Trying out a new Sonnar

[jawarden]

After reading all the posts about this unusual lens I just had to put myself through the pain of learning how to use it. 😉

My lens was optimized for focus at 2.8, which was really obvious after developing the first test roll. At minimum focus the dof is two inches closer than indicated.

As you stop the lens down it behaves as expected, with good sharpness and cntrast. I think these next two were at f4:

So I haven't become completely comfortable with the wide open focus yet, but it's not as hard as I was expecting. I'll be leaving the lens at 2.8 optimized. Actually I think I'll be using this lens at 2.8ish quite a bit; 1.5 is a bit shallow for my usual kid shots, but I think 2.8 will work well with the squirming rascals.

This is a nice lens.

😛

 

[jawarden]

These two galleries are from last week, where I shot the M9/Sonnar exclusively:

Some really nice shots there. Thanks for sharing!

 

[DubilUC]

My lens was optimized for focus at 2.8, which was really obvious after developing the first test roll. At minimum focus the dof is two inches closer than indicated.

As you stop the lens down it behaves as expected, with good sharpness and cntrast. I think these next two were at f4:


So I haven't become completely comfortable with the wide open focus yet, but it's not as hard as I was expecting. I'll be leaving the lens at 2.8 optimized. Actually I think I'll be using this lens at 2.8ish quite a bit; 1.5 is a bit shallow for my usual kid shots, but I think 2.8 will work well with the squirming rascals.

This is a nice lens.

😛

Yes indeed, this is a fine lens capable of outstanding results, provided you take the time to learn how a classic lens is designed to be used. I think a lot of the bad press about the focus shift issue in this lens is coming from lens reviewers whose job it is to push a lens to its worst-case-scenario limits, and the maximum-bokeh-defocus-wide-open always cult. Neither of which imo are that relevant to your everyday shooting scenario, where focus shift should rarely, if ever, be an issue. The Zeiss guys were knowing what they were doing when they initially chose to optimise this lens at 2.8. Fast lenses never look at their best wide open at MFD anyway (unless soft focus and abstract out of control aberrations are your thing). I did a bunch of tests on this lens and at MFD the lens improves dramatically as you stop down and (depending on how extreme the relative position is between fg and background) you might be surprised to see how sweetly and smoothly it can render the OOF transition as low as f5.6. To achieve a pleasing DOF effect at most subject-background distances f2.8-4.0 is the sweet spot (of this and most any 35mm format lens), which is nicely covered in a 2.8 optimised lens. And shooting wide open is not a problem at anything other than close focus.

 

[jawarden]

Just adding another to the pile. I'm thoroughly enjoying this lens and camera. Life is sweet.

🙂

 

[jawarden]

Dot Mac

Dot Mac

So it looks like Apple pulled the plug on dot mac, which is where my images are stored, and now they have all disappeared as broken links, messing up this thread. Sorry about that. Here is an image hosted on Photobucket of an intense girl to mark the occasion, taken with the Sonnar of course. She's looking right through me to my broken links.

😉