Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: Rajan Parrikar on October 07, 2013, 12:28:28 am
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http://diglloyd.com/blog/2013/20131007_2-Zeiss-Otus-55f1_4-overview.html
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Short summary:
Lloyd had a prototype lens to test for a long time. He is impressed and satisfied.
The lens is close to perfection and seems to be very sharp at f/1.4. Stopping down improves even more.
Downsides? Heavy and expensive.
Best regards
Erik
http://diglloyd.com/blog/2013/20131007_2-Zeiss-Otus-55f1_4-overview.html
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This is the link for the mini-review
http://diglloyd.com/articles/ZeissZ/ZeissZ-Otus-55f1_4.html
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I checked out the full review and WOW what a lens. Amazing!
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Probably good enough to make moire an issue all over again on 36+ megapixel AA filter less cameras...
Cheers,
Bernard
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Probably good enough to make moire an issue all over again on 36+ megapixel AA filter less cameras...
Cheers,
Bernard
And that's at f1.4 Bernard :)
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Well... this is a tech achievement, so far. But I'm not that impressed by this output, especially at this price. When you see what can do the latest SIGMA optics, I wonder how good will be the next 50f1.4 in the ART section, and at what price. This zeiss is a collector item I can't see how it can be justified as an investment, at all.
Have a look here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlzeisslenses/sets/72157635236491881/
A photo out of the DP3 Merrill, for example, is far more mind blowing that those examples, imho.
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Well... this is a tech achievement, so far. But I'm not that impressed by this output, especially at this price. When you see what can do the latest SIGMA optics, I wonder how good will be the next 50f1.4 in the ART section, and at what price. This zeiss is a collector item I can't see how it can be justified as an investment, at all.
Have a look here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlzeisslenses/sets/72157635236491881/
Some of the image samples have a pretty obvious problem in the upper left part of the image, others are virtually perfect. Even on the less perfect ones, the center is amazing.
I am not sure why they decided to convert their images with Capture NX though, it is really behind in demoisacing and sharpening. They would get much nice edges with C1 Pro and an even better detail with Raw developper.
Cheers,
Bernard
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At 1,4 autofocus can be a real image saver...
Depending on the subject you can expect to have better results from the inferior Nikon or whatever AF 1,4 50mm than this beautiful Zeiss.
Still i am very glad you now have a choice. At infinity this is the best lens for sure.
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That lens weighs only 200 grams less than my 400mm f/5.6L. When I think back on the 35mm film SLR kit lenses, 50 to 58mm, 200g to 300 grams and all metal, I am astonished that Zeiss has managed to make a 55mm 4 times heavier.
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That lens weighs only 200 grams less than my 400mm f/5.6L. When I think back on the 35mm film SLR kit lenses, 50 to 58mm, 200g to 300 grams and all metal, I am astonished that Zeiss has managed to make a 55mm 4 times heavier.
it is 77mm filter, so it is like 55/0.x design with aperture limiting it to f1.4... regular plain 50/1.4s are 49mm threads
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Lenses just keep improving, this one looks really good! I image this one will become more attractive after I upgrade my camera bodies from 5DMIII to a higher MP body. Right now 24-70mm II is pretty close to perfect on 22MP, I look forward to see how it performs on 40MP (when Canon makes that body).
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Have a look here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlzeisslenses/sets/72157635236491881/
I am amazed at how poor the post-processing quality of those sample images is, especially sharpening. It is sub-standard.
Contrast looks great, but OOF specular highlights turn into doughnuts.
Cheers,
Bart
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I am amazed at how poor the post-processing quality of those sample images is, especially sharpening. It is sub-standard.
Contrast looks great, but OOF specular highlights turn into doughnuts.
It seems the images were processed with Capture NX + PS CS3.
Cheers,
Bernard
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CS3? Seems Zeiss isn't buying into CC.. :p
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CS3? Seems Zeiss isn't buying into CC.. :p
Someone is?
Cheers,
Bernard
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Someone is?
Michael - you know the guy that runs this website and said that he was a while back?
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To get this kind of performance you need lots of lens elements, and this at 55mm which should be a "simpler" focal length to get good performance at. 12 lens elements, while others of similar focal lengths have 6 to 8. At $4000 it's twice the price of my medium format tech cam lens of same field of view, and I thought that was expensive. If high MP DSLR lenses will cost like this, digital MF could actually start to become competitive from a pricing perspective ;). Oh well, there was the pricing of digital backs to consider too...
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Don't forget this is an 55mm f1.4 APO design. I think 4K is quite reasonable.
Leica is asking 7K for it's 50mm APO and it is f2 with reported flare issues!
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I hope this lens will sell very well so maybe then Nikon et al will see that you can sell a decent 50mm lens...better than the 300$ 1.4 50mm
I always find it hard to understand that they only think good ( expensive ) telelenses will sell...
If only they would make a 50mm lens with the quality of the nikkor 85mm AFS 1.4
edit 17okt:
well Nikon now also has a premium 58mm 1.4 lens :
with the announcement of Zeiss one year ago they had time to come with this AF-lens exactly in the same month..
the MTF of the Nikon compared to the Otus looks a lot less impressive. but images will tell..
I hope the AF will be a bit faster than that of the normal 50mm 1,4...
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Don't forget this is an 55mm f1.4 APO design. I think 4K is quite reasonable.
Yes it probably is, it's an advanced design with lots of large glass and very high precision requirements in mounting (to get the targeted resolution), this leads to big heavy and expensive. Other manufacturers could do a similar design with similar performance if they'd like to, but probably thought it would be too unpractical and expensive.
There's certainly a place for this type of lens line though I think, further narrowing the gap to medium format. While f/1.4 at this resolution seems a bit overkill for a manual focusing lens when it comes to all-around use, it will be great to have f/1.4 for accurate live view focusing when shooting landscapes from a stable tripod.
Someone who knows what the roadmap for this lens line is, what focal lengths will be next? 55mm is one of the "easier" ones to make, it would be most interesting to see what they can do with say a 24mm lens, or even better a 24mm tilt-shift :)
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...Someone who knows what the roadmap for this lens line is, what focal lengths will be next? 55mm is one of the "easier" ones to make, it would be most interesting to see what they can do with say a 24mm lens, or even better a 24mm tilt-shift :)...
I do not know their roadmap, but when building very nice and expensive Z-wideangles they always seem to forget the extreme corners...
Even their most expensive distagon 15mm f2.8 lens costing more than 2600€ fails to address the extreme corners...
So a true architectural 24mmTS lens would probably cost ... a lot