Actually Fred has a ZM 85 as well. The thing is a laser so really good on landscape. Now I have the GM85 as well and love it but the ZM does kill it in the corners even at 5.6. It's a really sharp little lens. Now I have a feeling a Loxia 85 is coming but even so not sure it can match this ZM f4
Jack see if you can rent one to try. Jack Thompson wrote:
So Guy, you're rolling with the ZM 85 F4 on the long end, and Fred is using the Leica 90 2.5. Reasons you prefer the ZM (other than being a Zeiss man at heart)?
Was just checking out Guy's FE 50 F1.4 FS post thinking its the fastest sale transaction on the FM.com Buy & Sell ever. ( Is this a record sale time?) Also what does "Tagged for feedback" mean on the Buy & Sell ?
GMPhotography wrote:
Actually Fred has a ZM 84 as well. The thing is a laser so really good on landscape. Now I have the GM85 as well and love it but the ZM does kill it in the corners even at 5.6. It's a really sharp little lens. Now I have a feeling a Loxia 85 is coming but even so not sure it can match this ZM f4
Anyone want to make the over/under on how long the 85GM lasts in Guy's bag?
I occasionally think I should sell lox21 or B18; but can never decide which so they are both safe in my camera bag. I feel with both of them the way I never have in my entire life with ultra wide angle: IQ wise it doesn't matter what you do with them. They are great at all settings. You can concentrate on the image and forget the lens. Fred Miranda wrote:
I think he kept the Loxia 21/2.8 for almost a year! but...I remember he had thoughts of replacing it for the Batis 18!
Some people on the web talk about the C-Sonnar as being two lenses in one: a great character lens at wide apertures, and a modern sharp lens across the field stopped down.
Now I didn't buy the lens for stopped down use, but some preliminary testing suggests that (as I expected) at f8 this is a bit optimistic. It's plenty sharp over most of the field, but the corners are not a patch on the Loxia, or (I imagine) the G-Master zoom, or the 1.4/50.
That is of course what might might realistically expect for the form factor and design. But if anyone was thinking of getting the lens to do all those things you might need to think carefully.
Gotta say, I am super happy with it though. It really does give a wonderful look at wide apertures - and it's much sharper centrally at wide apertures than I expected (*much* sharper than my ancient Jupiter was) as well as surprisingly contrasty even at wide apertures. So you get the old Sonnar look with much greater sharpness and much much greater contrast.
On the other hand (relative to my last post) here is a kind of image I did not expect the Sonnar to excel at.
I do a lot of botanical photography; and it turns out the Sonnar's distinctive bokeh is rather nice on wide aperture botanical images (made possible courtesy of the TAP)
Here is an image (not great, but illustrates the potential) where the Sonnar bokeh gives a lively spatial feel to the bokeh with could otherwise have been a flat smooth blur, which somehow to my taste would make the flower spike feel less immersed in its environment (the actual flower is a focus stack of 3 f 1.7 images, the rest of the image is from one of those)
DavidBM wrote:
On the other hand (relative to my last post) here is a kind of image I did not expect the Sonnar to excel at.
I do a lot of botanical photography; and it turns out the Sonnar's distinctive bokeh is rather nice on wide aperture botanical images (made possible courtesy of the TAP)
Here is an image (not great, but illustrates the potential) where the Sonnar bokeh gives a lively spatial feel to the bokeh with could otherwise have been a flat smooth blur, which somehow to my taste would make the flower spike feel less immersed in its environment (the actual flower is a focus stack of 3 f 1.7 images, the rest of the image is from one of those)...Show more →
Golly, that's impressive. I wouldn't have thought it possible to do a focus stack of a "living" subject such as a flower at such a close distance. Was there absolutely no wind at all?
I love photographing Grevillia and this might have opened up a whole range of possibilities...
genji wrote:
Golly, that's impressive. I wouldn't have thought it possible to do a focus stack of a "living" subject such as a flower at such a close distance. Was there absolutely no wind at all?
Very little wind; but it was hand held at less than minimum focussing distance (thanks, TAP!) so my hand was as bad as wind.
The trick is after doing your auto-align in photoshop, to set the opacity of one of the layers to about 40% so you can see how it is registering, and then move it around a bit to get is as perfectly in register as you can in the exact bits where you plan to blend. Since only the subject itself is focus stacked (the rest of the image is just the closest one of these exposures, to get best bokeh) it doesn't matter if you loose registration in the rest of the image.
Once you have the layers of the flower itself in register, I blended them in manually. Basically the three images had the bottom of the flower spike, the middle and the top in focus.
But no, you couldn't do this with Helicon focus.....
DavidBM wrote:
Very little wind; but it was hand held at less than minimum focussing distance (thanks, TAP!) so my hand was as bad as wind.
The trick is after doing your auto-align in photoshop, to set the opacity of one of the layers to about 40% so you can see how it is registering, and then move it around a bit to get is as perfectly in register as you can in the exact bits where you plan to blend. Since only the subject itself is focus stacked (the rest of the image is just the closest one of these exposures, to get best bokeh) it doesn't matter if you loose registration in the rest of the image.
Once you have the layers of the flower itself in register, I blended them in manually. Basically the three images had the bottom of the flower spike, the middle and the top in focus.
But no, you couldn't do this with Helicon focus.....
. I was just thinking the same 
