Finally, The Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon Report

Avotius

Avotius

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Forrest in Lijiang. The excellent corner to corner performance of this lens really shows in this shot. I actually added some artificial vignetting to the image because it seemed too even!



The Carl Zeiss ZM line of lenses is pretty easy to nail down. It’s priced between the hideously expensive Leica M mount line and the comparatively cheap Voigtländer VM line. Since all these lenses are M mount a lot of cameras out there can use them, and arguably many of those cameras are among the best ever made. Carl Zeiss ZM lenses are made by Cosina, the same people who make the Voigltander lenses, and so have taken a lot of flack for being not up to spec with the legendary Leica lens line.

Total nonsense.

In today’s age its hard to compare the top of the top, the line between the details of two different lens lines designed for different purposes and characteristics is very difficult to quantify in a way that everyone can understand so many people settle for “most expensive is best” or all the advertisement gunk. Well every once in a while an underdog comes by and wipes the smile off the competition. I seriously think the Carl Zeiss ZM line is that underdog, and Cosina right now should be smirking.



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Our horses we took into the mountains, they did not always like getting their picture taken.



I know from experience that most publications want color photographs. I also know that many of them want things that stand out and despite digital cameras being a fact of life now, film still is used in a lot of serious applications. My very good friend who was the photo editor for National Geographic Traveler magazine put it very bluntly in broken English: “digital looks thin, its just crap, film i\ real stuff.” When I showed him my new Carl Zeiss 28mm Biogon lens, he told me the story of when he was younger, in a China just opening its doors to the world. Back then he had a dark room and printed his own photos and all of that stuff. He had three enlarger lenses then, 50mm and 80mm Chinese made ones and a highly coveted Rodenstock 50mm lens. It did not take him more then a single print to throw the Chinese lenses out, he said that the lens was striking not only in its ability to project images, but also that just looking at it and the glass bubble felt like it was looking back at you. When he was looking at this new 28mm lens I had on my Leica M6 he said what has become a bit of a joke between us, “this is real stuff.”



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Trying to get some shallow depth of field from far away, this lens is up to the task. This lens is excellent, why is there so little information about it out there?



Now my friend (who just asked me to take his name out) is not a gear nut like some of us, but he knows a good thing when he sees it and working for National Geographic and traveling around has given him a sense for knowing what is good. As we sat here looking over the negatives shot with this lens there was no doubt that we both were impressed. This is a wide angle lens, but the corner to corner coverage is near perfect. Details area easily held out to the outer extremes, there is no vignetting in real world use, and even on the shots where it would be easy to detect…nothing. To say field coverage is good would be something of an understatement. Resolution, even wide open is outstanding. I really did not expect this lens to keep up with the Carl Zeiss 50mm f2 Planar which I think is the sharpest 35mm lens I have ever used, but the truth is in the details. The fact is that the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon is so close that is doesn’t mater, there is little in it and would take a good sized enlargement and a trained eye to see the differences between the two lenses. Zeiss really did a great job on their lens line. Consistency is a word that one can use to describe the ZM lenses. Of all the ones I have used, they all render in a similar way with similar characteristics such as excellent field performance, resolution, and out of focus rendering.



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The girlfriend on the Hong Kong MTR. Wild colors from all the different lights, the Zeiss lens renders them all in interesting ways.



So whats the deal? Are the Zeiss lenses pretentious upstarts to the Leica throne or are the just a cheap imitation and not worthy of a second thought?

Does it mater?

Here we have a line of lenses, priced to sell, maybe more then the equivalent Canon or Nikon SLR lens but then again it’s a whole different concept. Imaging characteristics are excellent, far better in fact then many of the people using the ZM lenses, so there is lots of room to grow. Small, flexible, very tactile and useable, perfect companions for the M mount rangefinder photographer. Really what it is all about is a mater of taste. Zeiss and Leica lenses render images with different characteristics and characters. What you find in that is must to your own preferences. Needless to say though, ZM lenses are just as capable as the modern Leica lenses. Vintage lenses will always have a taste all their own, and I own a couple old Leica lenses just so I can take black and white photographs with that taste that has been forgotten to the modern lens designer.



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This lens displays very little distortion. Hong Kong on the other hand seems very distorted, but I love it.



So the Zeiss 28 Biogon has the makings of a great lens. Small and compact but still a good 2.8 aperture that can get you through some of those low light rough spots. Good built quality, excellent tactile feel and a price that makes the Leica lenses blush. For us though, the image should be the real deciding factor to a lens and in the real world test charts, newspapers and brick walls are not stuck to the foreheads of people on the street or in the middle of a beautiful vista.



