Zeiss Sonnar/Planar?

[oliviero]

I was wondering if you could explain me the difference between the Sonnar design and the Planar design.

I guess they have different signatures, any idea on how they compare?

Thanks

 

[kshapero]

I was wondering if you could explain me the difference between the Sonnar design and the Planar design.

I guess they have different signatures, any idea on how they compare?

Thanks

check The multiple threads under the Zeiss Ikon forum.

 

[mfogiel]

Go to www.flickr.com and to the group called m-mount, there you will find photos from various lenses, including sonnars and planars. Generally speaking, Planar is a sharp lens with high microcontrast, Sonnar CAN be a sharp lens, but the microcontrast tends to be lower, and the bokeh smoother, therefore it is used preferably for portraits or soft rendering shots.

 

[Avotius]

Howdy, I was thinking about which to buy before and ended up with the planar (not the popular choice it would seem). The Planar is the sharpest, strongest rendering lens I have ever encountered. It has great presence when shooting color and it lets you know it so you have to be able to control the sheer power of such a lens. The sonnar, as with all the sonnars I have ever used are lower contrast, also the images lack the sharpness bite to them, which is fine, just a different type of tool, but many people say the sonnar out of focus rendering is smoother, I tend to disagree, I find my planar to render smoother then the sonnar, in fact in my experience with sonnar's on hasselblad's, m42's and M mounts, sonnar's tend to render with a "busy" background where lines are generally easier to make out then the planar, just my experience though.

 

[awilder]

I've have the Sonnar as seen with the sample shots here: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56414 and here: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54569. Generally the Sonnar is just as sharp as my current Summicron or prior Summilux but only when stopped down to f/2.8-3.5 and smaller. Wider opennings than f/2.8 results in some softness due to moderate undercorrected spherical aberration resulting in some focus shift. There is no easy fix for this since a compensated version for f/1.5 results in a slight softening at medium apertures. I prefer the former senario.