I'm a little late to the party I suppose but I am somewhat baffled by these new lenses. I guess if video is your focus they will be very attractive, but if you asked me what focal lengths I'd like to see from Zeiss for FE mount I surely would not have answered 35mm and 50mm. Since there's already an AF 35mm Zeiss and 55mm Zeiss for FE mount I'm left baffled by the choices. Where's a 24mm, 21mm or 18mm? Why are they only f/2? At least if they were f/1.4 they would have been significantly faster at least than the existing FE offerings.
kurt765 wrote:
if you asked me what focal lengths I'd like to see from Zeiss for FE mount I surely would not have answered 35mm and 50mm. Since there's already an AF 35mm Zeiss and 55mm Zeiss for FE mount I'm left baffled by the choices. Where's a 24mm, 21mm or 18mm? Why are they only f/2?
Am I the only one who thinks the bokeh are harsh, distracting, and unattractive?
-K
Hi Kurt,
The answer to your questions seems to be video. The AF lenses aren't well suited for video and these lenses are, and 35 and 50 are probably more important for video shooters than ultra wide angle. I too an disappointed, but Zeiss has said that wider angle and telephoto lenses in the line are coming. We will just have to patient I guess.
By the way, you are not the only person who finds the bokeh less than stellar. I do too, but I think these lenses will have there place for still shooters too. The 50 looks a lot like the Contax G 45 f/2, which is a great lens, and the 35 looks like it will be a great lens for street shooting and closer object and may be at least pretty good stopped way down (something like f/11)--we will see. I think in many ways it may remind people of the Contax C/Y mount 28 f/2.8. The MTFs have at least some similarity and the Loxia 35 looks better in some ways stopped down.
douglasf13 wrote:
Yeah, I prefer focusing at shooting aperture with EVF cameras, vs the aperture dance of the electronic apertures.
Many people do, and for landscapes and macro I would always focus stopped down. But for closer shots with a fast lens focusing wide open can be really effective.
The image you get in the electronic viewfinder makes the depth of field look deeper than it is due to the limited resolution. Hence if you're shooting a few stops down having the lens wide open for focusing means the depth of field you get in your shot is the same (or a bit deeper) than what you see in the viewfinder, hence you can focus reliably without having to stop and magnify which can slow you down a lot.
Peaking is also more reliable when the lens is wider than the shooting aperture.
I tried the Canon 85 f/1.2L on my A7R with the Metabones adapter, and was amazed how well the peaking worked with the lens at f/1.2, it was like a translucent yellow wall moving back and forth, and made it really easy to visualise how the plane of focus intersected the environment!
kurt765 wrote:
I'm a little late to the party I suppose but I am somewhat baffled by these new lenses. I guess if video is your focus they will be very attractive, but if you asked me what focal lengths I'd like to see from Zeiss for FE mount I surely would not have answered 35mm and 50mm. Since there's already an AF 35mm Zeiss and 55mm Zeiss for FE mount I'm left baffled by the choices. Where's a 24mm, 21mm or 18mm? Why are they only f/2? At least if they were f/1.4 they would have been significantly faster at least than the existing FE offerings.
Taking into consideration that the Zeiss FE lenses are only Zeiss by name and T* coatings, I really do not mind true Zeiss 35 and 50. As mentioned already, the other FL are coming soon enough.
edwardkaraa wrote:
Taking into consideration that the Zeiss FE lenses are only Zeiss by name and T* coatings, I really do not mind true Zeiss 35 and 50. As mentioned already, the other FL are coming soon enough.
But, the new 35mm Loxia though it may perform a little better?? than the Leica C 40mm f2 Summicron and the Minolta CL and the Minolta CLE MC 40mm f2 M-Rokkor lenses they are substantially larger and heavier than the C Summicron and Minolta M-Rokkor lenses. This really is something to consider for many of us though of course the Loxia is a native mount, transmits EXIF information, has newer coatings, and is 5mm wider.
