What are people's thoughts about the CZ 50mm f/1.4. From the Zeiss' published MTF charts it looks like it would have fairly good bokeh with moderate sharpness wide open and would become quite sharp stopped down. Is this people's experience? Does anyone have any samples shot? Thanks for any help you could give.
I'm working on a fast 50mm group test with the 1Ds III, but the CZ50/1.4 has long been a favourite of mine. It has typical Zeiss bokeh (ie, a little busy) but at f1.4 I've not used anything sharper overall, though I'm expecting the 50/1.2 L to come close. It does have something of a weakness for close range work: here a good Takumar 50/1.4 is better, but at distance, it's superb.
None of the 50mm lenses are are sharp wide open in the f1.0-f1.4 range as the best 85mm lenses, of course.
I'm going to mirror hubsand's observations. I have a CZ 50/1.4 and a Pentax Takumar SMC 50/1.4. At a close distance of about 18 inches the Pentax was sharper across the frame on my 5D. But in comparision shots of 10 meters (estimate) and out the CZ 50/1.4 spanked the Pentax. They were both good centrally but the CZ was just so much better in the corners.
All that said, they have both given me excellent shots and I am keeping both of them.
My bokeh grading by maker: A (Leica M & R), B (Canon), C (Zeiss C/Y), D (Nikon). Nikon is getting better recently. No personal Minolta experience, but they would probably get an A or B. All that said, the CZ P50/1.4 gets a D- (and I have two copies). Of my dozen C/Y lenses, it ranks dead last in bokeh. Wide open, it's very sharp, but there is falloff and contrast is low in the corners. Barrel distortion is noticeable at 2%. These are common deficiencies for a fast 50. Below is illumination behavior at various apertures, and a wide-open corner crop. Shot on 100 ASA film, tripod-mounted RTS III, scanned at 4000 dpi.
I have one, but have not amassed very much experience with it yet, as it is one
of four 50mm primes I have, and I've not had it too long. I have set up a page
of comparision shots made with all four of my fifties. It is not a perfect test,
as the shots were all handheld and made with 1.6x crop bodies, but I think it
still has some value. Check here if interested, and of course, view the "original"
(100%) file size. The pbase resized photos are uselessly soft:
www.pbase.com/tswen/50compare
Tim
Edited by trumpet_guy on Jun 10, 2008 at 09:16 PM GMT
No experience with the P50/1.7, sorry. I don't mean to denigrate the P50/1.4, as it performs very well overall. In addition, I love the size, handling, DOF scale, and build quality. It balances beautifully on the lightweight Contax Aria to give a street-shooter delight. Even the ni-sen bokeh can be improved by stopping down.
hubsand wrote:
I'm working on a fast 50mm group test with the 1Ds III, but the CZ50/1.4 has long been a favourite of mine. It has typical Zeiss bokeh (ie, a little busy) but at f1.4 I've not used anything sharper overall, though I'm expecting the 50/1.2 L to come close. It does have something of a weakness for close range work: here a good Takumar 50/1.4 is better, but at distance, it's superb.
None of the 50mm lenses are are sharp wide open in the f1.0-f1.4 range as the best 85mm lenses, of course.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for responding. I was hoping that the CZ 50mm f/1.4 would do a little better with bokeh than the typical Zeiss lens, but it doesn't look like that is so. It will be great to see your 50mm test group. I love your website and find it very helpful. Thanks for all the work you do on these tests.
jamesdak wrote:
I'm going to mirror hubsand's observations. I have a CZ 50/1.4 and a Pentax Takumar SMC 50/1.4. At a close distance of about 18 inches the Pentax was sharper across the frame on my 5D. But in comparision shots of 10 meters (estimate) and out the CZ 50/1.4 spanked the Pentax. They were both good centrally but the CZ was just so much better in the corners.
All that said, they have both given me excellent shots and I am keeping both of them.
Hi James,
Thanks for responding. I hadn't heard about the close focusing issues. That is very helpful.
walter pfyl wrote:
Can I ask you what adapter you are using to mount your CZ to the EOS?
Hi Walter,
Welcome to FM. People use a lot of different adapters for CZ to EOS. Some swear by Kindai. Others like the ones from happypageHK. Others seem to really like fotodiox, and other just buy cheap ones from ebay. I don't hear any consensus. Sorry I can't help more.
rico wrote:
No experience with the P50/1.7, sorry. I don't mean to denigrate the P50/1.4, as it performs very well overall. In addition, I love the size, handling, DOF scale, and build quality. It balances beautifully on the lightweight Contax Aria to give a street-shooter delight. Even the ni-sen bokeh can be improved by stopping down.
