dmchadderton
Member
Having seen the great ZM 28/2.8 shots posted a short while ago, I wonder if anyone else has examples of the 25, 35 and 50 lenses?
I'm particularly interested in the 50mm, but am curious about the other two lenses too ...
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Dave
I'm particularly interested in the 50mm, but am curious about the other two lenses too ...
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Dave
tetrisattack
Maximum Creativity!
The 50 planar is great! I find that it has quite a bit of character, in a good, refined sort of way. Consider that every lens has somewhat of a "signature" that it leaves on your images. To that extent, the 50 planar has a lovely, elegant signature that I enjoy taking note of.
Sharp wide open, great OOF, high contrast, peculiarly detailed shadows. I've been shooting a lot of Tri-X at 1600 lately, developing in Rodinal. Some of the shots I've attached are "junk shots" that are more to demonstrate the lens than my skill as an artist.
Sharp wide open, great OOF, high contrast, peculiarly detailed shadows. I've been shooting a lot of Tri-X at 1600 lately, developing in Rodinal. Some of the shots I've attached are "junk shots" that are more to demonstrate the lens than my skill as an artist.
Flyfisher Tom
Well-known
nice shots Tetris, great tonality for Tri-X pushed to 1600!
dmchadderton
Member
Nice shots .... Just the sort of images I wanted to see. It seems that the 50/2 does have a nice 'signature' (to me anyway!).
I've been mulling over how best to spend a 'small' amount of money - do I get the Leica 50/1.4, or perhaps the ZM 28 and ZM50? If I take the latter option I could maybe even get myself a second rf body (R3A) or even the CV35/1.2. Or perhaps a TON of film !!! The shots above certainly make me lean for the 2nd option.
I've been mulling over how best to spend a 'small' amount of money - do I get the Leica 50/1.4, or perhaps the ZM 28 and ZM50? If I take the latter option I could maybe even get myself a second rf body (R3A) or even the CV35/1.2. Or perhaps a TON of film !!! The shots above certainly make me lean for the 2nd option.
jja
Well-known
Tetris, those are wonderful shots. What camera body and how do you like the lens's ergonomics, size, etc? Are you happy w/ the accuracy of focus?
tetrisattack
Maximum Creativity!
Oh! I should qualify my earlier comment about pushing tri-x to 1600. Only two of the posted shots are from my recent experiments with that EI (the guy with the goofy grin and the woman wearing what appears to be a duckblind). The guy joking about eating the girl's hamster was on 400TX, the hospital bed was APX100, and the court door was Delta 100.
Dave, I think I would veer toward the Zeiss option. The summilux is probably a better lens, but for my shooting preference, being able to shoot at two focal lengths would be more important than being able to shoot at f/1.4 rather than f/2.
jja, thanks for the compliment. I use an R2A that seems to focus this lens perfectly, but I have not done any scientific tests with a yardstick or graph. My own accuracy at focusing is probably more of a limiting factor than the precision of the lens.
The size of the lens is reportedly exactly the same size as the 50 summicron, which is to say that it's somewhat bigger than the absolutely dimunitive CV 35 classic, but still far smaller than any 50mm lens in Canon's SLR lineup. At close focus it blocks only a tiny portion of the 50 framelines of my R2A, not enough to be a significant concern.
The focus ring has a 90-degree throw, a small "bump" (not really a tab) that you can choose to use or ignore, and the helical seems to be pretty well-damped. That being said, I grew up on pentax k-mount lenses with extremely fluid operation, and this is close, but not quite as smooth. The aperture ring though is probably the best I've used. Quite obviously made of brass. It is very rapid and smooth, with springy detents and not click-stops.
I am not fond of the plastic lens cap, which is designed to hide under the hood that I don't have. I've seen worse, but it's not as nice as CV's hard metal caps with that wonderful felt lining.
At any rate, there's a depressingly small amount of information about the ZM lenses out on the internets, so I suppose this is my contribution.
