Fred Miranda
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 p.28 #12 · Sony Planar T* FE 50/1.4 ZA tests | |
Steve Spencer wrote:
35mm seems to be a very hard focal length for which to design lenses. I think part of that is it is just that people want to do so many things with a 35mm. They want to shoot high quality landscapes. They want to shoot excellent portraits. They want to be able to shoot well at close focus. For so many people it is their default or one lens solution, so people want it to do everything. I think another part of the difficulty is that it is still wide angle enough that for SLRs designers they had to make it retrofocal to clear the mirror, and for mirrorless designers if they don't make it retrofocal it is still close enough to the sensor to have a short enough exit pupil that you have to design for the coverglass. Concretely this means that all DSLR lenses (and really any lens that is designed to be retrofocal) are going to be pretty large, and rangefinder lenses (and any non-retrofocal lens that isn't redesigned for the coverglass) are going to be compromised at least to some extent.
Sony and Zeiss seem to have developed three 35mm lenses that aren't retrofocal. One is excellent, the Sonnar in the RX1 and descendants, but it was specifically designed for then sensor and apparently sits very close to the sensor in a way that an interchangeable lens never could. The other two are small and quite good, but IMO fall a bit short of excellent. The Sony/Zeiss 35 f/2.8 is a good value and tiny, which makes it a wonderful choice for many people. It also has very few flaws. It never achieves quite excellent results either, however. And Zeiss' redesign of the ZM 35 biogon as the Loxia 35 f/2 is also a very good but not great lens, IMO. It is a great size and has good performance in many ways, but it really could be better into the corners at smaller apertures and never quite is able to achieve that.
Frankly, I think Sony and Zeiss can do better at designing for mirrorless, but both the FE 35 f/2.8 and Loxia 35 f/2 were very early developed lenses and were pushed out the door very quickly. I am hopeful that in time we will see some stronger designs (even though these aren't duds by any means, they aren't top designs either). What I would really like to see is better bokeh from the non-retrofocal designs, but that is a big challenge. I don't think I have seen any 35mm lenses that is non-retrofocal for which I actually really like the bokeh. Not the Leica M 35 f/1.4 ASPH (FLE or non-FLE); not the Zeiss ZM 35 f/1.4; not the Voigtlander 35 f/1.2 (it is pretty good at some distances and terrible at others); not the Zeiss ZM 35 f/2; not the Leica M 35 f/2 (ASPH or not); not the Zeiss 35 f/2 Contax G. The closest two are probably the Voigtlander 35 f/1.7, which I think is ok but not great; and the Leica M 35 f/1.4 (pre-ASPH) which has quite nice bokeh stopped down a bit (but it is very glowy wide open and the bokeh wide open is pretty weird at some focal lengths too). The Leica M 35 f/1.4 double ASPH might be pretty good, but I haven't seen enough samples to know really. So, it seems that designing a non-retrofocal 35mm lens with great bokeh is a challenge that hasn't really yet been met, so it would seem it is a hard challenge.
If we look at retrofocal 35mm lenses, however, a number of them have pretty decent bokeh. Starting with the Zeiss C/Y 35 f/1.4, Zeiss seems to have designed 35mm retrofocal lenses with at least pretty good bokeh. I actually think the Zeiss ZE/ZF 35 f/1.4 has very nice bokeh (if you don't look too hard in the corners) and it is my personal favourite. And as discussed here the FE 35 f/1.4 has nice smooth bokeh and if they just had avoided the onion rings I could have called it excellent. So, Sony seems with this lens and perhaps some advice from Zeiss, to have gone the retrofocal route for perhaps good reason.
In contrast 50ish mm lenses with excellent bokeh both DSLR (e.g., Canon EF 50 f/1.2L; Minolta MC 58 f/1.2; Zeiss MIlvus 50 f/1.4; Pentax K 50 f/1.4; Nikon 58 f/1.4) and rangefinder (Leica M 50 f/1.4 ASPH; Leica M 50 f/2 AA: Zeiss ZM 50 f/1.5) are not that hard to come by, and therefore I don't think it is all that surprising that both the FE 50 f/1.4 ZA and the FE 55 f/1.8 ZA are excellent lenses with quite nice bokeh. At 50mm SLR lenses don't even have to be retrofocal and that is part of the reason they can be so small. So, the distinction between SLR and rangefinder becomes less meaningful.
35mm just seems to be a much harder focal length to design for than 50mm and although the FE 35 f/1.4 ZA is not quite up to the FE 50 f/1.4 ZA, I think that is to a certain extent to be expected. It would be nice, however, if Sony gave us some type of 35mm f/1.8 or f/2 fairly soon and if they can't do that, perhaps they could at least give us an update of the FE 35 f/1.4 ZA that was made with the new lens molds and polishing and gets rid of most of the issues with the onion rings, and then increase the quality control so that fewer bad copies are out there. Then I think they could claim that the FE 35 f/1.4 ZA is a world class choice....Show more →
The 35/2.8 ZA is not loved enough imo.  Sony was able to accomplish something difficult to do in a very small lens. High contrast, low aberration (LoCA) and high resolution from center to very edges wide open. The main complain is harsher rendering at mid distance but other than that, this lens is excellent.
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