What will your subjects be? A lot of shooting wide open at starscapes or close-up flowers? Middle distance street photography? Wide open, the only lenses that will come close to the otus are the sigma 1.4 28 and the summilux-m 28 1.4 asph, and if you're not shooting the m lens on an m or sl2 body there may be microlens color cast issues.
The sigma is sharp, but color-wise falls behind zeiss and leica, and one cannot fix in post what was not recorded in the first place. I prefer the leica colors to the otus colors, but the otus is arguably much more highly corrected for aberrations wide open, hence the size differences. Even stopped down the otus bests the leica.
The zeiss classic 28 and the leica r you have are both great, ( the zeiss distagon 25/2 is sharper than the zeiss 28, though. the milvus 25 1.4 would be on my list to try. ) but not corrected to the degree of the otus or the summilux-m. I would guess that stopped down all would give great performance, but the older generations would not measure up by a large percentile to the modern zeiss, leica & sigma for sharpness and corrections. Rendering of colors is generational, quite distinct and personal preference is highly subjective.
The zeiss zf.2 and leica m mount are manually controlled for aperture and focus. otus focusing is the best in class, the only more precise I have found is arca r mount, and that is only more precise, otus is better damped.
I have piles of gear here that I thought would help me get the kinds of images I envisioned were possible, and for the most part I was wrong, as I brought the images into lightroom or capture one and was disappointed.
I was wrong in expecting high performance out of gear that was not top-tier. If I add up the cost of all the lenses I have tried and the adapters and all the imperfect mechanisms it far exceeds the high cost of doing it right the first time. Oh to have bought the otus 85 first, before all the others I tried. The pentax 67, mamiya rz and leica m glass I will keep, but so much else trying to save a buck and it never works.
Other than buying the right item used.
For shooting stuff at wide open at 1.4, 28mm full-frame ( or even 33x44 sensor ) nothing will do what the otus does for now. If that's what you want, there it is. An sl2 with the summilux-m 28 1.4 asph would be next closest. ( so, at about 2x the cost of the otus 28, haha. )
For stopped down landscapes there are a few challengers. All are medium format and none do 28mm at f1.4.
The otus will make you work for it. It's easy to miss focus even with focus peaking on. But it's so rewarding when it all works.
On the other end of resolution, the newer sensors diffraction limited depth of field is increasing rapidly. The diffraction limits we are coming up on are: 33x44 50mp sensor = f/7.6, 100mp 40x54 sensor = f/6.6, z7 = f/6.3, 150mp 40x54 sensor = f/5.5, a7r4 = f/5.4. So a highly corrected fast lens like the otus 28 zf.2 will go along way into the coming future of photography between the system limits of aberrations and diffraction.
otus 85 on z7
Dec 27, 2019 at 03:39 PM
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