philber - Great shots, the CA is quite bad on the 28mm. Maybe next time you will have to do some bracketing shots specifically for the stain glass windows, to A) give a bit more detail while still having light shine on through, and B) to get rid of the CA that's plaguing the image.
I think it would be better to take an extra shot (assuming you have a tripod with you) then to have to mess about editing out the CA.. Even still, I'm really loving what you're doing with these ZE lenses.
Thanks, Makten. The reason I used f:2.0 was that I had been criticised for never using it...:-). But you are right, of course.
Adam, you are right about the stained glass, but tripods are out in most churches in France. So you have to choose the lesser evil....
Yes there may be CA, but the feeling and rendering of the shots are amazing IMO. Some of the CA may be accentuated just because you are using f/2, and in effect this is the bokeh, which can be unpredictable, when there is such a contrast.
These are some of my favourite shots yours Philippe. The photos just feel alive. I like the different angles and including a foreground.
philber wrote:
Claude, with a Zeiss 21, you get so much depth-of-field that you hardly ever have to focus, unless you are (1) inside a dark building, or (2) shooting close up. When I am outside, I set the lens at f:5.6, and everything is in-focus from about 8' to infinity. It is like having a FF, 22MP point-and-shoot...
I was not worried about de Z21 but more about the Z 100mm. I gues there is sigificant limitation if you want to shoot subjects that have some movements.
snowboarder wrote:
Charles, don't believe anything this guy is telling you.
Landscape forum used to be good, but recently there's been so much cr@p there
and all the comments are always the same - "amazing", "wonderful" etc.
I think there is much more valuable pictures here in this thread
than any other place. Sorry, but landscape forum is nowhere near
what it used to be. Almost all the really good guys are gone.
Don't give up, please keep posting those great Zeiss shots guys
-----------------------------------
Andrew, you are correct to a degree. I've been hanging out at the landscape forum for nearly 8 years, and it certainly is different than it was years ago. Still, there are a lot of excellent photographers there, but as the number of members increased so dramatically over time, the frequency of fine images being posted had declined. That's simply the nature of the internet and not anything we can control. i do my best there to encourage development of the craft and the art of critique, but it's often a deluge. The next level of seriousness can be found at NPN, NatureScapes or BPN.
I've seen you posts in Landscape, and you were quite well received. Clearly , this thread is not for the same purpose as Landscape, so I am puzzled by your comment.
With so many pics, it has become difficult to filter out pics for each of these zeiss focal length. As many of people with experience with these lenses agree of a different character of each focal length, I wonder if it woudl be a good idea to start separate thread for each focal length. That would also be helpful for people who are planning to buy a new zeiss lens and want to see that particular lens pictures.
philber wrote:
jfreak, if you are purely into Zeiss optics, and want separation by focal length, you can find that on a forum called zeissimages
Well! Yes and No. I suggested that the pictures submitted in this thread by people like yourself and others be better visible in terms of how a particular zeiss lens looks. Right now,( more in future as this thread gets even bigger), it is not easy and one has to scavenge every page to see it has anything from the lens they want to look at.
I think it is a better thing to do but only if people like this idea.
jfreak: First, to answer your original question posted a few pages back - no I'm not selling the pictures for stock photography. The reason is twofold - first, they are completely unsuitable. If you look at the images that successful stock photographers take you'll see that they are typically practical illustrations - most often involving people (models). The second reason is that I can't really be bothered. When I put up my web gallery at zenfolio I saw that they already had the whole commerce infrastructure in place. I could have left it as it was and then people would have been able to purchase the images. The problem was that I would have to upload full res images which would then be left at the mercy of zenfolio's resizing algorithm - which sucks big time. So instead I chose to upload them at the max supported display resolution (1440x960), resized and sharpened the way I wanted them to be - and I disabled the shop functions.
As for having separate threads for different glass, I think it would be a very bad idea. The really great thing about this thread is that you get an overall view of what different photographers do with various Zeiss glass. The images are often thematic and it would really suck to have a related series of images split into multiple threads.
In my opinion this thread is really the place for Zeiss (for DSLR) related discussions and display of photos. There are really skilled photographers posting here sharing their knowledge. Furthermore they recognize and appreciate the subtle rendering features of Zeiss glass. In the landscape forums you'll find a number of really good photographers that are very good with composition and light but don't give a damn about fine rendering detail, subtle colors and 3D. It's a special niche of photography and it can get pretty technical. What is very interesting here is that you'll find a great variety of photographic styles but with a common denominator in the love of the rendering style of the Zeiss glass. Superficially (to just take a few examples) Makten's urban environmental detail photography, Philippe's (philber's) architectural photography and Samuli's landscape photography have very little in common - yet there is a common trait binding them together and that's the focus on the rendering style of the image. Composition, light the subject etc are all important but so is the actual rendering of the image (colors, micro contrast etc) - an opinion that I think significantly differentiates this thread/forum from for instance the landscape forum.
