Although I love my new Canon 50 1.2L, it, like the Zeiss 55 1.2 does not have the sharpness (wide open) and bokeh of the 85L.
I would love to see comparison between the Canon 50L and Zeiss 55 1.2
I just took several images from both the 55 1.2 100 Anniversary and the 85 1.2 50 Jahre Anniversary. I find both these lenses to be amazing and I think it is well understood now that Zeiss had no need for commercial success from them but needed to show what was possible at the then state of the art.
Please note that these are not scientific tests. To be completely comparative I woul have needed to create the same image size from each lens and my furniture made that a difficult challenge.
So what I did was to compare the lenses at two different viewing distances from the subject which is the Shamen statue. The first distance was approximately 3 ft and the second was about 9 feet.
What I wanted to show here was a subjective view of the bokeh. All images were shot with the 1DsMkII at f 1.2 in all cases. Hope this provides som information for everyone.
Please note that all images were processed in C1 at default settings. No post-processing was done in photoshop wxcept to resize ans convert to SRGB space for the Web.
I see a lot of purple fringing on the statuette and the white vase and some green fringing from the 55 on the silver box under the TV. Harsh condititions I know, but I thought Zeiss had more or less engineered CA out of their high-end lenses.
foxbat wrote:
I see a lot of purple fringing on the statuette and the white vase and some green fringing from the 55 on the silver box under the TV. Harsh condititions I know, but I thought Zeiss had more or less engineered CA out of their high-end lenses.
The purple fringing you see is not CA. It is sensor bloom. It can't be "engineered out" of a lens. Lots of posts in the archives about this. It is a fairly common phemomena with specular highlights with any ultra-fast lens shot wide open, or close to wide open.
jjlphoto wrote:
The purple fringing you see is not CA. It is sensor bloom. It can't be "engineered out" of a lens. Lots of posts in the archives about this.
So the fringing does not depend on the lens.
It is a fairly common phemomena with specular highlights with any ultra-fast lens shot wide open, or close to wide open.
I believe he means that it does not depend on the performance of a specific lens used, rather it is a characteristic of the sensor when a particular type of lens is used in a certain way. On the the 1DsII, a Canon 85/1.2 would probably produce the same sensor bloom when shot wide open in the same setting/conditions as the Zeiss 85/1.2.
odo benus wrote:
So the fringing does not depend on the lens.
Yes, I've seen it on shots taken with the Canon 85/1.2, and also shots taken with a meduim format camera with a 24x36 sized diggiback back also. Something to do with a really, really wide column of light from a large diameter optic at a wide open aperture striking the sensor rather than a conical shape of light when stopped down. Not a scientific explaination, but just a hunch.
jjlphoto wrote:
Yes, I've seen it on shots taken with the Canon 85/1.2, and also shots taken with a meduim format camera with a 24x36 sized diggiback back also. Something to do with a really, really wide column of light from a large diameter optic at a wide open aperture striking the sensor rather than a conical shape of light when stopped down. Not a scientific explaination, but just a hunch.
I don't know much about sensors, but the large diameter of the optic as you call it also comes with an inevitable residue of longitudinal chromatic aberration. All purple fringing I have seen so far in f/1.2 sample images certainly looks and behaves as chromatic aberration.
See also: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~parr/photography/faq.html#purplefringe
