What gives Zeiss its color rendition?

[Pherdinand]

markho, i think you got it slightly wrong.
You can adjust each colour individually relative to each other in a blink of an eye.

Try this e.g.: Take a nice colourful image. Load it in Photoshop. Go to adjustments hue/saturation. Select e.g. "blues" instead of rgb. Move the "hues " slider by a low amount of say, three. Do you see a relative change?

Other way: Bring up "lkevels" and do an "auto levels" on a freshly scanned image in the RGB mode. Then go selec the "red" and look at the histogram. Select the "green" channel and look at the histogram. Same with "blue". All three histograms will be adjusted differently - just by pressing one single button, the "auto levels".
Same happens with "auto curves", "auto contrast". And these are the basic functions that every scanner or image manipulation software has, and almost everybody uses for each frame separately when or after scanning.

 

[LynnL]

My 2.8 may not be your 2.8

My 2.8 may not be your 2.8

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the difference in the amount of light coming out of the back of the lens. Since the f-stop is mathmatical, my 2.8 may not be the same as your 2.8. Motion picture lenses are set in T-stops. The transmission of light through a set of Zeiss primes or Panavision primes will match. Obviously and especially on slide film, any slight variation in exposure will change density, contrast and color.

L.

 

[Pherdinand]

i mentioned the need for the exact same exposure...

 

[40oz]

"Color rendition" is really subjective, and if you shoot anything but slides, irrelevant.

I don't think the OP was doing anything more than commenting on the fact that different lenses have a different look. I don't know how "color rendition" could be subjective, unless you are commenting on our varying opinions about it 🙂 And since every film has it's own characteristic way of capturing color, I fail to see how it could be considered irrelevant. If i am using a film that makes faces ruddy, I would like to know that my lens will either increase or mitigate the effect, to whatever degree.

It would seem to me it would either be there in a print and people would either see it or not, or it isn't there, and nobody sees it. I certainly see it. I don't know if it is because of how the various lenses transmit the different colors, how the different colors are focused differently, or what. But I've looked at enough pictures to see that different lenses most definitely influence the image in many ways, including color.

 

[drjoke]

To me, color rendition is more appealing than sharpness and that MTF thing I never seem to understand. Even if people say that the Zeiss color rendition is all subjective, psychological and reproducible in Photoshop, I am one of those fools who would spend extra to get Zeiss lenses if I would ever get a Nikon DSLR. I am not sure if others have this experience, but colors actually affect my mood. I can search for photos with beautiful colors on Flickr and stare at them for hours and relieve my stress. The color produced by Zeiss lenses on Fuji slide films seem to have the strongest impact. Only Fuji DSLR could come close but not exactly.

 

[lewis44]

I used to have a G2 with Zeiss Lenses. I got rid of it because of the viewfinder, but loved the rendition of the Zeiss lenses. I have that same look from the Zeiss 35mm Biogon & 50mm Sonnar that I am now using on my Leica Bodies.
I don't know what it is and really don't care. It's there and I love it. And Yes, Slide film seems to bring out the best of it.

 

[drjoke]

For the best Zeiss experience (staying true to the Zeiss's quality and "colors" -- if such a thing actually exists in your imagination) would you imagine ZM or ZF to be better?

It's interesting how Zeiss releases more lenses for ZM than ZF, while I think they should have better success with ZF due to the more availability of Nikon cameras out there.

Well the best thing I see with ZM is that it offers Sonnar at a more usable range.

 

[gavinlg]

For the best Zeiss experience (staying true to the Zeiss's quality and "colors" -- if such a thing actually exists in your imagination) would you imagine ZM or ZF to be better?

It's interesting how Zeiss releases more lenses for ZM than ZF, while I think they should have better success with ZF due to the more availability of Nikon cameras out there.

Well the best thing I see with ZM is that it offers Sonnar at a more usable range.

I suspect the ZM lenses are slightly better than the normal SLR lenses they make.