Sonnar in hand!
Sonnar in hand!
Well, I have my first few rolls with the 2.0/85 Zeiss Sonnar back, and a few early impressions. First, it does produce photos with a Sonnar look to them, though I don't think quite as dreamy as the 1.5/50, but I wasn't shooting under the dreamiest of circumstances either (you can only shoot where you gotta be, so my apologies if the atmospherics of the examples offend anybody). I did quite a bit of shooting at closest focus and wide open, and although I did miss sharpest focus on occasions, it is easily possible to get some sharp results this way (at least with the rangefinder baseline length of the ZI). Backing off and stopping down just a bit of course helps a lot, without losing the look of the lens. I didn't detect any consistent misfocusing by the lens. I don't think this lens has quite the biting sharpness of the Leica 50/1.4 ASPH Summilux which I have used in the same setting, but I was also hampered by the 85's closest focus distance of 1 meter. I definitely missed the 0.7 meter closest focus of the Leica 50 and 75mm lenses (the project I am working on requires a lot of close work with the highest possible detail rendition, and I don't think this is the lens for this kind of work. In fact my best results not surprisingly are with medium format). In fact, the lack of closer focus is my biggest disappointment in the lens. With all the trouble Zeiss went to, floating element and all, I would have thought they could have designed the lens to achieve a closer nearest focus.
The lens is big but I found the handling to be fine, and not unbalanced on the ZI body. It feels like a longer lens and is definitely not inconspicuous, particularly with the hood attached. The front element is very prominent and is easily banged when putting on the lens cap (very difficult but possible to do without removing the hood), I plan to invest in a protective filter, which is not my usual habit. The focus throw is long enough to enable reasonably precise focusing, but perhaps a bit too long for very quick focusing (at least in my hands). The aperture ring is well separated from the focus ring and is easily set without removing the camera from the eye.
Anyway, the attached samples may give a little bit of a feel for what the lens can do. I need more opportunity to work with the lens, and some more pleasing settings, before I can form much more in the way of judgment, but so far I am pleased with what Zeiss has accomplished.
LJS