My two cents anyway.
Philippe, I really like your 28 cathedral shots. There is definitely something about that lens that you have been very successful in expressing in the shots.
I'm back in Stockholm now, but before leaving Zagreb I had a last go at the cathedral yesterday. I was armed with a tripod this time and was hoping to get some HDR material. This turned out more difficult than I expected. My previous (and only bracketed exposure) shot was just dumb luck. For the most part the stained glass windows are four or five stops brighter than the rest of the interior, so I'm not sure that I got anything good. I'm currently transferring images from the external drives I traveled with. When that's done, I'll have a look at the cathedral images and see if there is something worth keeping there.
Until then, here's a more abstract 100 MP shot:
I have briefly looked through the images I've posted here the last two-three weeks and they look very different when viewed on a 24" calibrated monitor compared to the crappy 1200x800 display of the macbook air that I've been using during my travel. Some images are definitely better while others look worse. Anyway, it's good to be able to open a raw file without having to wait 2-3 minutes. Underpowered laptops really suck for image processing - especially when you shoot raw.
denoir, I understand your point of view and I agree with every word you said. I was just thinking of the people who try and find a particular lens images so convince themselves that it is worth it. But if I think your way then all these images whether of the lens they are looking for or other lens actually speak of the same very fact that all of the zeiss has that special and that special thing is only different in this way or other. I think pics by every lens collectively in a single thread only reinforces these facts about the zeiss lenses.
jfreak wrote:
Well! Yes and No. I suggested that the pictures submitted in this thread by people like yourself and others be better visible in terms of how a particular zeiss lens looks. Right now,( more in future as this thread gets even bigger), it is not easy and one has to scavenge every page to see it has anything from the lens they want to look at.
I think it is a better thing to do but only if people like this idea.
Well, since I did not start this thread I think it will be ok for me to chime in. Philber mentioned searching by focal length. Yes you can do that. But, you can also search by the actual lens. so if you wanted to compare a ZA to a ZF you could search from the list of lenses.
i am with snowboarder here, this is the forum with the most beautiful images, maybe even better than the landscape one. i have seen thousand of images in the internet. i have spent several years of my life seeing them and lately the landscape forum was my preferred, although the images there are so much "perfect" and the colours are always the same. These beautiful and always present reds in the sky and the mountains,etc.that make the captures a little "flat" though at miles of my technique.
Here, the images posted by Snowboarder (awesome pelicans) Denoir (several breathtaking evening shots with spectacular clouds), Samuli ( the sunset cliff is one of the best and awesome images i`ve seen in ages!!!) ,and those sunsets in England?with the marvelous and soft light), the magnificent images of Philippe, the "megacontrast" captures of Makten almost being there, and the long list of starrings whose photos here has made me and many others get crazy about a forgotten hobby, so PLEASE GUYS KEEP ON THE GOOD JOB!
excuse me i donīt want to bother anyone and forgive me if any of my words is disturbing, is just what Denoir says: the fine rendering, the 3d, the colours.... this thread rocks!!!
I agree with denoir. This thread is about the rendering of lenses, even if Zeiss gear is often used by good photographers, of which some can be found in this very thread.
Let's take an example, with a shot I took yesterday. To most people, this image just sucks. It's boring and worthless to them. But not to me.
I shot it because I liked to challenge myself with a boring subject. Look at the doormat. It's "there"; just pops out of the screen. There's no way it would have looked this way with a Nikkor. And I like it so much that I can show it to you guys, just because of the technical quality. It contributes to the thread, without being the least artistically good.
Makten wrote:
I agree with denoir. This thread is about the rendering of lenses, even if Zeiss gear is often used by good photographers, of which some can be found in this very thread.
Let's take an example, with a shot I took yesterday. To most people, this image just sucks. It's boring and worthless to them. But not to me.
I shot it because I liked to challenge myself with a boring subject. Look at the doormat. It's "there"; just pops out of the screen. There's no way it would have looked this way with a Nikkor. And I like it so much that I can show it to you guys, just because of the technical quality. It contributes to the thread, without being the least artistically good.
I don't know, Makten. The 3D aspect of even this nominally 2D scene gives me vertigo just looking at it. Most images on the web are just flat and boring. When lens, technique, and photographer can all conspire to make such a simple scene have that effect, something good is happening.
P.S. I get the same negative comments from my wife about my close, abstract floral and mechanical shots. She just rolls her eyes and asks if I shot any landscapes that day.
What I find cool here is that different people have such varying thoughts on what photography is, and what about it that gets them excited. That helps me to not fall into the narrow mode of thinking that is so easy to do, and believe that only 'fine art' images are worthy, or that just landscapes are the best. Here, all kinds of subjects are shown, many that I like and many that do nothing at all for me. Sorry, the messy floormat did not inspire me, but I'm glad it made someone else happy. I had thought that anyone with pro gear and an investment in Zeiss glass was beyond simple daily snapshots of whatever was in front of them, but I see that many people enjoy that. Keep doing what works for you, and so will I.