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The girlfriend and I standing in line at the Shenzhen airport, I snapped the last few shots off in the camera to keep the film from going through the scanner.



I don’t think we got anything to worry about here. Consistency is the word. This lens is on par with the rest of the Zeiss ZM lenses and that means its in a class that falls inline with some of the best in the world. I really love Zeiss lenses for color photography, and despite that most of my photos lately have been shot on Fuji 200 speed Superia consumer film I think there are no problems with using this lens with this film for a professional job, though I ended up using slide film for that job : )



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Low light, no problem. Even at night with the shops own lights the lens is up to the task of capturing those details. Great drinks here by the way.



Back when I used a Hasselblad and Zeiss lenses, color was always great. Few lenses can compare to Zeiss lenses when it comes to the characteristics of color images. Many big names in photography have used them for years, and its great that Zeiss has made a new line of lenses that even us newcomers to photography can get into. The legacy goes on.



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Cool rendering under fluorescent lights, yet something strangely warm in some of the details…ps. That is not flare in the bottom right, turns out its me.



And of course there is the so called “3 dimensional” rendering, something subjective to many people, but those who recognize it tend to agree that Zeiss lenses are great at rendering images with a certain “air” to them that makes it feel as if there is something more to the image, a lack of flatness on a flat thing. I have shot a lot of color photos with my Zeiss lenses and have loved the results I have got from them. Consistency. Then there is black and white. I have had more trouble moving my Zeiss lenses into the black and white world. Later I found out it was because the way I had been shooting with the lenses I was using did not suit the Zeiss line and then I altered my methods a bit and then started to get some great results.



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Interesting skin tones, very nice I think, no doubt the grays are showing through. The markets in Hong Kong are the street photographers ideal location.



Here in this part of China film is sort of hard to get, though with things like Taobao (the Chinese ebay) its becoming easier for me to try out different film stocks and chemicals. My black and white film of choice for a long time has been Ilford XP2, I always had great luck with that film and it seemed to fit my style very well. When it came to the Zeiss ZM lenses I had more problems. The lenses and the film did not seem to get along much, and after playing around with it I started to get some acceptable results but I knew there was more to be extracted out of these lenses.



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High contrast but still lots of shadow detail, though I did crunch them a bit when I processed to get the look I was after. I think he was selling the balloons, was not really paying attention though, people move so fast here…



I got lucky and picked up several bricks of Kodak Tri-X film and then went on a trip to Hong Kong and ran that through the camera with my newly purchased Zeiss 28mm lens. The results were much different. I used to like Tri-X back when I had a Mamiya 6, it was a very interesting film with lots of character but far too much grain for my taste. The story remains the same it seems. The film helped extract a lot of character from the lens, succeeding where XP2 was not, but the grain is far too much.



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The first day of my photography class my teacher told me, don’t cut off heads, feet or hands. I forgot that when I shot this, I don’t know why…stupid me. This shot will remind me to be more on the ball because I will always regret.



That said I really enjoyed looking at the results that I got from the film. This is where I knew the Zeiss lenses had something more to give and im glad I am on the right track. Next I will be trying out Ilford Delta and HP5 film stocks because I would rather be shooting Ilford as I am more accustomed to the characteristics of their film. Just for fun I have some Agfa APX 100 here too, im sure I can find something fun in the Zeiss lenses with that : )



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The 28mm perspective of this lens is perfect for street photography where you want to be up close to your subjects, the M6’s quiet shutter makes sure they don’t notice : )



The Zeiss 28mm Biogon I feel is a great companion for my style of shooting, wide enough to be in close and get unique perspectives but still offer a lot of the other characteristics I find so necessary in a lens, like good bokeh, good resolution wide open, resistance to flare, and so on. Alongside my Zeiss 50mm Planar and Leica 35mm Summicron V3 (which I use strictly for black and white) there is a formidable team that can handle almost every situation I run into on the streets and out on those trips far away from home.



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Diversity is great, and to know that your lens can be as diverse as your surroundings, that’s great too.



Speaking of far from home, I have been away from my home for 5 years now. Hailing from Seattle, I find myself in unfamiliar territory every time I walk out my door. When I was in Hong Kong I was excited to see so many different races intermingling and felt like I fit in just fine there. So many people who go there are out looking for a taste of the world, Hong Kong is a wonderful place to see so many things and do some great street photography. I would love to spend a couple years living there some day. In Hong Kong people move out of the way of a camera really fast, almost faster then I could take the photos, but since the Zeiss 28mm lens has so much depth of field I would typically set it at f8-11 and hyper focal focus so things between 1 meter and a few meters out was ok then stalk the streets. Not many people are faster then a preset Leica M6 and a hyper focal focused lens, and neither let me down out there, the 28mm field of view with this lens we perfect for capturing moments in the crowds on the streets of Hong Kong.



