Samuli Vahonen
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Initial verdict about FE55:
+ All what is in focus is very nice and very high quality.
+ "Flower boke" (subject close, background far away) is very good.
+ AF was fast and accurate (for my static subjects in f/8 & 1s & ISO 100 light).
+ based on few aperture series I shoot diffraction is not going to be big problem, even f/16 did seem quite ok, this requires more study.
- Medium/large distance boke with complex multidepth background suffers same kind of issue as FE35. Most likely you never see it in urban shots, but it's typical to shots focused 3-8m (9-24feet) in forest where background has complex structure on multiple depths (e.g. evergreen pine and spruce forests).
- Focusing due to "intelligence" Sony added to focus ring makes me crazy; just when I'm about to nail the focus the ratio in which focus ring adjusts focus changes and I go past or focus ring makes focusing so slow that I accelerate and Sony then hits high gear and I'm again past the subject. Lens itself is brilliant from drawing point of view for focusing, even wide open it's very easy to see where focus is. To avoid frustration with MF "intelligence" I started to use AF to focus and just checked it's OK with magnifying function.
Still to figure out;
- colors; seem muted compared to ZE-series+metabones+A7-combo, but have to shoot both FE55 and ZE50planar in same light to verify
- urban boke (based on what I did see in forest there never ever should be any issues in rather easy urban boke scenarios)
- nightshooting (veiling flare and lens specific flare, the sensor flaring most likely same as any normal lens)
I was really hoping to finally "get rid off" ZE Planar 1.4/50, but it still seems to be one of the few normal lenses, which will produce almost flawless boke on difficult medium/large distance scenarios (from f/2.8-3.2 depending on distance, not wide open). Unfortunately most of my ~50mm lens usage happens in such situations.
#1 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/1.8, 0.6s, ISO 100
All boke above centerline of image suffers from mild cross-eyed boke (or at least looks about same as FE35 bad boke on similar situation and it was called cross-eyed boke), resing to web takes care of it but it's visible on big monitor and print (at least FE35 issue was visible in print as well)
#2 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/2.8, 1/2s, ISO 100
Boke mostly behaves well due to lack of complex multidepth structures on back boke.
#3 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/1.8, 1/3s, ISO 100
Boke very nice when resized for web. At large monitor right side boke not so nice.
#4 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/2.8, 0.8s, ISO 100
Here Sony software really sucks, there is no way to improve the black area below the log. With Apple Aperture, Lightroom, Capture One or even Iridient Developer could have solved it with few slider touches in seconds. The detail on fungus/mushrooms/whateverthoseare-in the log has very great detail, so correction also on close-ups is very high. Leaf on bottom left corner very well drawn, lens is insane sharp all the way to corners. "Flower boke" is excellent as expected.
#5 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/1.8, 0.4s, ISO 100
Excellent separation between subject and background. Boke has little roughness even on this tiny websized JPG on top left corner, on large monitor it's pretty bad.
#6 Carl Zeiss Sonnar FE 1,8/55 ZA T* @ f/5.6, 8s, ISO 100
Large magnification boke is very blurred and I didn't find any issues.
Samuli
Edited on Dec 28, 2013 at 12:52 PM · View previous versions
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