I am not stating anything I'm expressing an opinion and am questioning the benefit of using such a lens on a high MP 35mm body. For me using a DSLR is about flexibility and speed. I want good zooms and good AF and good high iso and combining these will often require VR. I did not say that you need VR to get the most out of the lens...rather out of the body...
If I need to focus manually I want to be able to SEE it through the finder. If I need to change the focusing screen every time I change a lens then I'm loosing another benefit of DSLR, but that's just me I guess...
As a friendly comment Fred If you want to be taken seriously you should read others' posts before you fill up the page with yours...
"I did not say that you need VR to get the most out of the lens...rather out of the body..." regardless of how you put it or call it the image stabalization is in the lens and the lens and body work together. image stabalization
reduces camera shake thus making the sharp image the lens produces recordable. While at low shutter speeds this has a dramatic effect that is even visable from far away at higher speeds like 1/60th or so
the effect will be less dramatic but will significantly help keep lens sharpness so it can be recorded. With the high resolution of cameras today image stabalization is a significant advantage for just about any hand held work.
Even the steadiest hand will have some movement... maybe not enough to smear the image, but enough of reduce some sharpness.
As a friendly comment Fred If you want to be taken seriously you should read others' posts before you fill up the page with yours...
And regarding this .... "friendly comment" I do read your posts well and I also remember them well.
When the Zeiss 55mm 1.4 was first discussed you wrote this about the lens.....
Or
It's the same lens as the 55mm/f3.5 Distagon they made for the 645AF...
But with a larger aperture since 35mm sensors only use the centre of the lens so won't bring up issues of CA, vignetting and softness towards the edges at full aperture
......
Implying that Zeiss rather than designing a whole new range of lenses for 35mm DSLRs it was just recycling an old design..... that happens to be from the 80s if I'm not mistaken.
But that's not all.
Another forum member added a comment that you can't just magically turn a 3.5 lens into a 1.4 lens....
It's a new design, "opening up" an existing design by 2.5 stops is not possible...
I hope that they finally got some common sense and produce this lens themselves - compromising another design by mediocre mechanical quality or sample variation for a so-called reference line-up makes little sense, since the target audience already accepts bigger, heavier and expensive lenses - no need for compromises...
Your response to that was.....
Unless the original design was already capable (mechanically & optically) of going to f1.2 but was physically limited to f3.5 due to vignetting/ CA/ soft edges...which won't be so much of a problem with the 35mm chips...
The 45mm, for example, was an f2.8 lens and it used the same basic barrel as the 55mm/f3.5...
So you were saying that the lens Carl Zeiss designed was capable of f1.2 but was physically limited to f3.5.....
..... If Carl Zeiss had some how magically figured out how to make a 55mm 1.2 that was so compact i'm pretty sure they would have
put it on the market even if it were soft at the edges stopping down would have done the same as your suggested "physical limiting",
but at the same time it would have has the magic of a super shallow depth of field lens for artsy purposes. Maybe they would have added some special indication
to the apertures above 3.5 as "special purpose" or something.... Would have been an incredible environmental portrait lens
would not matter if it's soft at the edges right... aren't you the one that said this to.....
As a general comment if a lens is designed to be a portrait lens (as most 50mm are) then there is no real point in testing and comparing edge sharpness
Yair