p.7 #1 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
See why I like 25 looking at your balcony shot here the lens perspective at least to my eyes is perfect. Has a nice wide angle look but not over done. Looks natural looking
p.7 #2 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
GMPhotography wrote:
See why I like 25 looking at your balcony shot here the lens perspective at least to my eyes is perfect. Has a nice wide angle look but not over done. Looks natural looking
That's the classic wide angle.
We are just playing with distortion going 21, 15, 12 and 10mm but I can't help myself!
p.7 #3 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Of course, I got cloudy sky and no stars last night, so the coma test will have to wait a bit.
Here is a sample showing the worse case scenario for axial color aberration. As I wrote, it's well corrected for a 25mm and I only see fringing in areas of very high contrast with blown highlights. I added a 1:1 crop showing the OOF area behind the focus plane (green fringing) and the result of using a simple LR preset to fix it.
1:1 crop showing green fringing (LoCA) behind the focus plane
1:1 crop showing same as above with a fix in software
p.7 #6 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
niklasl wrote:
Yes, I have seen it with my Loxia 21 on a7R II when taking pictures in snow and cranking up saturation a bit. I could try to post pictures but I failed a while ago using pictures in my Dropbox account (it should work with Dropbox, shouldn't it?). Maybe prepare an LCC in Capture One because of this? It felt a little annoying and I was also surprised to see it as I haven't seen any mentioning of it despite being a diligent forum lurker here...
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Fred Miranda wrote:
I will check this today. Can you guys post some samples?
I looked into this issue a little more and I think it comes from LR 6.14 strong magenta bias when auto color balancing Loxia 25 images. Images taken with the Loxia 25 that are predominantly neutral and light show vignetting even when the lens is not wide open i.e. F5.6. The somewhat strong vignetting intensifies the magenta cast that LR 6.14 adds to images taken with the Loxia 25. This makes the images look like they are suffering from color smearing or some weird optics-sensor interaction. Note that the version of Lightroom 6.14 I am using is the last non subscription version and it is not a current and supported version of the software. This version also lacks a lens profile for the Loxia 25 (not sure if one is available for other versions yet). What made this issue a bit deceiving is that if you are importing images taken with different lenses only the ones taken with the Loxia 25 show this weird cast. Unlike color smearing, the magenta bias can be removed with a simple magenta to green color balance adjustment. You can then leave or remove the vignetting depending on the look you want.
The first image below shows an exaggerated view of the magenta cast and the second image shows it can be corrected.
I looked into this issue a little more and I think it comes from LR 6.14 strong magenta bias when auto color balancing Loxia 25 images. Images taken with the Loxia 25 that are predominantly neutral and light show vignetting even when the lens is not wide open i.e. F5.6. The somewhat strong vignetting intensifies the magenta cast that LR 6.14 adds to images taken with the Loxia 25. This makes the images look like they are suffering from color smearing or some weird optics-sensor interaction. Note that the version of Lightroom 6.14 I am using is the last non subscription version and it is not a current and supported version of the software. This version also lacks a lens profile for the Loxia 25 (not sure if one is available for other versions yet). What made this issue a bit deceiving is that if you are importing images taken with different lenses only the ones taken with the Loxia 25 show this weird cast. Unlike color smearing, the magenta bias can be removed with a simple magenta to green color balance adjustment. You can then leave or remove the vignetting depending on the look you want.
The first image below shows an exaggerated view of the magenta cast and the second image shows it can be corrected....Show more →
Thanks for looking into this. I do see it with Capture One 10 as well and PS CC 2017 with ACR 10.1.
p.7 #14 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Fred Miranda wrote:
It was interesting to see the sunstar in the light water reflection even at f/2.4.
Interesting! Makes me think maybe this is one of those lenses which is a touch faster optically than it’s rated, but whose advertised aperture depends on the iris never closing down, to give better performance “wide open”
I’d probably rather be able to use it at f2 or whatever, but I can see that these days it’s proabably eaiser to market a premium f2.4 lens than one which is described as a bit disappointing at f2...
p.7 #15 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
DavidBM wrote:
Interesting! Makes me think maybe this is one of those lenses which is a touch faster optically than it’s rated, but whose advertised aperture depends on the iris never closing down, to give better performance “wide open”
I’d probably rather be able to use it at f2 or whatever, but I can see that these days it’s proabably eaiser to market a premium f2.4 lens than one which is described as a bit disappointing at f2...