Here is a refined image of my vision of that agave plant that I presented here earlier in color. This one really says what I was thinking while in it's presence. I spent 1.5 hours contemplating and photographing this one plant. Definitely not a snapshot, but hey, that's not what I do.
philber wrote:
I concur, Charles, definitely. Though I would call them "less saturated"...
Philippe,
About 28mm; one thing to take into account is that your 28mm shots seem to be slightly overexposed, which results less saturated and flat (in terms of colors and contrast) images.
I'm not sure why this is since for for example on your last outdoor photo (big head on ground and church/building on background) you have correct exposure ("sunny 16"-rule at ISO 100 = 1/100s f/16 -> 1/200s f/11 -> 1/400s f/8 -> 1/320s f/9) - image looks quite washed out, since you shoot handheld and 28mm hood is quite short = sun was shining to front lens (based on how shadows are in photo), but typically I have not found out that 28mm would be this bad in sunlight handling - did you use filter? That could explain the overall weak contrast and colors?
The similar image on previous page was f/8 1/250s, which is 2/3 overexposed and the landscape formatted image of back of Notre Dame was f/7.1 1/200, which results 1 1/3 stop overexposure for the sky (not overexposed as blown out whites but sky blue not looking right).
Due to this kind of difficulties techniques like HDR, enhancing specific colors on post processing or good old fashioned polarizer filter are useful to overcome the washed look in sky. To maximize contrast on difficult situations I try to shade front of the lens with baseball cap or whatever is available and I never use filter unless it's needed for some effect (I don't own any other filters except polarizers and IR - I may have some which have came with used lenses but I don't use them).
One simple thing to compensate (better results are of course achieved if this is not needed) filter/backlight/etc. caused weak contrast is to adjust black level in image - now any of these outdoor images didn't have anything black in image, for which I would assume adjusting black level could improve these outdoor images. Typically with any Zeiss Z* lens I have always something in image, which clips blacks without any adjustments (of course assuming there is no haze or direct sunlight to lens).
It also could be that there is sample variation in 28mm - Seems that everybody else is suffering from CA with this lens, and I have not has issues with CA at all, at least yet. On other hand I have not seen anybody having as horrible corner bokeh what I seem to make everytime I shoot with the lens. Overall it's quite obvious that it's not at same level as Z* "stars" 2/100 and 2.8/21, as I see it there is nothing at the moment at same level as these two.
----------
Denoir, waiting for your photos - I did wonder the weird colors on some of images you posted in past few weeks, but uncalibrated laptop and images without profile kind of explains most of the weird things I have been wondering.
---------
Makten, on this size you presented the green mat and nice texture on wall doesn't works very well. This image looks like one, which looks on large size on your screen great but when you downsize it the detail goes too small and it stops working.
Great shot Luka! Great artistic feel to it.
joakim, I like the shot with the 28/2.
Good point Luka, There are so many styles that are unique, and what makes it interesting here. If it were purely technical comments, and rather than how to achieve and maximize zeiss rendering, it would simply be like the canon or nikon threads. Nothing wrong with the threads, but they are different. This thread is different, and is the reason why it attracts a lot of people to it.
First, thanks for the nice comments on my photos a few pages back
Philber, the church shots are very nice!
denoir wrote:
Some great shots here!
As for having separate threads for different glass, I think it would be a very bad idea. The really great thing about this thread is that you get an overall view of what different photographers do with various Zeiss glass. The images are often thematic and it would really suck to have a related series of images split into multiple threads.
In my opinion this thread is really the place for Zeiss (for DSLR) related discussions and display of photos. There are really skilled photographers posting here sharing their knowledge. Furthermore they recognize and appreciate the subtle rendering features of Zeiss glass. In the landscape forums you'll find a number of really good photographers that are very good with composition and light but don't give a damn about fine rendering detail, subtle colors and 3D. It's a special niche of photography and it can get pretty technical. What is very interesting here is that you'll find a great variety of photographic styles but with a common denominator in the love of the rendering style of the Zeiss glass. Superficially (to just take a few examples) Makten's urban environmental detail photography, Philippe's (philber's) architectural photography and Samuli's landscape photography have very little in common - yet there is a common trait binding them together and that's the focus on the rendering style of the image. Composition, light the subject etc are all important but so is the actual rendering of the image (colors, micro contrast etc) - an opinion that I think significantly differentiates this thread/forum from for instance the landscape forum.
johnahill wrote:
I drove into London today with the possibility of nice sunset, well that didn't happen but I got this in the twilight about 20 minutes after sunset.
5D + ZE50/1.4
Absolutely awesome capture, John! Nice work!
One question: why select f:11? One comment: it seems to me that your image is ever so slightly tilted upwards to the right. Is that only an illusion?
I like the different angles and including a foreground.
