melcat
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Robin Smith wrote:
I don't have the Zeiss Planar 50 f1.4, but agree with the others, if it is the ZE, then the general impression I get is that this is not a particularly special example, unlike say the 21mm, 135mm APO or even 100 mm Makro that used to get very good reviews.
I have the 100mm f/2 and 50mm f/2 Makro Planars, and the 100 is one of my most-used lenses. I often use it with botanical subjects where I'm trying to reproduce colours accurately, and in conjunction with Canon L lenses where I want to match the Zeiss and Canon renditions. So, with nearly 10 years of experience doing that I think I do have a handle on whatever the "Zeiss colours" are.
I do most of the correction by having separate Adobe DNG profiles for Zeiss and Canon lenses with each body. (These are made using a ColorChecker target and XRite's software.) This still leaves some more correction which I do manually for some images. I found when experimenting on how to do that it was easier to start with a Canon L image and make it look Zeissy, by nudging the yellow–blue slider towards yellow and tweaking the tone curve. To "correct" Zeiss to my "standard" Canon look, of course go the other way.
These adjustments are consistent with how the Zeiss images look to me subjectively. There is often a yellow push visible in green foliage, and the images seem too high key in the brighter areas. I don't fully understand why the DNG profile isn't fully correcting the yellow, but the way Adobe have done this is technically weird in the way it doesn't fix the white balance; life's too short and it seems plausible. I put the highlights brightness down to the Canon L coatings being better. Even though Zeiss invented multicoating (it was a WW II German military secret) both my Zeisses are noticeably less flare-resistant than my Canon Ls, especially the recent ones, so that's plausible. The Milvus versions of the same lenses are claimed to have improved coatings over the ZE "Classic" versions I have.
Comparing other aspects of lens performance, when I first used it I was astonished at how sharp the 100mm f/2 Makro was, but it is not in fact sharper than my 100–400 II at medium distances (of course,it still kills the zoom close up). As many commentators have said, other lens makers have caught up. I really dislike the Zeiss "Classic" cosmetics, and given the reports of the 21mm ZE falling apart I am not convinced they have any better build quality than Canon Ls. Nor are they weather sealed, although mine have survived hiking trips. The focussing action on the 100 is OK, but that on the ZE 50mm f/2 Makro Planar is just as stiff and horrid as people say. The Milvus version fixes the weather sealing and haptics, and I really regret not spending the extra on the Milvus version of the 50, which was out by then and which I tried out in the shop.
One more issue with the 100mm f/2: it has longitudinal chromatic aberration wide open, consistent with the age of the design.
If Canon made fast 100mm and 50mm macros, I'd replace my Zeisses with those, but they don't. (I was disappointed with the way they went with the new RF 100mm macro. I guess the existence of the 100mm and 50mm f/2 EF Milvuses destroyed the market for a fast 100mm macro, so they went for magnification as the party trick instead.) In other words, I have these lenses not because they are Zeiss, but because they are specialist tools.
The OP's 50mm f/1.4 Zeiss can be regarded as a specialist tool, for its traditional "fast fifty" bokeh. Canon's offering there was the EF 50mm f/1.2; I have that, and it's underwhelming. The Zeiss would probably have been a better buy had AF not been a requirement.
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. They has such a unique rendering style compared to Canon and I have always felt that they give the scene a little more life.