Samuli Vahonen
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sebboh wrote:
have you found that the 4m pcx is useful on the g35? i couldn't see any benefit from the 5m pcx on the lens.
Derek, no, it's bad lens; "the Zeiss Samuli didn't like". In my opinion 4000mm fixed boke the best; w/ 3000mm overall sharpness suffers but boke doesn't improve and 5000mm did not seem to do anything. Closing down 3 stops (=f/5.6) doesn't calm down the boke, but closing down the 4th stop (=f/8) it starts to work in boke area as well, but what's the point shooting boke shots f/8 with 35mm? For landscapes it might be OK, in Kolari v2 (no PCX) f/5.6 seems to be OK, but landscapes are so easy as DOF is so huge (why I never care about infinity testing, slanted horizons etc. as it tells nothing about the lens in real life use or it's rendering style - unless you are interested only infinity sharpness). Once again the real challenge is the medium distance boke shots, where this lens really sucks and produces ugliest boke I have ever seen any Zeiss lens to produce. I wrote short "review" some time ago; this thread 250 pages before - management summary; boke sucks, focal plane & rendering quite nice.
Based on MTF the field curvature it's bad even on film, so I would assume it's no use with UT camera as well for medium distance boke shooting?
sebboh wrote:
also, are you not happy with the g28 pcx combo?
Yes and no - landscapes and close-ups I like G28, or should I say love not just like... absolute the best 28mm I have for those use cases. But it's just too slow for my main use = medium distance boke shots. It needs to be closed f/4 or f/4.5 to get rid off harshness in boke and thicker DOF in corners (not field curvature, PCX will take care of that - too small lens barrel and lens elements). But as it's Biogon (=more symmetrical than most other designs), it still gives quite shallow DOF @ f/4-5.6 compared to any retrofocus designs. If I get the medium distance boke shots otherwise "right", then Hexacons in boke ruin it. For landscapes my only problem is that I can't see point investing A7r mkII camera just for backlit CMOS, as 24Mpix is enough for me, and in A7r mkII you mostly pay for the megapixels - the price of A7r mkII is still gigantic in Finland. And without backlit CMOS the color cast requires flat field plugin, which requires to use Lightroom - And I absolute hate LightRoom, and use it just for this plugin and strictly only for photos needing the plugin... So on some level I'm OK with G28, but with the few issues in back of my head tend to remove the joy from shooting, and therefore killing creativity. I like challenges, but "more boring and awful work on post processing" or "issues which can't be resolved by skill and technique" are not inspiring challenges for me. I'm enough masochist to be OK with G-FE adapter focusing, if everything else would work.
I think I need f/2 or faster 28mm lens (with 9 aperture blades), so it would be real life usable ~f/3.2. Lens manufacturers always skrew up and make the lens barrel and lens elements too small, so that quality boke is available in best lenses after closing 1-1.5 stops, and crappier lenses after closing 2-3 stops. I have tried also C/Y 2.8/28 and Leica-R 28mkII, which both are not on level of G28 in my use. I even tried Sony FE28 and hated every second with it, rendering style is not for me. Also in PCX thread people tried to get Voigtlander 2/28 to works, but it seems to have rather ugly boke and PCX really didn't work either.
ZE-series Distagon 28 is the best "fast" 28 I have, but even with Kolari v2 (or Canon 5DmkII, which is similar to Kolari v2) the corners focus much further than the center making the lens not useful in majority of my use cases - and with standard A7 camera it's just awful, corners focus even longer distance and astigmatism is worse. Without background items popping into focus in corners ZE 28 has really good boke and rendering style - if I would shoot only square-format ZE28 would be really good lens, but I almost never shoot square-format.
If Zeiss can't get Loxia 28mm out, then I need to send one camera for Kolari to get UT sensor cover glass and get Summicron-M, but they are really expensive. Or get Otus 28, but I really don't want so big, expensive and fragile lens. Maybe I try ZM2.8/28 before going to extreme expensive solutions, it should not be much worse than G28 and has ZM-series aperture (=no hexacons).
Slight frustration starts to hit with 28mm "issue", so I'm shooting with 35mm more these days, even I don't like the FOV so much. I currently use ZM2/35 (3000mm PCX @ Kolari v2) and it's close to perfect in my use; boke maximum quality reached already at f/3.2-3.5 and in my opinion this lens has the best focus plane rendering style I have ever experienced - lens is close to "my perfect lens" as possible, but it has wrong FOV. I use also FE1.4/35, and it's not bad either thou it has quite flat rendering, and user interface is not as nice as in ZM-lens plus the gigantic size - and I'm sure I would enjoy ZM1.4/35 and Voigtländer 1.7/35 as with compatible camera or suitable PCX, and naturally Loxia 35 is most likely not much worse than ZM2/35 on Kolari v2 with 3000mm... So many nice choices, if I just would like the FOV, but I don't... For people liking 35mm FOV it must be really great, lots of good options and different rendering styles to choose from.
End of crying for Loxia 28  and image as we are in image thread - G35 demonstration of f/5.6 boke, 3 stops down and boke quality is still BAD, and this is close-up not medium distance, which usually makes boke OK just due to quantity of it. Also focus plane is not so crisp at close distances compared to longer distances.
Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2/35 G @ f/5.6, 1/25s, A7 mkII @ ISO 160, OptoSigma SLB-50-4000PM
Samuli
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