Interesting, I've heard nothing but great things about the ZF 50. So many great things including comments and samples in this forum, in fact, that I bought one. Once my broken collar bone heals a bit more, I might get a chance to go and use it.
i have heard/seen things that say its a great lens and all, but i've also seen plenty of members on this site posting photos w/ lots of blooming and just not that impressive in general... esp when you remember it's what, $500? I paid $75 for my Nikkor 50/1.4- it's smaller, lighter, cheaper, and probably just as good maybe better. And i can throw it at you as a weapon, because it was so cheap.
j/k about tossing a lens at you- but i COULD do it haha
Andi (I think) put up some crops from the ZF 50 and the pics had a strange glow to them in OOF areas wide open and stopped down to 2.8. Lotus, surely you remember the discussion on this particular point. I've seen this kind of behaviour before, though not to the same degree, on my C/Y 35-70 wide open (which is one area where the Leica 35-70/4 beats the Contax easily), so I don't think this behaviour is exclusive to the ZF 50 .
I'm still very interested in trying a ZF lens or two, but I'll wait until more start to appear on the used market, bringing prices down.
StevenPA wrote:
Andi (I think) put up some crops from the ZF 50 and the pics had a strange glow to them in OOF areas wide open and stopped down to 2.8. Lotus, surely you remember the discussion on this particular point. I've seen this kind of behaviour before, though not to the same degree, on my C/Y 35-70 wide open (which is one area where the Leica 35-70/4 beats the Contax easily), so I don't think this behaviour is exclusive to the ZF 50 .
Andi's sample images from the ZF 50 were uniformly excellent. He also spoke quite highly of it. I did notice a something of a glow in the wide open shot, but other posters suggested that was fairly common and potentially situation-based. I'll see if that effect is duplicated in my wide-open samples.
Hopefully, I can get some samples over the next day or so, and potentially a side-by-side comparison with the Contax c/y 50/1.4. Hopefully adapter issues won't get in the way of decent comparison.
Lotusm50 wrote:
Andi's sample images from the ZF 50 were uniformly excellent. He also spoke quite highly of it. I did notice a something of a glow in the wide open shot, but other posters suggested that was fairly common and potentially situation-based. I'll see if that effect is duplicated in my wide-open samples.
Hopefully, I can get some samples over the next day or so, and potentially a side-by-side comparison with the Contax c/y 50/1.4. Hopefully adapter issues won't get in the way of decent comparison.
I'm looking forward to your samples, Lotus, and I hope you feel well enough to not be uncomfortable when you're taking the pics.
I can't remember Andi's thread too clearly as it was a while ago, but I remember thinking the glow effect the lens produced was visible at apertures other than wide open, and also recall thinking, well, it's a nice effect, dreamy-like, but would I want to deal with that all the time? If you're testing does elicit the same effect, I wonder if you could try to do something half artistic with it to show it in a good light because surely that dreaminess is good for something if in fact it exists on your copy too.
StevenPA wrote:
I can't remember Andi's thread too clearly .
correct StevenPA wrote:
but I remember thinking the glow effect the lens produced was visible at apertures other than wide open,.
wrong
ISO1600 wrote:
I wonder how this 58/1.4 will perform...
I ordered one for myself, can't wait. I'm in general impressed with Voigtlander SL series - not quite a bargain, but so far really good image quality (at least with the lenses I''ve tested)
No, I dont care. If other people believe their lens is better it s ok. I actually dont know why people want to bash the ZF line. They say it has too much CA, an ugly bokeh and is not sharp, nothing is true. That is why I made that thread a while ago and not to proove that this lens is in any way better than any other. Actually all current 50mm lens designs are Planar design, they are different in some way but most of them deliver a correct image quality, including the Canon.
Andi Dietrich wrote:
No, I dont care. If other people believe their lens is better it s ok. I actually dont know why people want to bash the ZF line. They say it has too much CA, an ugly bokeh and is not sharp, nothing is true. That is why I made that thread a while ago and not to proove that this lens is in any way better than any other. Actually all current 50mm lens designs are Planar design, they are different in some way but most of them deliver a correct image quality, including the Canon.
That's cool. I can see that this particular conversation is going nowhere fast, so I'll bow out as I don't even own the lens. I apologize if I've given the impression that I was out to bash it. Far from it, I find the new offerings from Zeiss very interesting (as I said earlier this thread). However, I don't want to sit behind a brand name and claim superiority. You apparently don't want to do this either, which is, as you say, why you put the samples up in the first place. I just wanted to see them again to (dis)confirm an (in)correct memory.
I don't think that there is really all that much of the hazy glow that was mentioned. As I indicated above, it's appearance might be situational.
Bokeh and color are quite nice. It's not exceptionally sharp wide open, but it is certainly OK, and in line with expectations for the lens. Hopefully I'll get to a comparison with the Contax c/y 50/1.4 sometime soon. http://boncratious.info/ZF-wideopen-berries.jpg
StevenPA wrote:
I just wanted to see them again to (dis)confirm an (in)correct memory.
Could not find them anymore, here are some wide open shots, I guess the glow you were remembering were on a infinity shot at f1.4. Here some more samples
Thanks very much for going to the trouble, Andi. The more samples I see from this lens, the more I like it. Lotus' sample pic above looks great on my monitor, and the full res pics in the zip file look great as well. What kind of sharpening did you apply?
Regarding the "glow" wide open, the pic that exhibited it most from your thread a while back must have been the result of a combination of factors, none the least of which were demanding lighting conditions and wide open at infinity. I noticed the "glow" immediately because I've seen somewhat similar behaviour from my 35-70/3.4 wide open and wanted to explore whether or not it was part of the Zeiss design or whether it was an unwanted side-effect.
My curiosity has been satisfied (again, thanks); now someone please pass me a Nikon half-body (ala D300) with a FF sensor in it so I can dump my Canon gear and move on over to auto exposure Zeiss!
Steven, you and I are two totally different minds then in this regard, as i can't stand how the ZF's bokeh has that soft/visceral "glow" to it... it doesn't look right to me, and pretty much makes me uncomfortable.
ISO1600 wrote:
Steven, you and I are two totally different minds then in this regard, as i can't stand how the ZF's bokeh has that soft/visceral "glow" to it... it doesn't look right to me, and pretty much makes me uncomfortable.
haha
Yes, I know. We're going to have to agree to disagree. I know you like that more defined, "hard" bokeh. Let's not fight.
I've noticed that at wide open, the pictures produced by the ZF 50mm looks as if it was taken with a soft filter placed in front of the lens. This is most noticeable from shots taken with subjects at infinity because the softness is blended away with the out of focus bokeh.
Once the lens is stopped down, this softness or glow will disappear.
I'm not sure if this is a lens defect but the softness is kind of interesting and I don't really mind having it.
I wonder if the C/Y version display such glow too.
