A couple shots of the same overall view. First is morning (can you believe the is winter in Southern California?), f/8, ISO 400. The second is afternoon a couple days later, trying out new Hoya HD2 CPL (awesome filter, great coating) at f/5.6 and ISO 200. Both with D800e, hand held. PP in LR5.7.
What drives me off of d810 is size and resolution, 36MP is not much, cmpared to 22.. Otus 85 can resolve 100MPixels, 50 is cool but Canon is meh.. I am leaning Sony somehow, I want small..I will probably go Sony and 2/25 in near future and will be able to carry it all the time with me.. DSLRs are huge.. rebels are small but not full frame and not sony sensor.
Cannot help being enthusiastic about the 25/2.0. It has some shortcomings (vignetting, less good corners at larger aperture) and perhaps not overly special @f11 and infinity. But at large apertures and smaller distances it is very special.
Nice series Samuli. 3 and 4 show special red and orange colors I haven't seen before in the Finnish forest (btw I've never been in Finland, just saw your pics). The last one appears to have some unrest in the background, in particular the tree on the left. The other images do not seem to show it. Reminds me of the 25/2.0. Is it a Distagon thing? And can it be avoided?
JocoFoto wrote:
Nice series Samuli. 3 and 4 show special red and orange colors I haven't seen before in the Finnish forest (btw I've never been in Finland, just saw your pics). The last one appears to have some unrest in the background, in particular the tree on the left. The other images do not seem to show it. Reminds me of the 25/2.0. Is it a Distagon thing? And can it be avoided?
Thanks JocoFoto!
The red/orange on trees is common on pines growing in national parks and swamps, another example about red stuff on healthy tree. I don't know exactly what causes it, but I have understood this happens to pine when it grows on too wet environment. Most of the Finland is covered by forest, but it's been hundreds of years modified for wood industry - this means that there are ditches to drain the soil to make it optimal for growing maximum volume of wood ==> no red stuff on ordinary Finnish forests. The worst part is that from Finland's forests only under 2% is in it's natural state - rest 98% is artificial monotonous industrial forest with minimal biodiversity
Bark of pine is always red from inside (at least for the pines in Finland). In the 3rd photo it looks quite intensive due to recent rain and polarizer usage.
Distagon 1.4/35 can produce unrest background (like any other lens). In my opintion it's not very prone to do it, but shooting f/1.4 you will get unrest boke very often (also too much vignetting, too much difference in DOF between center and corners, less microcontrast etc. I prefer to close down to f/1.7-2.2 where lens performs "optimally"). On last photo top left corner I would not expect to get any issues, because this frame is shoot with f/2.5, almost 2 stops down - the detail what is there is most likely just incorrect frequency to cause boke quality issue(s). This kind of things happen quite often in Nordic forests, due to which I'm quite picky about boke of lenses I'm using - for example Sony FE35, otherwise competent lens, can't be used in my forest photography; it's bokeh get really super ugly most of the time. I took few other apertures from this same scene, smallest being this f/10 which you can study to understand what caused unrest boke.
"Is it a Distagon thing?" - In my experience all Distagons can produce it, but so has done any other sharp retrofocus lens I have ever shoot with. I haven't yet seen or heard ofsharp retrofocus lens, which could not be lured into situation in which the boke becomes unrest. I have understood based on what other photographers have written that some rangefinder wides (e.g. ZM 1.4/35, Leica-M 28mm, etc.) are better than retrofocus SLR-lenses - but I have no experience of these lenses. Only rangefinder wide I have is Zeiss G28 and it's not designed for boke (can be extreme harsh for Zeiss @ f/2.8-4).
Great seeing you back posting Samuli. Wonderful photos as always!
Living in East Tennessee we have very limited snowfall during the winter. Even with only 3" of accumulation it's a huge deal so outside we go! Of course, that gave me the chance to use the Zeiss 135 which I love. More and more I'm finding this lens glued to the 1Dx. What a fun afternoon!
Thanks Samuli. I've learnt something more on the Finnish forests and its pines. In The Netherlands there is 0% forest in natural state. In fact there is no landscape in natural state at all. Perhaps the sea.
