Fact is, up to now, Zeiss lenses are not speed demons compared to the fastest of the Canikon counterparts. They are, at best, best in class, and sometimes not. If one is after ultimate speed, in UWA it is Canikon, in "normal" lenses it is Leica or Voigtländer. And oddball Samyang holds the lowest "cost-per-unit-of-speed" position. This grabbag tells us that speed alone does not equate with IQ. At least not IMHO.
Lotusm50 wrote:
Don't photograph a brick wall up close with the ZF 25! However, a field of flowers up close, even using the lens wide open, will give you elements of detail and sharpness all the way to the edges and corners. [...] It's also not clear to me why anyone would want to photograph a flat subject with a wide angle close-focus lens
I didn't mention any brick wall or any other flat subject, but actually was thinking of something quite close to a field of flowers. My experience with the Contax 28/2.8 is that when getting close to the MFD (0.25m), also with non-flat subjects like plants the focal plane can be difficult to place without getting smearing of the borders if there are things like bigger leaves in the periphery of the frame. The DOF transition gets pretty ugly then, which is a pity. I'd hope this would be better on the Hollywood or Z* 28/2. Using a 50mm macro isn't a substitute in this case because it doesn't give the look of a 25/28mm.
I'll see if I can post a shot that illustrates what I mean.
AhamB wrote:
You don't have to defend the ZF 25 so strongly. I didn't mention any brick wall or other flat subject, but actually was thinking of something quite close to a field of flowers. Also with natural subjects the focal plane can be difficult to place without getting ugly smearing if there are things like bigger leaves on the periphery of the frame. The DOF transition gets really ugly then, which is a pity. I'd hope this would be better on the Hollywood or Z* 28/2.
I didn't think I was defending it "so strongly". In any case, I've never had a problem with "ugly smearing". Maybe I becuase I never saw a compositional need to have bigger leaves on the periphery of the frame.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Well, my memory is not great but I never recall that a Sony Zeiss ZA 24/25 1.4 was a given and widely expected. Seems like between everyone that was eagerly anticipating the wide angle Zeiss AF for Sony, half of us wanted a smaller, better performing F2 (which I believe we got though it's really not that small!) while many others dreamed of the 1.4. So, it may be that the 24 1.4 AF Zeiss for sony was never even developed and is the product of wishful hoping. Given the size of the Sony ZA 24 2, I can only imagine how huge a 1.4 version with similar performance by F2 would be, not to mention it would have to sell for at least 3K for such performance (my guess given the Zeiss tax and extremely small market). I think Sony made the right decision here myself....Show more →
Just take a look at the new 35/1.4 and expect a 24/1.4 to be even bigger
PS: just looked at the specs. 850 grams is almost as heavy as my 135/1.8.
Lotusm50 wrote:
I didn't think I was defending it "so strongly". In any case, I've never had a problem with "ugly smearing". Maybe I becuase I never saw a compositional need to have bigger leaves on the periphery of the frame.
Probably because you guys used it in different ways. In the short period of time that I used the 25, I never got ugly smearing neither, I would rather call it nice foreground bokeh
Ugly smearing was a bit of an exaggerated wording, but compared to other FL's with such a shallow DOF, the transition to focus can be dizzying to look at if there's any subject matter with texture in it. I don't know how much better the Z* 28/2 would be, but I'd like to try at some point.
