For those still forming an opinion whether the A7R might be appropriate for casual, particularly street photography an example with the FE 35 mm @ f/4.5 & ISO 6.400 .
Hey, I walked over that bridge just a few hours ago! Nice tones, that you seldom see from digital B&W photos.
But there's something strange with the IQ here. The borders and corners look "cross-eyed" while the middle is sharp (at least if you view the largest size on Flickr). Did you shoot wide open, or is the adapter perhaps tilting a bit?
Very nice, as usual Samuli. But is there a reason for the smallish size you post? IIRC, your images were larger a year ago or so. I think much of the magic (that I suppose you want to show) is lost in downscaling.
Makten wrote:
But is there a reason for the smallish size you post?
Yes, laziness and quota (web bandwidth quota and disk quota). I wasn't thinking it's smallish, it's same size I post to my website and mostly the size I have posted here as well. I'll see what could be done to two mentioned issues...
I made decision to fully commit to Sony, and due to this I'm no longer shooting test photos. During "testing period" I have been shooting lots of test stuff and published this stuff to directory "A7temp", which as name indicates was intended to be temporary directory = I didn't have to consider disk quota. After test period I'm back to normal 972px size, and 1280px size for some photos, which I upload to zeissimages.com. I have randomly posted larger size for forum, but I would have to do some clean-up to fit large images to website - cleaning up (physical or virtual) and laziness is not combination, which really works well together...
Question - I'm not sure where to ask it, but as this is only thread I have ever seen people post Contax G45 photos and optics gurus anyway read this thread:
I was today shooting with Contax G45, and as it's boke is rather ugly (very rough structure in boke), I wanted to experiment small aperture shooting. I shoot many landscapes and scenes with f/11 (and some aperture series to get understanding of G45 closed down performance).
From all of the photos shoot one thing bothers me; the DOF doesn't extend back of the focus plane as much as I would expect from 46.9mm lens (true focal length of G45 is 46.9mm not 45mm according to Zeiss). Below is sample, which I have verified that it's actually shot @ f/11 (I shot aperture series from this location and also shutter speed matches other f/11 shots in similar light shot before and after this) - shooting distance 4-5m (12-15 feet):
And here is crop, showing how blurred the background is: 2034x981 crop
On other landscapes, where focus was 8-10m (24-30feet), this wasn't as visible, looked like just that MTF 40lpm/mm would have dropped to 30% in the far background (very small detail still visible, but contrast is weak). I don't actually mind about this, gives nice depth on large viewing sizes to landscapes. However this just doesn't match my memory; as far as I remember other normal lenses on same scenario would have generated longer DOF, for sure the forest on rear would not be tack sharp. Thou forest would have actually been pretty sharp if this would have been shoot with Zeiss ZE/ZF Makro-Planar 50, which has rather long DOF. This looks like it's shot f/4. But it can't be since my f/4 shot in the aperture series had 1/10s, while this one is 0.6s.
Does this look normal for G45? Any optical explanation, the Zeiss PDF looks like the lens is very simple compared to SLR-lenses??
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Below is sample, which I have verified that it's actually shot @ f/11 (I shot aperture series from this location and also shutter speed matches other f/11 shots in similar light shot before and after this) - shooting distance 4-5m (12-15 feet):
Here's what I get when I type your shooting parameters into Barnack, using a CoC of 0.10mm:
Samuli, I have no explanation but your image makes me want that G Planar! I've seen sort of the same behaviour from the Distagon 35/2 that gives a "too blurred" background at several meters away, stopped down. And since that's something I really like, I wouldn't complain. Though, I can hardly believe your shot was at f/11. Doesn't seem reasonable at all.
Off topic, but this was shot with the ZF 35/2 Distagon at f/4 on a Nikon D700. I thought everything would be sort of in focus, but no.
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On topic:
After weeks of rain and ~+7°C we finally got some snow last night. Temperatures rapidly dropped below zero and ice began to grow in shallow bays.
Snapsy, I don't think the issue is CoC 0.010mm, that is pretty accurate (the actual area of DOF, which is perceived as sharp). Based on graph Barnack outputs, the rear bokeh should have CoC somewhere around 0.035mm (=6000px on 36mm==>166.666px/mm =====> 0.035mm=5.83px), but the blur is more than this, much more.
BTW. Most mathematical DOF calculations, are based on theoretical single lens element model, and doesn't apply very well for example to retrofocus lenses, lenses with aberrations etc. - I did the background study in 2005/2006 when I wrote my own DOF calculator, so I may not have most up to date information. However thanks for link to Barnack, I never bothered to calculate the theoretical stuff outside DOF in my tools I programmed for photography.
Makten wrote:
Samuli, I have no explanation but your image makes me want that G Planar! I've seen sort of the same behaviour from the Distagon 35/2 that gives a "too blurred" background at several meters away, stopped down. And since that's something I really like, I wouldn't complain. Though, I can hardly believe your shot was at f/11. Doesn't seem reasonable at all.
Martin, I'm not complaining - I just want to understand. This makes G45 just more interesting for me, as you know front to back all sharp isn't my (or your) style. But as any lenses, I really want to understand inside out how they work to get best results. Naturally I can just shoot thousands of photos and analyze some tens of hours, but understanding theory/reasons why this happens would make the process of understanding MUCH faster and efficient (at least typically it does...).
As you mention, there is something same in ZE/ZF 2/35. I have also some "weird" shots, where DOF is really long for being shot f/2.0-2.8, but rear boke is gigantic (compared to my expectations). As far as I remember this mostly happened on quite far focus distances (>5 meters).
Thx makten, took a walk over to Scandinavian photo and took the picture on the way
I set the camera up on a tripod and was aiming for longer exposures but traffic on the bridge made it very shaky...
Makten wrote:
Hey, I walked over that bridge just a few hours ago! Nice tones, that you seldom see from digital B&W photos.
But there's something strange with the IQ here. The borders and corners look "cross-eyed" while the middle is sharp (at least if you view the largest size on Flickr). Did you shoot wide open, or is the adapter perhaps tilting a bit?
Very nice, as usual Samuli. But is there a reason for the smallish size you post? IIRC, your images were larger a year ago or so. I think much of the magic (that I suppose you want to show) is lost in downscaling....Show more →
Nice tones, that you seldom see from digital B&W photos. 
Though, I can hardly believe your shot was at f/11. Doesn't seem reasonable at all.
