fracas wrote:
You are right about the misfocus ... I am now posting another couple of shots, which should be more correct
what about 3D effect differences now?
Thanks for your feedbacks!
The first shot is focused a little more forwards, or the depth of field is larger. The front lemon is sharper. However, this time I don't think it is enough to influence anything.
It is fairly easy to see that the first shot is more contrasty, especially around the focus plane. It is also sharper. Those two factors give more support for the 3D effect, but the effect itself is quite weak in this shot.
In general, Zeiss lenses give 3D more readily than just about any others, but they don't always give it, and it can be quite hard to produce it on demand. If you want to see it, I would try more different objects, curved is good, with nice surface textures, trying different apertures, and varying the lighting and the distance. At some point you should be able to see it better.
Bob - Beautiful B/W conversion. Great ominous sky on the third one, the cloud looks like a monter, it gave me a chill. I love them all though.
Hugo - Amazing capture. Cloud and reflection of cloud on the first one is very painterly. incredible color.
Guys, something bad happened to my ZF.2 21. I think CPU on the lens spontaneously died. I checked with other lens on the body to verify, and it is the lens. Good thing is I can still take photos using aperture ring, pretending it to be ZF 21, not ZF.2, but considering it is only 6 month old I am going to have to get this repaired. Boo.
OK, this is definitely the wrong place to post this, but still: Am I mad in wanting to trade my Sigma 50/1.4 (my only walkaround AF lens except for an old Canon 35-70) for the Zeiss 50/1.4? I did some test shots in the store and I actually preferred the lively Zeiss bokeh over the neutral, dead gaussian blur of the Sigma.
Rasmus: The Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar is a sort of special lens. It's fantastic at some things and not so brilliant at others. It has been designed as a portrait lens and by design suffers from high spherical aberrations. This means that close up and wide open it loses a lot of contrast and resolution. At medium (portrait) distances it can be quite nice wide open. Stopped down it is fantastic. According to Zeiss it has been optimized for performance at infinity so you'll get most out of it at infinity around f/5.6-f/8.
Yes, I've read about the character of the Planar. I would mostly use it when I'm going for a one-lens solution, and then the small size compared to the Sigma is a plus. I'm guessing I won't do that much infinity stuff, mostly medium range and portraits.
I'm sold on the lens itself, but still not sure if it would be wise to own no AF prime.
EDIT: One question: How bad is the focus shift when stopping down on the Planar?
RZetter wrote:
Yes, I've read about the character of the Planar. I would mostly use it when I'm going for a one-lens solution, and then the small size compared to the Sigma is a plus. I'm guessing I won't do that much infinity stuff, mostly medium range and portraits.
I'm sold on the lens itself, but still not sure if it would be wise to own no AF prime.
EDIT: One question: How bad is the focus shift when stopping down on the Planar?
I took the same step, trading my Sigma 50mm f1.4 for the Zeiss 50/1.4, and the more I use it the less I regret my choice.
The sigma is a great lens, sharpness wise it never disappoints at every aperture, but for some reason I greatly prefer the Zeiss, despite its flaws.
It is soft wide open, but provides a kind of "soft focus" rendering which suits some portraits very well. I love to use this trick for the kids, sometimes.
It gets far better from f2.2 onwards, and incredibly sharp at f2.8 and more. I have never seen such a crisp picture with any Canon or Sigma 50mm prime, micro contrast adding some pop combined with the sharpness.
As you pointed out, the bokeh is one the key differences between the Zeiss and the Sigma. A friend of mine just told me last week about a picture that the out of focus background was much "readable" and "alive". He unintentionnally described the Zeiss rendering
The focus shift has rarely been a problem for me, yet. I missed much more pictures because of my manual focusing skills in general, rather than because of the FS .
Yes it takes some training to master the manual focusing, even with the right focusing screen, but it's not that bad. It's just a different way to shoot.
RZetter wrote:
OK, this is definitely the wrong place to post this, but still: Am I mad in wanting to trade my Sigma 50/1.4 (my only walkaround AF lens except for an old Canon 35-70) for the Zeiss 50/1.4? I did some test shots in the store and I actually preferred the lively Zeiss bokeh over the neutral, dead gaussian blur of the Sigma.
No, you're not mad at all. I did that, and I'm very happy. I've also owned sort of every Nikon ~50 mm lens there is, and the Zeiss is my favourite still.
Is it sharp wide open? Not really, but sharpness isn't everything.
Could somebody please explain something to me? So much is written about the so-called "focus shift" with the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4. I am wondering if I am not missing something in my understanding or conceptualization. O.k., so you focus the camera at say f/2.8, change the aperture, stop down to f/8 or something, and now you are out of focus. Well, so what's the big deal? You simply re-focus at f/8, right? What's the problem??
Jon Shafer wrote:
Could somebody please explain something to me? So much is written about the so-called "focus shift" with the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4. I am wondering if I am not missing something in my understanding or conceptualization. O.k., so you focus the camera at say f/2.8, change the aperture, stop down to f/8 or something, and now you are out of focus. Well, so what's the big deal? You simply re-focus at f/8, right? What's the problem??
The problem is that you see ~f/2.5-5.6 (depending on the focusing screen) in the viewfinder, regardless of what stop you intend to take the photo at. At least if you have a camera that sports auto-stopdown. So the focus shift isn't apparent before you release the shutter.
I checked with other lens on the body to verify, and it is the lens. Good thing is I can still take photos using aperture ring, pretending it to be ZF 21, not ZF.2, but considering it is only 6 month old I am going to have to get this repaired. Boo.
