An all Zeiss Wedding

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ckuang

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Hi everyone, just wanted to share a recent wedding I shot.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?p...#!/album.php?aid=163672&id=37424881848&ref=mf

I thought the images might be of interest to this forum because all the images were shot on zeiss lenses. My entire collection of Leica lenses recently had to be sent back to leica for adjustment, so I rented myself a ZM 25, 35 and a ZF 85 F1.4. For the medium format stuff I was shooting on a contax 645 also on a zeiss lens.

All I can say after shooting on Zeiss is that I might just have to start a parallel collection of lenses. The Zeiss lenses have a beautiful warm, sharp rendition for color images which I have really come to love.

Hope you guys enjoy the images.
 
Ciao
I see you have shot both film and digital.. on some pictures of course you had to privilege the foreground to lose the background but some are really beautiful and almost "poetic".
Did you use an Ikon and which (D)SLR for your ZF 85 ?
 
Hi Dino, thanks for the kind words. for the zm lenses, I used a Leica MP and to use the Zeiss 85, I shot it on film and used a Nikon F100, which i feel is the ideal camera to accompany a rangefinder because it is small and light as well.
 
Hi Italy, yes, I noticed that too. I feel like the gap between 35mm film and digital is getting pretty narrow. I think I see the big jump when comparing 35mm digital to medium format. I've been seriously rethinking 35mm film.
 
Bogotron, yes, the zeiss surprised me as far as the black and whites went. I was actually expecting the strength of the ziess in the color image but the zeiss didn't let me down in the black and white department either.
 
kshapero said:
Ever had problems having client let you shoot B/W?
Click to expand...

Akiva, no problems from my clients when I shoot black and white, mainly because I manage their expectations from the start and I have clauses in my contract which requires clients to leave the choice of color or black and white to me. But that being said, it's pretty unlikely I will shoot an all black and white wedding. There will always be some image that will look better in color to me.
 
Lovely atmosphere. I'm sure your clients were happy with the results.

As an aside, this doesn't help one bit to dissuade me from ZE lenses for the 5D. There's a certain something I got when I was shooting Zeiss lenses for Hasselblad that's not there in my (more recent digital) work. I'm eager to see how the Fujinon EBC (that I'm shooting MF on now) compares. ZE lenses are competitively priced when put up against L Canon lenses.
 
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KZ photo, thank you for the kind words

Matthew, yes the ZE (for me I use the ZF range) do have a unique look when compared to their Nikon/Canon equivalent. One of the lenses I've been dying to try is the ZF 100 macro planar which is supposed to be legendary.

That being said, one of my difficulties using the ZF 85 on my nikon F100 was focusing the lens in low light. It was ok in bright situations but in low light like the reception area, it was hard gauging correct focus. I have a feeling you might have the same problem on the 5D which I had used for about 3 years.

The reason , IMO, is because the focusing screen for modern autofocus cameras, while bright, tend to not be snappy/contrasty, so you can rack the focusing back and forth a little and it still looks like the image is in focus on the focusing screen and on lenses like the 85F1.4 or 100F2, these minor adjustments in focus makes a world of difference in the focus.

Try the ZF lens on an old manual focus camera like an F3, or FM2 and the focusing accuracy seems jump because either you're in focus or you're out of focus and there is a snap to the focusing screen.

In the lower light, I ended up reaching for my MP more because I was more confident about achieving accurate focus on the rangefinder.

Hope this helps.
 
ckuang said:
The reason , IMO, is because the focusing screen for modern autofocus cameras, while bright, tend to not be snappy/contrasty, so you can rack the focusing back and forth a little and it still looks like the image is in focus on the focusing screen and on lenses like the 85F1.4 or 100F2, these minor adjustments in focus makes a world of difference in the focus.
Click to expand...

The Canon EE-S screen is designed for manual focus and works great at large apertures.

And great shots, BTW. 🙂
 
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