Samuli Vahonen
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philber wrote:
Samuli, I have the highest respect for your remarkable technical knowledge and ability, far in excess of mine,
Philippe, I know you try to be polite, but this is bullsh#t  I have no special technical knowledge... just trying to write my observations [crappily on 2nd language...]
philber wrote:
so this sharply limits the importance of what am I about to write: I find this set with the Zony uncomfortable, with the foreground subject almost etched and pasted onto the picture. Could it be oversharpening, because that is the closest I can come to explaining what I mean?
I think I understand what you mean. What I have seen this far of FE1.4/35 I would say that it looks less "organic" (best word I can come up with) than older Zeiss lenses, which maybe correlates to your observation. I have never had older Zeiss (or any brand) lens, which is able to produce usable photos @ f/1.4, so I'm not sure how f/1.4 photos are supposed to look like, DOF is really small @ f/1.4 - I'm much more familiar how high performance Zeiss/Leica photos look like @f/2.8-4. In perfect world I would like to combine ZM 2/35 focus plane and DOF/boke transtion to FE 1.4/35 boke, that would be pretty close to my optimal 35mm lens rendering style. I doubt such lens exists, haven't tried yet the ZM 1.4/35 or new optic formula Milvus 1.4/35 - and I don't feel huge urge to try either of them. More or less everything else I have tried. One day I try Voigtländer 35mm f/1.7, Helena's photos above just reminded me about it - again, but Voigtländer doesn't have "Zeiss like" rendering, very nice rendering but very different.
"subject almost etched and pasted onto the picture" - for me this is fine as rendering style (may not suit all scenes), as long as subject doesn't look like cardboard presentation of subject (=flat), but looks like the actual 3D-object. I have (and have had) lenses which did draw flat cardboard subjects on top of boke, but they are all longer focal lengths e.g. Canon 85LmkII, 135L, 180L(makro), 200/2.8L, Leica M-APO90/2 (not always, few times I have got non-flat results as well), Leica R-APO180/2.8. I do not like "pasting flat cardboard presentations of subject on top of boke"-look, the subject must be non-flat looking in my opinion. Subjects with semitransparent edges on backlit scenes (like the tree on this photo) can look pretty weird, and careful shading of lens from sun and polarizator use do make effect, which look little bit "etched and pasted on picture", but that is intentional and I prefer the effect.
My post processing is Bridge/ACR (color profile, wb, blackpoint, shadows&highlights) -> PhotoShop (Save as TIFF[why in earth Bridge/ACR can't do this directly]) -> move TIFF-image to Linux storage/processing server and use bash-script for the rest: ImageMagick local contrast, resize with Lanczos2 algorhitm, USM 0.3px&100%(similar to PhotoShop 0.2px&75% when Gamma ~ 2.2) -> Guetzli for packing JPG (Guetzli is google's new algorhitm which reduces JPG size 20-40% and at same time reduces JPG packing errors, e.g. gradients are better - "price" is that it takes 2 minutes to compress websize 1280px wide image with 4.2GHz i7, and you need to compile Guetzli yourself as it's only available as source code in GitHub) -> upload to internet server -> start import to database script in internet server.
I have never touched the sharpening settings on ACR, don't even know where they are hidden in the awful, frustrating and endless jungle of sliders (I hate sliders). And I have become lazy and all photos I have posted during last year (or more) I have not adjusted the resizing script parameters. Earlier I was less lazy and I adjusted the local contrast parameters for some photos, but I don't remember ever touching the end-sharpening. In JPG-filename end I have string like ".20_0.15_Lanczos2_1280_0.3_1.0", that is actually the local contrast and sharpening settings used in script, and the re-sampling algorhitm for resizing. I don't have other modern high performance lenses, the default parameters my Linux script uses are "Samuli's best practice based on years of photos from C/Y, G, ZE, ZM series lenses." - maybe parameters need adjustment for modern überlenses. Another possible source for discrepancy is that these are shoot with A7r, it's my least used A7-body, as it's with standard thick sensor glass - only <5% of images have been shoot with this A7-body, I have preferred the A7(Kolari modified thin filter glass) and A7mkII bodies => script might not be optimized for A7r. ZM25 photos have been OK, and I think all of them have been shoot with A7r as well - thou they don't have much boke.
Philippe, thanks for comment - I can't wait your commends for next set of images I'm preparing (front boke images ), if this was distracting I'll advice to skip breakfast tomorrow
One thing starts to look more and more sure; FE1.4/35 may not pair that well with GM85 as I hoped for. It has more contrast and microcontrast than GM85. I purchased the FE1.4/35 to get lens, which "pairs nicely" with GM85. Maybe I'll just have to give up and change GM85 to Loxia (if I can find one from store who takes GM85 in exchange), and get back to my comfort zone of traditional Zeiss rendering... But like Helena I think I also want/need something little different, so I don't give up yet, I'll try to get this working.
Greggf wrote:
Samuli...I love the FE 35 1.4 rendering. I've so far been able to not jump on one because I have the FE 50 1.4(which I would love to hear your thoughts on!!)...but I've rented one for this week and I'm excited.
Gregg, I have been drooling after FE1.4/50 due to your photos and other photographer, who's name doesn't come out just now (this photographer shoots American custom cars with FE1.4/50 and GM85, sorry about crappy name memory!!!). On some photos I have seen hint of issue due to having larger DOF in corners due to mechanical vignetting, not 100% sure is that real issue, or is it just the scenes. I would really need to shoot it myself to be sure - all f/1.4 lenses suffer from this, but on some photos it has been really distracting.
"FE1.4/50 is so big => I don't want it" has been my main excuse, and maybe little also Zony quality control (no idea is 50mm as bad as 35mm) and no real manual focusing, but instead focusing via AF and non-connected ring. Now finding that I actually like to shoot with FE1.4/35 and GM85 even they are very large and heavy lenses (manual focusing I don't like so much...but size/weight is fine), I need to find new excuse(s)... or real reason like "empty wallet", will do as well for now.
Samuli
EDIT: Edited 3rd paragraph (the one with starts with quotation mark)
Edited on Aug 05, 2017 at 11:54 AM · View previous versions
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