Samuli Vahonen
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
philber wrote:
Samuli, gorgeous car shots. You are trying out the FE 35 f:1.4 now? How do you find it compared to, for example, the ZM 35?
Philippe, thanks! Yes I ended up to getting FE 1.4/35. I had dilemma "which lens to match weird rendering style of GM85?" Well I failed and didn't find pair for GM85 rendering style, but I like the FE1.4/35 otherwise. It's not traditional Zeiss rendering style, and on focus plane "how to render shape/volume" it will never match the older Zeiss rendering style lenses, but it's also not too far off from modern Zeiss rendering style (e.g. Loxias and ZE/ZF APO-Sonnar 135) so I can bring it to forest with other lenses and it's images "blend" to other images from location quite OK.
My copy is great at close distances - I was really worried for sample variance, and had two used lenses in two different cities to choose from, and after many hours sitting in my car I got lucky and the 1st city copy seems OK, all corners render the same etc. Wide open close-up / mid-distance performance is really great. I have shoot a lot with f/1.4, but I have not yet made my final opinion do I prefer wide open f/1.4 or 1/3 stop closed down to f/1.7. In any ways this is not like older lenses, that it needs to be closed down 1-2 stops to get decent boke. However for landscapes FE1.4/35 needs f/5.6-8 to produce good landscapes (don't know is it copy issue or generic to lens model).
Manual focus is by wire, and even focus feeling is "OK" I find it harder to focus compared to real Zeiss lenses; the best contrast inside DOF is not as much visible as older Zeiss lenses when viewing the 14.4x magnified view. Reminds me a little how Canon L lenses were: large DOF and the center of DOF does not differ any way from other parts of the DOF, nice to eliminate small AF missfocus issues, but makes rendering style very boring (I sold all Canon L already in 2008-2011 time period when we got ZE-series from Zeiss, so my comment is not valid for modern Canon L, most my L were mkI except 85L, which was mkII).
The recipe for great large aperture performance seems to be these days very large lens size - lens is not heavy, but size is really big. For comparison Zeiss ZE135 with Metabones (considered very large lens for Sony E-mount), it's just a little longer than FE 1.4/35 - the small lens is ZM 2/35 with FE-adapter:
Compared to ZM35? I don't have the f/1.4 version, I have the f/2 version so I'll have to compare to it - naturally in the only combination I got it working: Kolari v2 + 3000mm PCX correction lens. These two are from different planet, the ZM 2/35 is lens what I would say has "the strongest old Zeiss rendering style" found from any lens I have shoot with. With ZM 2/35 the focus plane/DOF subjects very easily appear as real looking and don't appear flat but seem to have clear shape and volume, instead of flat cardboard subjects in middle of boke. Boke is much better on FE1.4/35, and it has less vignetting (ZM vignetting partially caused by large ray angle with Biogon & A7 sensor microlens alignment). For landscapes ZM 2/35 is clearly better lens; the great rendering style it has close-up/mid-distance it also has at landscape distances and it works the best with f/5.6, closing down more eats brilliance from image via diffraction. Both produce nice sunstars, but they are much smaller in FE 1.4/35.
I guess I survive with FE 1.4/35, just as long as I don't assume it to be able render like old Zeiss style (e.g. don't assume that FE 1.4/35 never could produce anything like this on focus plane: few trees with ZM 2/35 @ f/2.8). Also I'm not the person who sells lens immediately if there is other lens within 10mm focal length difference; for me the different rendering styles of lenses are way more important than the FOVs. So I'll keep enjoying both of the 35mm lenses, at least until somebody will produce good 28mm for E-mount - or I stop hesitating and buy the damn Otus 28...
Sony Distagon T* 1.4/35 FE @ f/1.4, 1/60s, ILCE-7R @ ISO 640 (still same location, shot through thick glass)
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.7, 1/100s, ILCE-7M2 @ ISO 640 ("normal" car museum, shot without any glass between camera and subject)
Samuli
|
