Samuli Vahonen
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
davidrwilliams wrote:
I'm also seeing somewhat less than perfect longitudinal-CA correction with this lens as compared to the 100/2.8R Macro (with a hint of green background fringing), but still, it's a great great optic with stunning sharpness across the entire frame even at f/2.8.
Heh, I'm shooting mostly with Zeiss ZE/Contax lenses (these have plenty of various CAs) and this lens clearly is clearest of all lenses I have ever owned regards CA. I have not paid attention to any CA stuff, I think I did see once green tint on background bokeh, but I could not make sure it was because bokeh CA.
davidrwilliams wrote:
Samuli: Other than the DoF issue, how is this lens meeting your long-sought rendering requirements for this focal length?
Yes and no. I really like it, but sometimes I miss the look I get from Contax Vario-Sonnar T* 4/80-200 C/Y. On other hand it has brought something completely new from rendering style point of view, what I have not had in my "lens arsenal" - I know pretty well how to use "Zeiss look", but it will take some time to learn to use "Leica ultra clean & ultra narrow DOF"-look, now I get results what I view in computer "well, didn't plan it to look like this, but I like it"-situations, and I'm not great fan of unpredictability, I want to know my tools and understand beforehand the results I will get - but this is just matter of learning.
The narrow apparent DOF is quite problematic. Specially because I'm little hesitant to use f/8 and f/11 (f/16 is out of the question) since the prints look dull at f/8 compared to f/5.6. For landscapes images I can see it even in computer monitor viewing (2560px wide picture), but portrait format (1600px height) doesn't look that much different between f/5.6 and f/8.
I'm not sure even myself why, but strong part of my shooting style is to shoot on unconventional light - e.g. tradiotional sunrise/sunset is little bit "tabu" to me and I'll avoid it partly because they are so cliche. Due to this I shoot a lot into backlight subjects and various harsh light scenarios, and the contrast of this lens works quite well for me. The hood could be longer, I have constant feeling that I need to hold hand/hat/whatever in front of the lens to shade it from the sun when I shoot. But the too short hood seems to be issue on all 180-200mm lenses I know of (optically they could be more effective but manufacturers have elected to create small hoods - or in case of Canon just very ineffective (so damn wide)).
At least for this year I'm happy with this one - also in future unless something new comes to market, I have tried almost everything and if nothing new comes to market the only alternative would be Canon 200/1,8 (so sad they did skrew up the 200/2 from rendering style point of view) and it's too heavy. So I hope my long search for tele lens is over, finally... So time for next "search project" for 400mm, preferably one with close focusing for butterflies...
davidrwilliams wrote:
Also, do you find that your STA-1 tripod mount isn't all that rigid? I find that even after really tightening it to remove the initial flex where it clamps to the lens, that it still tends to flex between the ring and the base plate, which leaves me wondering whether I'll use the ring for much other than as a convenient base for hand-holding.
The skrew hole in mine is too short for the skrews I have in all my Arca-Swiss lens plates. I'll have to visit my dad's workshop (not close by=not happening soon) to manufacture shorter 1/4" skrew to be able to try STA-1. However since I Leitaxed this lens I have not even been missing tripod collar. It seems quite flimsy and appear to be made from plastic so I'm not having any hurry to manufacture that shorter skrew... Proper tripod collar is joy when shooting, but bad one doesn't add anything. It was vital with 80-200 (weight over 1kg and adapted, no Leitax), but this lens is slightly lighter and having the Leitax mount makes huge difference.
Few more photos from Ylinenjärvi, Nokia:
Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 @ f/5.6, HDR(1/20s, 1/50s, 1/125s), ISO 100, Zeiss T* polarizer - larger
_972px.jpg "2026 © Samuli Vahonen")
Leica APO-Elmarit-R 180mm f/2.8 @ f/5.6, HDR(1/160s, 1/400s, 1/1000s), ISO 100 - larger
_972px.jpg "2026 © Samuli Vahonen")
(I have a lot of scripts for webshrinking and sharpening and none did work very well on these backlight scenes since there were lots of bright spots on needless on the trees and as websize this just looks odd with all resize/sharpening scripts - if I do traditional resize and then sharpen it just looks dull and definitely not like the real scene looked like, apologies for not being able to perfect the webdisplay)
Samuli
|
