Just taken delivery of a 50 1.4 ZE and, whilst it's great for smaller apertures and shows wonderful detail and clarity for landscapes etc, I seem to be struggling at the wider end, even with live view.
I don't seem to be able to get things to snap into focus with liveview - I have the 1DSiii which does not have the best LCD it has to be said - so that probably doesn't help. I also know that the general consensus seems to be this lens is not at its best wide (or near wide) open and has some focus shift issues but am interested to know if it's usual to struggle to get what at least looks like the right focus with live view.
Thanks in advance.
Jim Schemel wrote:
LizzieShepherd,
Post some samples.Let us see what you are talking about.F1.4 is very thin DOF
-Jim
Absolutely - it's paper thin DOF - I was more asking about whether people find they can get it to snap into focus in liveview. My widest ap. lens I had previously was a Canon 135L - f2 is of course not 1.4 - but I could judge if it was focusing which I'm struggling to do here. Missing focus at this aperture is more than likely - but I'm struggling to see where the focus point lies even if it has missed.
By all means I can post some examples tomorrow - but I was hoping to find out first if others have the same issue getting it to look right even in liveview - particularly with a camera with a lower resolution LCD.
Thanks for your reply though.
Welcome Lizzie
The 135L is one of the best lenses that Canon produces. Excellent IQ and the best AF. That aside the ZE 50/1.4 is a very good lens. I am sure that you have an excellent focusing screen for MF. This is a must. I know that the likes of Adam will avidly use live view. I do also but prefer not to, and use a well calibrated MF screen such as the Eg-S for the 5DII. We have different techniques. The MF with narrow DOF's with these lenses wide open does take some practice, even coming from the backdrop of manual film cameras.
With the 1DsIII, I have no experience with the live view focusing, but I am surprised that x10 view, that you cannot achieve the snap into focus. Look forward to your samples.
I have been watching this thread for awhile. I have not yet chosen to buy into the group of Zeiss users, but I did rent for a recent trip to Ireland.
I rented the Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 ZF.2. Lovely lens. I was amazed at how close I could shoot. I got some very nice flower photos that I never thought could be shot with a 21mm lens.
I was going to include some shots here, but ... I can't figure out how to get a direct link to a shot on flickr. So, here is the link to a stream of some of the photos I took in Ireland with the above lens.
Shoot yesterday few panos at f/3.2 and when looking carefully I was too optimistic; the bokeh highlights at corners are not round at f/3.2, so maybe stopping down to f/4 or even f/4.5 is needed - however bokeh is otherwise "perfect" at f/3.2.
"ideapark" - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 @ f/3.2, 1/15s, ISO (0.6Gpix, 85.7deg by 61.7deg, planar)
"made in Sweden" - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 @ f/3.2, 0.5s, ISO (0.22Gpix, 59.0deg by 41.2deg, planar)
I was also too optimistic and didn't have enough overlap, so I had to manually set the control points of panorama. If shooting vertically "all in DOF" panoramas can be very well shoot with 10 degree horizontal steps and 12.5 degree vertical steps - however for narrow DOF I would recommend 7.5 & 10 degree steps.
Samuli: Nice separation. The white balance seems to be off though - there is a green/yellow tint to the image...
Anyway, my Gigapan arrived today:
It has been raining all day today so I have not tried it outside yet (it has stopped raining now, I'm just waiting for nicer light). I'll do more of a review here later but for now what I can say it's huge and bulky but seems to work well. I'm having some serious trouble with the stitching software though. The included Gigapan Stitcher is primitive while Autopano Giga 2 has problems with aligning OOF areas. Although Autopano supports import of Gigapan images it does not seem to take image order into consideration but tries to do standard feature matching.
denoir wrote:
Samuli: Nice separation. The white balance seems to be off though - there is a green/yellow tint to the image...
Thanks - I'm not sure what I was thinking, I took WB from white paper (13000K was correct WB...light after sunset through thick clouds isn't very good). WB fixed.
BTW. Due to bokeh CA strange effects can be seen - in both photos you can see green/magenta arch on focal plane (which is curved due to panorama technique).
Wow - The Gigapan definetly isn't very mobile. For architectural work it's OK but for hiking it's too big.
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Wow - The Gigapan definetly isn't very mobile. For architectural work it's OK but for hiking it's too big.
No, it isn't very mobile - especially if you consider the 'collateral damage' that follows. It won't fit in my standard camera daypack (Lowepro Flipside 300) but I have to take a larger one (it barely fits in my CompuTrekker Plus AW). I also can't use my small tripod (gitzo 1541t) but have to take my big one (manfrotto 535 CF) if I want a really steady platform.
I've tried mounting the full kit with the 70-200 on the small gitzo but I think that's about as far as one can push it. It's really on the limit of what that tripod can handle. The big manfrotto on the other hand can only be carried in a separate tripod bag (it's too big to attach to the camera bag). I probably need to get another tripod - something between the light travel tripod and the massive video tripod...
