Out catching the milky way on Saturday morning after the moon set. The SP Rokinon found this little meteor storm. In fact I captures 17 of them over 8 images but this one looked the best with them seeming to come out of the milky way. It was a 15 sec exposure for the sky and a separate one for the sand, then blended.
Looking at the setting sun along Skyline Drive
Tripod mounted A7r and Leica M 90mm f2.5 Summarit lens
ISO 100, f11, 1/160 second; processed in LR6.10.1
October 25, 2016
Along Skyline Drive next to Big Meadows opposite Byrd Visitor Center, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
The fountains at Bellagio with SRA but I don't remember the number of exposures... somewhere between 60 and 80, I believe. The ghosting on the left was courtesy of the folks next to me and some moving trees in the back. Oh, well .
Found a Zeiss lens I don't like: Contax G-series Planar T* 2/35. Performance was optimized with front-end filter (4000mm plano-convex filter was best on standard camera, better than bare lens with Kolari v2 modified thin filter camera,tried also other plano-convex filters with standard and thin filter cameras). On focus plane quality was much better than I ever expected Planar 35mm to be.
However boke is mostly awful (personal opinion). Unlike most other Zeiss lenses boke quality doesn't transform to really good by closing down 1-2 stops. Sometimes even closing down 4 stops doesn't cure boke quality issues. 7 blade aperture is definitely wasted on this lens, I personally would have preferred G-series 28mm or 45mm to have the 7 blade aperture, but for some reason Zeiss decided to waste it on this lens.
Boke is awful when lens is closed down 1 stop, example:
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/2.8, 1/200s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 100, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/2.8, 1/100s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 100, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
So I mostly used the lens closed down to f/4 or f/5.6, when boke is less awful...
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/4.0, 1/500s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 125, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/4.0, 1/25s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 125, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/4.0, 1/125s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 200, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/5.6, 1/125s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 160, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
When having very low contrast in background boke can appear less distracting:
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/4.0, 1/60s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 125, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Found a Zeiss lens I don't like: Contax G-series Planar T* 2/35. Performance was optimized with front-end filter (4000mm plano-convex filter was best on standard camera, better than bare lens with Kolari v2 modified thin filter camera,tried also other plano-convex filters with standard and thin filter cameras). On focus plane quality was much better than I ever expected Planar 35mm to be.
However boke is mostly awful (personal opinion). Unlike most other Zeiss lenses boke quality doesn't transform to really good by closing down 1-2 stops. Sometimes even closing down 4 stops doesn't cure boke quality issues. 7 blade aperture is definitely wasted on this lens, I personally would have preferred G-series 28mm or 45mm to have the 7 blade aperture, but for some reason Zeiss decided to waste it on this lens....Show more →
ha, nobody likes that lens. it's the contax g lens pretty much everybody agrees is the dog of the family. i've heard it alleged that it is a cron v4 copy with zeiss coatings. no idea how true that is, but both it and the "bokeh king" have similar looking ugly bokeh (i'm actually ok with it by f/4-5.6 and my typical focus distance). it makes a very compact 35mm for lightweight travel though. not sure why it's price has gone up so much lately while the g28 has dropped.
some shots with it's sibling the g21, all wide open on the kolari UT with a 5m pcx filter:
and some moving trees in the back. Oh, well 