I find it encouraging that a Zeiss representative said:
“We’ll add to the family in the future with wide-angles and short telephotos. The challenge with these mirrorless cameras is designing an ultra wide angle lens that does not exhibit vignetting, lens shading and the ‘smearing’ effect common when using adapted wide-angle M mount lenses.”
I hope they can rise above this challenge and churn out something useful. I am not too fond of vague phrasing like "in the future" as that does not imply anything in the pipe line or even on the drawing board. Toss in the word "near" in front of future and my hope would be raised for sure.
I am not sure of what a UWA would mean in this case - 18mm? 21mm?
Cosina-Voigtlander seems to have produced a 21mm lens (in M-mount) that performs pretty well on the A7, so Zeiss should be able to produce something. It may be that Cosina has only so much manufacturing capacity for C-V, ZF/ZE, ZM, Touit, Otus, Loxia...
The problem I see is that Zeiss seems to have taken the easy road here and just modified existing ZM designs to make them work with the A7. I'm not sure how representative this will be for future designs. Will they be modified existing designs or designed from scratch for the A7. Somehow I feel Zeiss isn't very interested in putting too much effort in the Loxia line, maybe by agreement with Sony.
From Zeiss blog Q&A's: Loxia lenses are solitary developed by ZEISS. They are totally different lenses for different applications than the Sony/Zeiss FE type AF lenses. Sony and ZEISS have independent roadmaps for each of those lens lines.
The Loxia 2/35 and Loxia 2/50 build on these proven designs and are adapted for use on modern digital mirrorless full-frame system cameras. As well as the possibility of camera-internal image optimization, the Loxia 2/35 and Loxia 2/50 feature a far shorter minimum object distance than the Biogon T* 2/35 ZM and Planar T* 2/50 ZM: 0.3 m compared to 0.7 m for the Loxia 2/35 and 0.45 m compared to 0.7 m for the Loxia 2/50.
how does the Loxia 50/2 compare to SEL 55/1.8? The Loxia 2/50 is a complete different lens than the Sonnar T* FE 1.8/55. It is more optimized for smoothness than for contrast at high aperture.
edwardkaraa wrote:
In my experience with the A7 and adapted ZM lenses. Even when you shoot at f/11 (the smallest aperture I shoot at) with a wide angle such as the ZM 25, it is very easy to see where is the setting for best sharpness with very little latitude in the focusing ring, perhaps just a fraction of a millimeter. This of course provided that you focus in magnified view, which is the right way to focus with any precision.
Have to disagree on that one, you have to use magnified view to work this way period and indoors or low light, forget being able to find the plane of focus easily due to the noise. It's even worse with a wide angle. I find it hard enough with an 85mm. If you have a lens which you can focus wide open then you can use peaking at least. Albeit at the cost of focus shift but then that has always been the case. When I'm shooting in studio I've taken to focusing wide open then manually stopping down for the shot. Ok if you're on a tripod and I've had to go back to a tripod for studio work as a result, oh and a lot slower style of shooting with models reminiscent of the studio based medium format/large format days. I'd kill for a split screen for studio work. For all that Sony have this funky app thing on our cameras, it's far from being exploited as much as it could be.
Beni wrote:
Have to disagree on that one, you have to use magnified view to work this way period and indoors or low light, forget being able to find the plane of focus easily due to the noise. It's even worse with a wide angle. I find it hard enough with an 85mm. If you have a lens which you can focus wide open then you can use peaking at least. Albeit at the cost of focus shift but then that has always been the case. When I'm shooting in studio I've taken to focusing wide open then manually stopping down for the shot. Ok if you're on a tripod and I've had to go back to a tripod for studio work as a result, oh and a lot slower style of shooting with models reminiscent of the studio based medium format/large format days. I'd kill for a split screen for studio work. For all that Sony have this funky app thing on our cameras, it's far from being exploited as much as it could be....Show more →
No disagreement here, just a different shooting situation.When you're shooting portraits indoors at f/11, that could only be in one situation, studio lighting. I have to say that the EVF/LV technology has not yet solved this problem. OVF are still much better for this kind of shooting no matter if the lens is wide open or stopped down.