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Woops. At least it was a nice boat ride.



But I digress. No lens is perfect. The Biogon, along with every other lens I have ever used, is not perfect. It will flare if you provoke it, but my goodness you have to really provoke it. The above shot, taken in Lijiang China, had the sun just out of the frame, and the exposure was 1/500 at f11 on 200 speed film. It was very bright out and for the first time in a while I wish I had sunglasses and had a nice sunburn from that day out. This is the most catastrophic example of flare I have had with any ZM lens I have used. I had a couple other shots that day flare as well, none nearly as bad as this and many easily fixable. That said, I was the idiot here, I have not bought the hood for this lens yet (they are awfully expensive) and if I had the hood I bet most of the flare problems would have been taken care of.



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The girlfriend on the Hong Kong MTR again. The wind coming in from the windows makes it all that much more dramatic.



So in the end we have an excellent lens, from and excellent lens designer and we now know that Cosina is up to the task of building world class optics. My friend I talked about above, he said if I ever want to sell this lens, he will take it, my girlfriend has also claimed dibs on it as well. She is very impressed with Zeiss lenses and not so impressed with her Canon lenses though enjoys her 5D very much. She (and I) hopes for an EF mount Zeiss line so new possibilities can be recognized in the future of photography. My friend…well he is in a whole different trouble, he has not even bothered to get a digital camera, instead he has a Nikon FE2 and every once in a while goes to have a look at the Zeiss lenses that he can have on it. Needless to say the three of us are doomed, but what a way to go.
 
A little more stuff to add, here you can get an idea of the size of the Biogon on an M6.

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No my girlfriend does not have huge hands, instead its a tiny camera and lens ;)

And some other shots of the Biogon on my M6.

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Thank you for an interesting and enlightening review. I appreciate your effort.

So, how long until you acquire the 35/2 ZM?
 
Fantastic review - the real life photos say so much more about why these lenses are special than a test chart ever could, and there are some great shots here - well done. I was all set to sell my 35 and 50 ZMs but I'm not sure I can bear to do it now!
 
Thank you for this very entertaining and useful presentation. I love several of your posted photos here. The Zeiss 28mm lens looks to be a sharp lens with lots of potential for using it.
 
As always, great post you got here. Thank you for sharing. I have seen these pictures on your flickr the other day. I am very impressed.
Please keep it up the great work.

Chris
 
Nice report. I am looking for a 28mm lens, and have been seriously considering this lens. The new ultron is also in the running, and tempting with its extra stop and lower price point, but I will need to get more info about it before knowing which way to go.
 
thanks for the report.

I am debating 25 or 28, trying to find some reviews as well. The new Ultron 28/2? I think is also tempting.
 
AVOTIUS: Wonderful article.....Thank You :)
in particular your thoughts on B&W film w/ the 28 & spot on RE: the 3 dimensional aspect 'airiness'

What do you think of the 50/planar ?
I am considering it

best-H
 

Great report. The picture of the intersection in Hong Kong jogged my memory, and I dug out this picture taken in June 08, also with the ZM 28 Biogon. Is that a coincidence or what?

 
It's funny, but the photo with that flare that you don't like is my favorite of the bunch. Almost and ethereal (sp?) quality to the man with the pole. Where is he leading us in the boat?

Great article. Thanks. Have you ever shot with the Contax G series 28 and if so, how do you think it compares to the M version?
 
Steveh said:
Fantastic review - the real life photos say so much more about why these lenses are special than a test chart ever could, and there are some great shots here - well done. I was all set to sell my 35 and 50 ZMs but I'm not sure I can bear to do it now!
Click to expand...

Just keep the 35 and 50 together with the 28. They are all good stuff!
 
Avotious, great review and Iove the pictures. Your problem with the bl/w and the Zeiss lens line up is interesting. The Zeiss lens line is amazing in its consistency across the field and I think the contrast in the film and the lens "collide". I tend to process for a slightly higher contrast in my negs (which does give me problem with some of the Asph Leica lenses) and I have found that the Zeiss lenses work well with its slightly "flatter" contrast (mid range contrast seems to be emphasized).

I gave been shooting side by side with the Ultron 28f2.0 and the Biogon 28f2.8. From "normal" shooting (not testing with charts) they are both as good as you would ever need. The Ultron is quite stunning wide open and in close quarters, the only area were I find it superior to the Biogon 28.
 
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