Makes sense David. The Lox 25's iris does not seem to open up as much as the Loxia 21's.
p.7 #16 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Fred Miranda wrote:
It was interesting to see the sunstar in the light water reflection even at f/2.4.
Starts to explain why it's so good @ f/2.8. I'm extreme critical certain behaviours of rendering&boke and in some scenes I could tolerate the output even @ f/2.4 (so rare that I don't think I bother ever actually to use f/2.4).
DavidBM wrote:
I’d probably rather be able to use it at f2 or whatever, but I can see that these days it’s proabably eaiser to market a premium f2.4 lens than one which is described as a bit disappointing at f2...
We can thank the idiots "I need to take boke shot = wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide opeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen". Almost all lenses have have 100% more usable boke closed down a little, and majority of lenses improve giganticly in focus plane when closed down 1-2 stops. So maybe Zeiss learned from Loxia 35 that due to the idiot users & internet crying they need to make lens good wide open, instead giving choice to the users. Also lens "reviews" weight wide open performance heavily vs. giving useful information to readers e.g. "which would be widest aperture to shoot x from aberrations point of view".
Similar growing is happening in new f/1.4 lenses (e.g. Sigma Art, Zeiss Milvus/Otus); lenses are much bigger than old f/1.2 lenses would have been, e.g. compare Sigma Art 85 (or Zeiss Milvus/Otus 85, and remember they are manual focus so they are no so wide) and Canon FD 85L & Canon EF 1.2/85L mkII. I'm not sure this is correct direction...
Zeiss historically has allowed photographers to decide and use wide open aberrations for "artistic effects" if photographer chooses to do so (we have good example in this forum, look photos from Derek (forum nick name "sebboh")). Thinking historically if Zeiss would have for example artificially limited 50mm Planar with aperture to f/2.4 then it would have much better reputation (according to today's standards, back then it would have been just "uninteresting" being so slow lens) as it would not have focus shift & spherical aberration (specially at close distances) and many other issues people have cried about as they have not known how to use the lens. But at same time it would have removed the choice from users. If I would look statistically my own photos with ZE-series Planar 1.4/50, the distribution would be something like 2% f/1.4-f/2, 60% f/2.2-3.2, 30% f/3.5-7.1 and rest f/8-16. But even I almost never use wide apertures I have taken ~5 photos, which I would really miss.
p.7 #17 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Just to sum it up, Fred:
Do you see the lox 25 as an useful travel lens? I mean: if you love primes and, let's say, fly to Paris or Rome or Madrid for a long weekend, would you take this lens as your only one choice or is it still too wide for that?
p.7 #18 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Fred Miranda wrote:
Loxia 25 vs Loxia 21 @ f/3.2
Same goes for f/3.2...Lox 25 slightly better. Both great astro lenses.
Thanks for the testing. Makes it hard to resist.
I really love a 24mm aov and may keep any linear distortion uncorrected if it keeps it wider. My tiny Zuiko 24/2.8 has a ton of coma wide open rendering it suspect for astro.
p.7 #19 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
fededuran wrote:
Just to sum it up, Fred:
Do you see the lox 25 as an useful travel lens? I mean: if you love primes and, let's say, fly to Paris or Rome or Madrid for a long weekend, would you take this lens as your only one choice or is it still too wide for that?
Congrats for your excellent work here.
Definitely would be perfect for these locations. In fact, I will be traveling to Europe soon and will bring Lox 25/2.4, CV 40/1.2 and ZM 85/4 lenses.
p.7 #20 · Loxia 25mm f/2.4 Distagon Tests and Comparisons
Michael Gordon wrote:
Thanks for the testing. Makes it hard to resist.
I really love a 24mm aov and may keep any linear distortion uncorrected if it keeps it wider. My tiny Zuiko 24/2.8 has a ton of coma wide open rendering it suspect for astro.
Distortion is pretty low. I'd say less than 1.5% so there isn't much frame changing. The good news is that correction in post is not even needed, except for CA.