Dave, I think I would veer toward the Zeiss option. The summilux is probably a better lens, but for my shooting preference, being able to shoot at two focal lengths would be more important than being able to shoot at f/1.4 rather than f/2.
jja, thanks for the compliment. I use an R2A that seems to focus this lens perfectly, but I have not done any scientific tests with a yardstick or graph. My own accuracy at focusing is probably more of a limiting factor than the precision of the lens.
The size of the lens is reportedly exactly the same size as the 50 summicron, which is to say that it's somewhat bigger than the absolutely dimunitive CV 35 classic, but still far smaller than any 50mm lens in Canon's SLR lineup. At close focus it blocks only a tiny portion of the 50 framelines of my R2A, not enough to be a significant concern.
The focus ring has a 90-degree throw, a small "bump" (not really a tab) that you can choose to use or ignore, and the helical seems to be pretty well-damped. That being said, I grew up on pentax k-mount lenses with extremely fluid operation, and this is close, but not quite as smooth. The aperture ring though is probably the best I've used. Quite obviously made of brass. It is very rapid and smooth, with springy detents and not click-stops.
I am not fond of the plastic lens cap, which is designed to hide under the hood that I don't have. I've seen worse, but it's not as nice as CV's hard metal caps with that wonderful felt lining.
At any rate, there's a depressingly small amount of information about the ZM lenses out on the internets, so I suppose this is my contribution.
jja
Well-known
Your contribution is certainly very informative and welcome, Tetris. Like Dave, I'm curious about the performance of these scarcely discussed lenses (w/ good reason, since they are so recently on the market, but still).
Karen Nakamura's photoethnography.com has shots she took some months ago with a 35/2 Biogon:
http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/archives/2005/06/photos_japan_di.html
There are also these comparison photos, from Japan's Digital Camera Watch:
http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/review/2005/03/28/1240.html
And these, from Dirk Rösler's unicircuits (50/2 Planar, click on the main photo):
http://www.unicircuits.com/archives/000350.html
I have gone so far as to e-mail users on photo.net, requesting photos. If I can get permission to post one, I'll add it here later.
Karen Nakamura's photoethnography.com has shots she took some months ago with a 35/2 Biogon:
http://www.photoethnography.com/blog/archives/2005/06/photos_japan_di.html
There are also these comparison photos, from Japan's Digital Camera Watch:
http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/review/2005/03/28/1240.html
And these, from Dirk Rösler's unicircuits (50/2 Planar, click on the main photo):
http://www.unicircuits.com/archives/000350.html
I have gone so far as to e-mail users on photo.net, requesting photos. If I can get permission to post one, I'll add it here later.
doubs43
Well-known
I'm not trying to be contrary but the circular (almost donut mirror lens-style) OOF bright spots are not to my liking at all. They seem intrusive to my eyes.
The sharpness and contrast of the lens is excellent.
This is only my opinion, of course.
Walker
The sharpness and contrast of the lens is excellent.
This is only my opinion, of course.
Walker
tetrisattack
Maximum Creativity!
doubs43 said:
Well, for what it's worth, pinpoint city lights and especially overcast outdoor scenes with trees make a pretty rough situation for any lens.
It seems just that one photo with the tree in the background (and the weird person in the foreground!) that displays the less than pleasant OOF rings. I wonder what aperture was used for that one. One other shot shows some aperture polygons but otherwise smooth bokeh. All in all pretty decent.
hinius
Member
These were taken with the 35/2 Biogon; completely non-technical shots that are probably totally useless for evaluating bokeh and the like. Tri-x @ 1250 in Diafine. Have absolutely no complaints about the lens whatsover, from a handling and build-quality perspective... too busy taking pictures to be really finicky to be honest.
RObert Budding
D'oh!
tetrisattack said:
I agree that backround pinpoint light sources are difficult for most lenses. In addition, pinpoint lights in the background will tend to draw your eye away from the main subject. So I consider this to be a lighting problem, and not a lens problem.
Nice photos.
Robert
Beniliam
Out of the limelight
I shot with my Elmar (current version) in a weding this summer. I really love the bokeh of the Elmar, but with this type of light (trees) is very difficult to produce a pleasant rendition. I believe that the Noctilux, the Summilux and the Summicron cant do better.