I find that kind of shooting fine wide open actually with an EVF there is usually plenty light at wider apertures in a studio. It's only hitting focus stopped down which is a pain. I shot an event indoors, lenses stopped down to f4, I had to use magnification to hit correct focus. It's a rather slow way of shooting. When I was shooting people moving with the 20mm at f4 I had to zone focus, peaking was useless and there wasn't time to magnify. Haven't had to shoot like that for a very very long time.
Beni wrote:
I find that kind of shooting fine wide open actually with an EVF there is usually plenty light at wider apertures in a studio. It's only hitting focus stopped down which is a pain.
That is definitely the weakness of stopped down LV work. I would imagine the Loxia lenses will not be suitable for such shooting scenarios. The Sony FE lenses do have the option to focus wide open or close to if I'm not mistaken. However, and this is my own radical opinion that I don't expect anyone to agree with, nothing beats a nice DSLR OVF with a real glass prism finder and matching focusing screen, or the accuracy of a well calibrated range finder, in terms of clarity and pure enjoyment of the photography experience, with the safety net of LV whenever it is needed in very critical situations.
I'll take it a step further, is there anything to beat a WLF for studio work? Actually to be honest using the rear screen on the A7/r comes very close but again there is the problem of the focusing stopped down. I love shooting with the screen angled to be a WLF.
Would a split screen app such as Fuji have work at such apertures? I know a traditional optical split screen wouldn't, just goes black after f5.6. What might be nice is a zoomed in window just in the corner, you can get it with Magic Lantern for Canon. Best of both worlds.
Beni wrote:
I'll take it a step further, is there anything to beat a WLF for studio work? Actually to be honest using the rear screen on the A7/r comes very close but again there is the problem of the focusing stopped down. I love shooting with the screen angled to be a WLF.
Would a split screen app such as Fuji have work at such apertures? I know a traditional optical split screen wouldn't, just goes black after f5.6. What might be nice is a zoomed in window just in the corner, you can get it with Magic Lantern for Canon. Best of both worlds....Show more →
The zoomed window is actually very practical. My Ricoh GXR-M had this feature and it was a great way focus accurately while keeping an eye on the composition. Shouldn't be difficult to implement in the A7.
Beni wrote:
I'll take it a step further, is there anything to beat a WLF for studio work? Actually to be honest using the rear screen on the A7/r comes very close but again there is the problem of the focusing stopped down. I love shooting with the screen angled to be a WLF.
Would a split screen app such as Fuji have work at such apertures? I know a traditional optical split screen wouldn't, just goes black after f5.6. What might be nice is a zoomed in window just in the corner, you can get it with Magic Lantern for Canon. Best of both worlds....Show more →
don't use focus peaking when stopped down that far, it's useless (i actually prefer to never use it). i don't have any problem focusing at f/5.6 to f/8 on people at events with no peaking and no magnification. this is outdoors though, i pretty much never use such small apertures indoors due to my aversion to lighting. i would imagine the evf would get too laggy in such conditions?
i agree about a small magnified window, i've been asking for that for years.
Being used to RF shooting, I never really had any problem with magnified focusing. It only takes a second to focus and a slight tap on the shutter release brings me back to full view to compose and shoot. On the other hand, I wasn't as good at focusing without magnification. Somehow it didn't work for me.
However, and this is my own radical opinion that I don't expect anyone to agree with, nothing beats a nice DSLR OVF with a real glass prism finder and matching focusing screen, or the accuracy of a well calibrated range finder, in terms of clarity and pure enjoyment of the photography experience, with the safety net of LV whenever it is needed in very critical situations.
Actually to be honest using the rear screen on the A7/r comes very close but again there is the problem of the focusing stopped down. I love shooting with the screen angled to be a WLF.