This looks like a really cool lens. I am on the fence about it though since for a super small kit I seem to almost always have a Leica and 35mm1.4 handy. Certainly a price conscious option and the samples posted here look great.
Ai_Print wrote:
This looks like a really cool lens. I am on the fence about it though since for a super small kit I seem to almost always have a Leica and 35mm1.4 handy. Certainly a price conscious option and the samples posted here look great.
For me it performs above it's price point and does the job I wanted it to do.
You can tell I use it a lot when out and about in the streets at night.
The Z6ii's IBIS and great ISO performance opens up lots of hand held opportunities.
pbraymond wrote:
Always a tough test, OOF branches. At least these are not harshly lit. Wide open.
One could certainly do worse for a small $300 lens. The bokeh character reminds me a bit of the 35mm 1.8 AF-S lens, showing similar structures in the bokeh in busy scenes. Typically I like to slightly stop down a lens to reduce this but with the 40mm it may not make that big of a difference. Fortunately, the bokeh from this lens is usually good.
DeltaSigma wrote:
For me it performs above it's price point and does the job I wanted it to do.
You can tell I use it a lot when out and about in the streets at night.
The Z6ii's IBIS and great ISO performance opens up lots of hand held opportunities.
While out of state this week visiting a relative in California, I stopped by a local camera shop today, they had one 40mm left. I checked it for good centering and function and went for it, makes for a heck of a light walk around kit. Wide open it renders between my version 4 35mm Summicron and the 35mm 1.4 FLE, pretty darn nice.
Z lenses seem to be breeding like rabbits these days, my 100-400 ships soon…
A couple of food oriented images. From the outside, looking in.
Although grossly underexposed I still managed to blow the highlights in the center of the first image.
Fantastic, we’ll worth the money, worth much more. The size alone plus the 2.0 makes it A win for me. I didn’t do scientific tests or shots of brick walls, but I used for Easter morning and a visit with family and friends and I was very happy with the performance. Unfortunately this website is not allowing me to post shots from my phone I don’t know why. So I can’t show you any of the shots I took but just tell you that I was happy with them.
mrjpack wrote:
Fantastic, we’ll worth the money, worth much more. The size alone plus the 2.0 makes it A win for me. I didn’t do scientific tests or shots of brick walls, but I used for Easter morning and a visit with family and friends and I was very happy with the performance. Unfortunately this website is not allowing me to post shots from my phone I don’t know why. So I can’t show you any of the shots I took but just tell you that I was happy with them.
I totally agree with your appraisal.
I like it for low light, hand held, photography since it balances well on a Z6 and is unobtrusive.
Just picked up this lens based on the 40 being one of my favorite focal lengths and good reviews. I'm very impressed with the high IQ as it has the pop, character and bokeh of a more orthodox Gaussian design compared to the more sophisticated 35/1.8 S lens. Overall sharpness is very high being only slightly softer by my CZ 35/2 ZF.2 Distagon at normal shooting distances from a couple of feet to infinity. Optically for the worst case scenario, sharpness at the extreme corners suffer a bit at minimum focus of 12" unless stopped down to f/8 or f/11. However, by backing off slightly to about 16", corner sharpness significantly improves especially closed down to f/5.6, so 16" would be considered your closest practical distance for sharp imaging out to the corners. To illustrate, below is a far corner crop at 12" followed by the same far corner crop at 16". Both were shot at f/4 with the AF focus selected on that target since is not a flat field optic like a macro lens. However, the lens will produce very sharp imaging even at 12" if only interested in the central portion of the image as in most cases.
Test reviewers of the lens correctly point out that the lens suffers from coma that gets snuffed out by f/4. Keep in mind that the 40/2 Summicron-C for the Leica CL (film version) with a typical symmetrical 6/4 optical configuration also suffered from coma requiring f/5.6 to snuff it out at the far edge zone according to Popular Photography's lens test report. Zones 1/3 and 2/3 out required a little less stopping down to bring coma under control. To bring these types of aberrations under better control, I'd expect much more glass would be required as in the 35/1.8 S version.
I like the lens a lot. My aperture sweet spot is between 2.8 and 4. It's small and quick enough to use with the Z9. This lens combined with the 28mm 2.8 is so easy to carry with the z9 in a retrospective 5 camera bag.