Hi Rico,
Thanks for commenting and sharing your shots. I am not sure I agree about your bokeh ratings and I find it very hard to lump all lenses from a single manufacturer together. Take the Canon 50's for example. I really dislike the bokeh from the 50mm f/1.4, but find the bokeh from the 50mm f/1.8 to be pretty good and the bokeh from the 50mm f/1.2L to be very good. I do agree, however, that Zeiss in general tends to sacrifice bokeh to some degree for sharpness.
trumpet_guy wrote:
I have one, but have not amassed very much experience with it yet, as it is one
of four 50mm primes I have, and I've not had it too long. I have set up a page
of comparision shots made with all four of my fifties. It is not a perfect test,
as the shots were all handheld and made with 1.6x crop bodies, but I think it
still has some value. Check here if interested, and of course, view the "original"
(100%) file size. The pbase resized photos are uselessly soft:
www.pbase.com/tswen/50compare
Tim
Edited by trumpet_guy on Jun 10, 2008 at 09:16 PM GMT
Hi Tim,
Thanks for sharing your tests. I did find them useful, but they didn't really answer the bokeh question. Still I appreciate your effort in doing them and for sharing the results.
trumpet_guy wrote:
I have one, but have not amassed very much experience with it yet, as it is one
of four 50mm primes I have, and I've not had it too long. I have set up a page
of comparision shots made with all four of my fifties. It is not a perfect test,
as the shots were all handheld and made with 1.6x crop bodies, but I think it
still has some value. Check here if interested, and of course, view the "original"
(100%) file size. The pbase resized photos are uselessly soft:
www.pbase.com/tswen/50compare
Tim
Thanks Tim, your test confirms most of the sources I've found on the net regarding the CZ 1.7 vs 1.4 (even Zeiss's own database), unless focus was missed in the 1.4's shots, the 1.7 pretty much smokes its f1.4 brother for sharpness, from wide open to f4. And it's a few times cheaper too.
I did see your tests and they even spurred some of my thinking on this subject. I didn't comment on the thread, but even in your pictures I see some of what I don't like about the Canon, which to my eye is over brightness and relatively large brightness differences in the blurred background. Bokeh is of course a pretty subjective thing. To me I like the blur created by the Zeiss lenses (both the 1.7 and what I have seen of the 1.4) more than I like the Canon 1.4. Still I think both pale in comparison to some of Paul's shots with the 58mm Rokkor. I was hoping that someone would convince me that the bokeh from the Zeiss 1.4 could be quite nice, but it looks like it is probably only alright. I am interested in Zeiss because later this year you should be able to pick up an N-mount version and have it adapted for autofocus by conurus (at least that is what their website says), and it seems likely to me that the Zeiss would then become the best autofocus 50mm option for Canon. The question for me then will be do I want the Zeiss with autofocus or the Rokkor or both. Hard decisions.
Thanks for the shots. They confirm to me the alright character of the Zeiss bokeh. It is certainly not terrible to my eyes, but not beautiful either. Thanks for helping out.
Leon Noel wrote:
Thanks Tim, your test confirms most of the sources I've found on the net regarding the CZ 1.7 vs 1.4 (even Zeiss's own database), unless focus was missed in the 1.4's shots, the 1.7 pretty much smokes its f1.4 brother for sharpness, from wide open to f4. And it's a few times cheaper too.
Hi Leon,
Your shots with the Rokkor are certainly fantastic as well and have peaked my interest for this lens.
As we all know, any lens can have good bokeh if the camera-to-subject distance and camera-to-background distance ratio lands in the "sweet spot" for the chosen aperture and focal length. It is when these circumstances are not ideal that we start to see more differences between the lenses, particularly when the background has bright highlights and/or edgy patterns (whether they be parallel blades of foliage or fence lattice).
Maybe the approach for assessing bokeh ought to be to find a scene that is particularly challenging and produces relatively ugly bokeh, shoot it with various lenses, and then try to find which is the least ugly.
I think Antony's testing of the 50/58 Rokkors' bokeh is a good example: http://www.rokkorfiles.com/Battle of 50s1.htm (you'll have to copy and paste the whole url)
