Thank you Gary.
I bundled A7R with Leica Summicron-R 35 and Elamarit-R 28, which was a fairly small setup. Small enough to allow it swing on my neck for couple of hours and not intimidate locals in non-touristy part of Old Havana.
Manual focusing of fast moving objects was far from easy, but it looks Zeiss FE 55/1.8 may be perfect all-in-one solution for quality and AF convenience.
Nice images of Havana JaKo - one of my all-time favourite cities for colours, patinas, and just walking around. I'm new to the FM forums and here are a couple of images from a recent visit to Sri Lanka using the a7r and Summilux 50 ASPH, which is a challenging combo but can certainly give some decent results.
I'm a little disappointed by the high iso performance drop of a7 to be honest, compared to my d600 anyway that i used extensively in concert photography. This concert did have some bad lighting. On the plus side, FE 55 has amazing, fine detail rendering wide open. This was mostly 3200 iso with low NR in lightroom.
carstenw wrote:
Huh? Did you have this for a long time? Sometimes I think of adding this lens, but am not sure of near and far wide open performance.
I think I did buy it in 2012 (or 2011). But it haven't got much use as I very much love the 2/28. Also I find it harder to shoot with 21 and 25 than 21 and 28, and also the "gap" between 25 and normal lens is bigger than 28 and normal lens.
Overall It's OK lens, but corners at infinity suck, and one is better to prepare to crop 5:4 or 16:9 to avoid corners, as they still suck at f/11 (field curvature at large distances). It also has sometimes similar harshness as MP2/50.
Near: Like other ZE/ZF wides it sucks wide open, very very rough bokeh most of the time, but like others it improves f/2.8-3.2 depending on distance and background structure and texture.
As overall in A & B zones this is one of the best wides in ZE/ZF-line-up, very small CA and high sharpness - colors are really really good, very similar to 2/135, and very different to 2/28 and 1.4/50. As I'm moving from 1.4/50 to FE55 as my "main lens", I think I'll use more 2/25 in future, as it colors match better FE55 than 2/28 colors (2/28 is quite good match to 1.4/50 and 1.4/85 from colors and overall rendering style). I like to get similar rendering style with all lenses I have with me in the shoot.
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
I think I did buy it in 2012 (or 2011).
March 2012.
Overall It's OK lens, but corners at infinity suck, and one is better to prepare to crop 5:4 or 16:9 to avoid corners, as they still suck at f/11 (field curvature at large distances). It also has sometimes similar harshness as MP2/50.
Near: Like other ZE/ZF wides it sucks wide open, very very rough bokeh most of the time, but like others it improves f/2.8-3.2 depending on distance and background structure and texture.
As overall in A & B zones this is one of the best wides in ZE/ZF-line-up, very small CA and high sharpness - colors are really really good, very similar to 2/135, and very different to 2/28 and 1.4/50. ...Show more →
The corners are not ideal, but in practice they don't bother me that much.
I would prefer a 28-mm equivalent crop from a D2/25 image to the full-frame version of a D2/28.
Toothwalker wrote:
March 2012.
Thanks, good that someone has better memory than me
Toothwalker wrote:
The corners are not ideal, but in practice they don't bother me that much.
In practical shooting it's quite often OK, if top corners are on sky and foreground doesn't have continuous pattern/detail, which continues to corners ==> on most traditional landscapes it's usually OK - on "forest scapes" unfortunately it quite often shows.
I'm not 100% sure, but the corners seem better with A7 than they were with 5DmkII - due to cold weather it has not been possible (neither I have enough interest for such pixel peeping) to directly compare these two. There should be no difference as this lens is intended to be used with SLR-cameras.
Toothwalker wrote:
I would prefer a 28-mm equivalent crop from a D2/25 image to the full-frame version of a D2/28.
For lack of CA and fine detail contrast that would, however for boke shots I really don't want to sacrifice any sensor size. Also I like more the 2/28 boke characteristics better.
Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2/25 ZE @ f/11, HDR (1/6s, 1/20s, 1/100s), Sony A7 @ ISO 100, Zeiss polarizer
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