DaveSee
shallow depth of field
dmchadderton said:
Just uploaded some very quickly made neg scans of color and b/w shots with the Planar... two b/w, two color. Have not spent much time in the digital workflow lately, and these scans show it... just scans, no tweaks.
rgds,
Dave
zetablues
Established
only a late afternoon non artistically test snapshot ("focus on the ficus") with R-D1 (standard incam settings) and 35/2 ZM at f4 (ISO 400), the file is nearly untouched -> only set WB from 5500 (was auto WB) to 4500 Kelvin, resized and compressed (max. quality) for the web
regards
regards
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jja
Well-known
Friend of mine sent me these to post, I believe shot with an M6 and 35/2 Biogon. (Hope I didn't reduce the quality too much.)
FPjohn
Well-known
Comparison?
Comparison?
Hello:
Are there any head to head comparisons of the normal and wide ZM's vs their CV sibs?
yours
Frank
Comparison?
Hello:
Are there any head to head comparisons of the normal and wide ZM's vs their CV sibs?
yours
Frank
ZeissFan
Veteran
These lenses shouldn't be considered as clones of each other. I mean, it's not one line of lenses that rolls down the line and at the end, half get a CV badge, and the other half get a ZM tag.
I saw a decent comparison of various M-mount lenses (and some LTM in M mounts) on Luminous Landscape. It also includes some of the newer Zeiss lenses.
I saw a decent comparison of various M-mount lenses (and some LTM in M mounts) on Luminous Landscape. It also includes some of the newer Zeiss lenses.
FPjohn
Well-known
Sibs, not twins
Sibs, not twins
Hello:
Sibs are not necessarily identical but have much in common including ancestry. CV lenses of a given focal length have "Zeiss" mates of higher spec and price. Comparisons would be interesting and not to the detriment of either.
yours
Frank
Sibs, not twins
Hello:
Sibs are not necessarily identical but have much in common including ancestry. CV lenses of a given focal length have "Zeiss" mates of higher spec and price. Comparisons would be interesting and not to the detriment of either.
yours
Frank
Huck Finn
Well-known
Frank, you make a good point. And this would certainly be true of Leica siblings, for example.
I think that Zeiss Fan's point is that these lenses are not really siblings . . . well, maybe step-siblings. The point is that the Zeiss designs did not emerge from the same design teams that created earlier CV lenses the way succeeding generations of Leica lenses have - & those of other lens manufacturers as well. As a result, the Zeiss lenses do not share a common ancestry with the CV lenses; they merely share the same manufacturer. and even in terms of manufacturing, Zeiss & Cosina are partnering as a team, so extra quality control steps have been added in the building of these lenses that do not exist in Cosina's other lens manufacturing endeavors. They've also added new features to the Zeiss lenses - like 1/3 aperture stops vs the normal 1/2 stops on CV lenses.
Regardless, comparisons certainly are interesting. As Zeiss Fan suggests, some of these already exist in Sean Reids much discussed articles for Luminous Landscape:
www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/fastlensreview.shtml
www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/rd-1-lens.shtml
Cheers,
Huck
I think that Zeiss Fan's point is that these lenses are not really siblings . . . well, maybe step-siblings.
The point is that the Zeiss designs did not emerge from the same design teams that created earlier CV lenses the way succeeding generations of Leica lenses have - & those of other lens manufacturers as well. As a result, the Zeiss lenses do not share a common ancestry with the CV lenses; they merely share the same manufacturer. and even in terms of manufacturing, Zeiss & Cosina are partnering as a team, so extra quality control steps have been added in the building of these lenses that do not exist in Cosina's other lens manufacturing endeavors. They've also added new features to the Zeiss lenses - like 1/3 aperture stops vs the normal 1/2 stops on CV lenses. Regardless, comparisons certainly are interesting. As Zeiss Fan suggests, some of these already exist in Sean Reids much discussed articles for Luminous Landscape:
www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/fastlensreview.shtml
www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/rd-1-lens.shtml
Cheers,
Huck
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