Because the new Zeiss APO lenses are so fine, I have been using them for my close-up work. I know. They are not intended for close-up, but who’s looking. I am, and they work just fine up close. I can add 8mm or 14mm of extension and (surprisingly) no great harm seems to befall the images. And this goes for the most recent Zeiss Otus 85mm f/1.4 lens.
I am stacking photos with these new Zeiss lenses and then comparing them to a single photo of the same subject taken at f/16 to see how they compare. I can’t make up my mind half the time which format is better, stacked or single-photo. I never even came close to having this choice with other lenses. As it turns out, I lean toward stacking images, although I find myself stacking in fewer layers or even taking just two shots of key focus areas and stacking those two to bring out a couple of focus areas. The new Zeiss APOs seem to allow this.
By stacking I can exercise better control, but at the price of artifacts and perhaps slightly worse color. With single shot photos I have to be careful to see that I get what I want in focus, and where the focus turns to blur is not always pretty. However, with stacking I especially like to use fast wide-angle lenses with a very narrow depth-of-field to paint or layer focus to create a block of the subject (or different blocks) in focus. This is just the opposite of the traditional method of trying to gain Depth-of-field by using narrow apertures.
This spring my plan is to work out with these three Zeiss APO lenses using a small amount of extension to see what I can get away with, what works and what does not. And, as mentioned, on the other hand I want to see if I can perfect one-shot photos by pushing the aperture to f/16 and trying to dodge diffraction. Before the Zeiss, I never could get away with shots at f/16, although I had not tried for some years.
I am sure most folks will not be using these great APO lenses from Zeiss as I do. They were not intended for close-up work. I don’t care. I go where the correction goes, and these APO Zeiss lenses are highly corrected. That’s what I find I need.
Here are a few photos with the Nikon D810, the Zeiss APO 85mm (with 8mm of extension), and Zerene Stacker. This approach may interest a few of you.
