Yes, very few are disappointed with the sharpness levels of all five APO-Lanthars, of which four serve duty on the E-mount system. There is nothing to speak of to separate them. They have also a beautiful color palette and controlled macro contrast.
The 65/2 has more obvious sharpness as it sees almost all work done at close focus distances, which lets the bokeh shine. You may occasionally see some busy asph-related bokeh highlights, such as p.83 #3 · p.83 #3 on the previous page. It was also the first APO-Lanthar released, back in 2017.
Here's a series from an autumn garden walk yesterday, 11/25, with a little stubborn summer color still hanging on. I'm really surprised this lens isn't more popular!
The Alpine Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) were on full display this week in the Two Medicine area of Glacier NP.
It had rained the day/night before.
Sony A7RIII; ISO.100; CV 65mm Macro Apo-Lanthar @ f2.8; 1/200; 18 images stacked in PS
Doug
PS - I would not have been able to capture this (with the 18 focus bracketed images) without it being absolutely calm - something extremely rare in Glacier!
We have had a lot of wet warm weather here - part of the "atmospheric river" that is causing so much flooding on the west coast. Locally, this has resulted in the snow disappearing at lower elevations and a return of some mushrooms (which I missed a month ago)
Here's a little fellow I found Sunday going in some moss - it is only 1/2 - 3/4" in diameter. Lots of manual focus bracketing with the 65 APO starting at minimum focus distance. All natural light - nothing additional. Cropped in to about 90mm?
I've recently just acquired this lens pre-loved about 9 months ago and I have to say that's it's become one of my favourite. It recently developed an issue (or maybe it's always been there but I never noticed).
When the focus ring is at infinity, the distance on my A7R3 reads 2m and when I rotate from infinity to MFD, it moves towards 0.3m and right around the 0.31m mark on the lens barrel it pops to infinity and stays there for the rest of the way.
Is this normal? My only concern is whether it is negatively affecting the IBIS and essentially overcorrecting. I have for the moment turned off SteadyShot when I use this lens and just shoot at a high enough shutter speed. It does seem to affect my shots at around 1-2m but this is an informal test handheld so it's terrible evidence.
Sending it back for service isn't really worth it as for about the same money, I could just buy another 2nd hand one.
Ideally, I would like some benefit of IBIS so I was wondering if setting it to manual and 60mm focal length would help? Does that setting then ignore the focus distance and not factor in lateral shifts?
It is a great lens, I have one also. Have you tried cleaning the electronic contacts on the lens? If not that is quick and easy thing to try, though to be honest I do not really think that is it.
There are people on the forum that will take apart a lens and attempt repairs themselves, but I am not one of them. Or you might be able to find a teardown video on the net. I don't think cameraquest.com (authorized dealer) does any repairs themselves, but they may have some suggestions for someone who does. Also, keh.com has a repair service that I've read is pretty good, perhaps you could contact them and see what they think but there are costs to actually have them look at it. https://www.keh.com/shop/repair
Thanks for the reply, I've tried cleaning the contacts, but it didn't help. I thought initially maybe this was how the lens was set up so wanted to check with others who have this lens. But I think it's just mine that potentially the distance strip that measures the movement of the helicoid has shifted.
I've done some testing and also looked up the manuals, you're right in that they are vague. But from testing it seems like once you set it to manual, it no longer takes lens readings into account.
When focused on subjects quite far away (>15m), SteadyShot set to auto definitely has some motion blur which is likely due to the lateral/vertical correction for 2m. Once I set it to manual at 60mm, that blur goes away. Now this is all handheld so it's not terribly scientific.
I'm going to use it in this way, have set up a preset for it so I don't forget. It's still a great lens and not really worth the $400ish to fix the problem.
