closer subjects especially if you're using the classic landscape composition AKA rock-in-foreground style.
Microcontrast is also not really great, and the lens compresses both highlight and shadow tones, though it does have a nice midtone range, which makes sense for a portrait lens, I guess. Surprisingly color was kind of meh, so I converted to B&W, where it's actually pretty good. Focusing with CDAF on liveview sometimes didn't work either, so I had to manual focus about half the time (liveview, 1:1 magnification, with a Kinotehnik loupe).
I think I'll be sticking to PJ and people work with this lens, which is what I bought it for in the first place, but it was an interesting and fun thing to try out landscape.
Andre Y wrote:
So just for the hell of it, I took the 58G out on a landscape hike yesterday, and I don't think the classic landscape lenses will be shaking in their lens caps anytime soon! I also had the 24 PC-E and Zeiss 2/135 APO Sonnar with me so I could make comparison photos under similar lighting and environmental conditions.
Thanks for the detailed analysis! I'd be interested in seeing some of your comparison shots. Besides family shots, I've been using the 58G quite a lot for landscapes recently - well, actually many times it was the only lens I took out over the last weeks.
I like the interesting rendering you can get for landscapes at f/1.4 (as you can see on this thread ), but of course you get problems like heavy CA (see above) when you do that, and if I stop down of course there are other lenses in my arsenal which can do the same job. But just sometimes, I get a landscape picture with a look to it that makes me think I couldn't have gotten this with any other lens I own (e.g. the 2nd shot in my post above or #3 and #4 in this post). Then of course I don't own a Zeiss, the 2/135 renders amazingly from what I've seen on the web.
Here are two full-sized, max quality JPEG photos from that day, one shot with the 24 PC-E, and the other the 58G shot above. The 58 pretty much falls apart in the highlights, and there is OK microcontrast only in the midtones, while the shadows and highlights have very little. The 58 was also liveview-focused on the rock with a loupe and 100% magnification, and isn't sharp anywhere, and this was at f/8.
Andre Y wrote:
The 58 was also liveview-focused on the rock with a loupe and 100% magnification, and isn't sharp anywhere, and this was at f/8.
Thanks for posting! The 58G photo really isn't very sharp... but that could come from wind movement, and did you use a ND filter?
I'd say my copy is sharper than that from f/2 on... But I don't want to start the sharpness discussion all over again. So I hope it's ok when I just reference a post I wrote on dpreview about the 58Gs sharpness, including 100% crops.
Andre Y wrote:
Here are two full-sized, max quality JPEG photos from that day, one shot with the 24 PC-E, and the other the 58G shot above. The 58 pretty much falls apart in the highlights, and there is OK microcontrast only in the midtones, while the shadows and highlights have very little. The 58 was also liveview-focused on the rock with a loupe and 100% magnification, and isn't sharp anywhere, and this was at f/8.
agelessphotog wrote:
Are you referring to the 135 DC?
Zeiss 2/135 APO Sonnar.
Bohemien wrote:
Thanks for posting! The 58G photo really isn't very sharp... but that could come from wind movement, and did you use a ND filter?
I'd say my copy is sharper than that from f/2 on... But I don't want to start the sharpness discussion all over again. So I hope it's ok when I just reference a post I wrote on dpreview about the 58Gs sharpness, including 100% crops.
Probably not movement. The 24 PC-E sample was a 61-second exposure with the tripod in the waves, and same weather environment, and that's sharp. I also have another shot taken with the 58G of something much further away that's very sharp at f/2.8, though the SLoCA on the water highlights ruined that photo. All of my near shots with the 58 are soft like this one.
Yes, I had a Lee 10-stop filter, along with a 2-stop hard grad, and maybe a B+W MRC Nano polarizer on both shots. (Maybe not the polarizer on the 58 --- I can't remember.)
Elijah wrote:
...I still do not understand why people use a special lens like 58G for landscapes, I just don't.
It's like using my 12mm fish for portraits.
Why not? I use my 58mm for landscapes & cityscapes all the time. Love the added compression it gives while still being able to retain a wide enough angle to capture a lot of expanse. It's not my go to for landscapes but it is very capable.
Andre Y wrote:
All of my near shots with the 58 are soft like this one.
Yes, I had a Lee 10-stop filter, along with a 2-stop hard grad, and maybe a B+W MRC Nano polarizer on both shots. (Maybe not the polarizer on the 58 --- I can't remember.)
Hm, that sounds like quality gear to me. True, the 58G focuses better on far subjects than on near ones, but as you used live view I'd think the results should be sharper. Focusing via live view also eliminates the need to fine tune the AF, that would have been my next guess. The only thing that's left to think of is the curved plane of focus this lens has, but if I remember right that's only a problem when shooting wide open (I read about this when I was researching this lens before I bought it).
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Elijah wrote:
...I still do not understand why people use a special lens like 58G for landscapes, I just don't.
It's like using my 12mm fish for portraits.
I have seen some quite funky portraits done with a fisheye lens!
Well, for me it happened because I don't have as many occasions to shoot portraits as I'd like (at least portraits I'm allowed to share online ), and the 58G now is my only prime in the 50mm range, so I tried it for everything and was pleasantly surprised when it gave me the nice rendering visible in some of the landscapes I posted here. Of course the more I use it and from the feedback I get (for which I'm always grateful!), I learn more about what works with the 58G and what doesn't, and when my excitement for the lens has cooled down a bit, I will not use it quasi exclusively all the time anymore. But it's fun to experiment.
Who cares about perfect focus - it's a very cute shot that will make your little one smile when he/she will look at it in 20 years. Enjoy your new toy, it's a great lens!
OK guys, now this is really fooling around, but just for the heck of it and because I'm really impressed by the 58Gs performance - this is a 55MP 7-shot panorama of St. Goarshausen (with Burg Katz - "the cat castle") - at f/1.4. I will not do this again, I promise.
Bohemien wrote:
OK guys, now this is really fooling around, but just for the heck of it and because I'm really impressed by the 58Gs performance - this is a 55MP 7-shot panorama of St. Goarshausen (with Burg Katz - "the cat castle") - at f/1.4. I will not do this again, I promise.
). The second and third show more castles and villages along the way to Assmannshausen (yep, that's really the name of that village 
), and I'm so glad I bought it after reading through this whole thread, the 58G is something different. It rarely leaves my camera now, maybe I need a second body... 
(On Sunday I also had the 105/2.5 AI-S though, which is also a gem.)