The bottom line is that you can use the Gigapan for shorter walks or if you have a car with you but it is definitely not something you would bring along on a hike. It weighs 3.3 kg but the problem is not the weight but the size.
charles.K wrote:
Welcome Lizzie
The 135L is one of the best lenses that Canon produces. Excellent IQ and the best AF. That aside the ZE 50/1.4 is a very good lens. I am sure that you have an excellent focusing screen for MF. This is a must. I know that the likes of Adam will avidly use live view. I do also but prefer not to, and use a well calibrated MF screen such as the Eg-S for the 5DII. We have different techniques. The MF with narrow DOF's with these lenses wide open does take some practice, even coming from the backdrop of manual film cameras.
With the 1DsIII, I have no experience with the live view focusing, but I am surprised that x10 view, that you cannot achieve the snap into focus. Look forward to your samples.
...Show more →
Thanks for your suggestions and help, Charles.
Unfortunately there's a problem with my webspace where I upload example images at present so I can't show the reference shots I took at 1.4, 1.8 and 2.2 but hoping they'll sort the problem before too long.
However, I did experiment a bit more and basically what I see in Liveview is exactly what I get in terms of image result and if you focus with the DOF button engaged, then you can see the image gradually sharpen as you close the lens down by each 1/3 stop - by 2.2 it's very sharp and more contrasty than it is wide open. To be fair, I think this is probably consistent with many of the comments and reviews I've seen on this site.
I've always been keen to try some Zeiss glass and you can't rent it here in the UK to the best of my knowledge, so the 50mm seemed the cheapest way in. I do buy and sell lenses a fair bit depending on my needs at the time and also because it does work out more economically than renting. I'd love to keep all of them but I have a rule that if I want to buy some new camera gear, the funding has to come from something related! ;-)
I may get shot down in flames for saying this on this forum ;-) but although the Zeiss 50 1.4 is a super lens, beautifully made and lovely to use - I'm not seeing that it's producing significantly different results from a friend's Canon 50 1.8 - even if it is the most horrid plastic lens to use, it is actually remarkably good optically - the bokeh is not as nice as the Zeiss but in a full DOF landscape situation I'm struggling to see a major difference.
The lens I was most keen to try out was the 35 f2 - and had thoughts I might do so depending how I got on with the 50. Now I'm a bit undecided. But I'm open to suggestions, thoughts, etc.
Lizzie, if you can't see a difference between a Zeiss 50 f:1.4 and a Canon 50 f:1.8, then something is amiss. You should see differences in colour, in contrast, in volumes. That should give your picture a different "look and feel". Now of course the difference isn't huge, relatively speaking. It is the same as hearing two performances of the same Beethoven symphony by different condcutors and orchestras. It is still the same old Ludwig Van, even though one performance may leave you exhilarated and the other one bordering on boredom.
Philber - I like the analogy! ;-)
I guess a bit of subjectivity can come in to play in both examples...
I do see some difference but not a big difference - though I should say the light today is about as bad as you can get for photography. Another thing to consider is that my friend's copy of the Canon 50 may be a particularly good one - I know some people don't rate it at all so maybe he just got lucky.
Yesterday I got about 5 secs of lovely light and quickly took a snapshot of a barley field with the Zeiss - when I looked at that in Lightroom I thought I could see what all the fuss was about and it really did have a 3D look - of course the light was partly the cause. Even so, probably hard for any glass to shine on a day like today.
philber - Great shots (eps #1), I'm sure the processed RAWs are stunning... Did you get each shot with one exposure, or did you bracket and merge a few shots together?
charles.K wrote:
Welcome Lizzie
The 135L is one of the best lenses that Canon produces. Excellent IQ and the best AF. That aside the ZE 50/1.4 is a very good lens. I am sure that you have an excellent focusing screen for MF. This is a must. I know that the likes of Adam will avidly use live view. I do also but prefer not to, and use a well calibrated MF screen such as the Eg-S for the 5DII. We have different techniques. The MF with narrow DOF's with these lenses wide open does take some practice, even coming from the backdrop of manual film cameras.
With the 1DsIII, I have no experience with the live view focusing, but I am surprised that x10 view, that you cannot achieve the snap into focus. Look forward to your samples.
At certain distances, even with live view, the 50 1.4 has trouble with critical focus... Lizzie is onto something, as I've noticed this as well. However, usually the 50ZE has no problem snapping into focus on f/1.4 when looking through the viewfinder, but I'm using a Eg-S screen, and that helps tremendously.
I actually use z-finder when shooting for work, or a serious personal shoot. Most of my walk around work is done without a z-finder so without live view. It'll take a while to get use to the lens, but focusing has gotten WAY faster for me, since I first started.
Philber - particularly love the last of these - it gives the impression of a really huge interior. Excuse me if I should recognise it, but where is it?
