My 2 cents on Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 1.4
If you’re one of my frequent readers, then you already know about the Sony alpha 300 kit that I’ve tested last week. The a300 review is already written and is just waiting to be proofreaded, so it’s hopefully going to be posted due tomorrow on slo-foto. In this post I’m going to focus on one of the crown jewels of the Sony lens lineup . I’m not going to draw any concrete conclusions, since that would be very unwise after just five days of mostly bad weather testing, along with two other lenses. I’ll just post some samples and write my thought about various aspects of this lens.
Sharpness is good. Even very good. The lens gets sharp at f1.7 and continues to gain sharpness up to f4. To be honest, I didn’t even try it above f4. It just doesn’t matter to me, wether the lens is sharp at f8. Especially when it comes to a f1.4 lens. And because I’m not a studio photographer. What confused me a bit, is the lack of “microdetails” (skin pores etc) especially when shot at wider apertures. I suspect that might (also) be the result of a rather strong AA filter on a300. I also got the feeling that it’s not as sharp wide open as either of the Canon 85’s. But as I said before, I’m not drawing any conclusion. I’ll let you be the judge of its image quality. So please, leave a comment. CA is also quite noticeable at f2. I know that CA is a common problem with fast lenses. But usually things get a lot better when a lens is stopped down for 1 f stop or more. Bokeh is really smooth and creamy and the colours also seem good, natural, nicely saturated, but not too punchy. I can’t comment on the AF speed, since a300’s AF is pretty slow, but it is accurate, I got the vast majority of wideopen and almost wideopen shots in focus. Built quality is excellent, the housing is made of metal. It gives you a really robust feeling while holding it in your hand. I just don’t understand why it doesn’t have internal focusing, since the lense stretches quite a bit during focusing. The difference in length of the lens between extreme focus distance (min focus distance to infinity) is approximately 2 cm.
Below you can see the samples, so you can judge the lenses image quality for yourself. All shot in RAW and converted to jpg. Downsized samples are slightly sharpened (the first is obviously also desaturated and I’ve added quite a lot of contrast), while 100% crops, of course, aren’t postprocessed. View LARGER, or else you’re just judging the quality of Wordpresses downsizing algorithms.
f2, 1/320, ISO 200
f2, 1/250, ISO 200
f1.7, 1/160 ISO 100
I’m not posting the complete shot, because I don’t want him to get his ass whooped by his momma 
. The framing is almost identical to the first sample. This one looks best to me, perhaps ISO 200 is already “eating up” microdetails…Both are taken at ISO 100 (both crops are from the same image).
f1.4, 1/160, ISO 100
And below you can see a series of boring sharpness comparisons between different aperture settings. All shot at ISO 200.
f1.4
f1.6
f1.7
f2
f2.8
f4
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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CyMaN said
am May 6 2008 @ 9:31 pm
Groza glede kromatske! Kolko je pa kaj cena, nisem niti šel poizvedovat, dokler me sony ne zanima. Sicer pa me ne impresionira, čeprav je mindof lahko fajn.
Peter Bernik said
am May 6 2008 @ 9:45 pm
Cena je 1,45k. Tnx za mnenje. Sem malo razdvojen, ker so na DPR večinoma hvalili ta objektiv.
izo said
am May 7 2008 @ 11:26 am
noob, meni ne zgleda tako slabo. aberacije so normalne pri objektivih z blendo 1.0, 1.4 ipd, lahko pa da, ni najboljši coating gor ipd.
ostrina je tudi čist ok, če se mene vpraša, moral bi res nardit direkr primerjavo z kakšnim drugim oz. z tistim 85/1.8.
Peter Bernik said
am May 7 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Sploh nisem mislil, da zgleda slabo. Le pričakoval sem malo več, sploh pri odprti blendi in “mikrodetajlih”. Ok no, edino CA se mi zdi previsok, pač najbrž res glede tega slabši primerek. Največji plus tega objektiva je pa zagotovo bokeh.
Škoda da res nisem imel časa za primerjavo. Sem hotel imeti session (potem bi res imel kup sampleov), samo zaradi počitnic ni bilo nobene v LJ.
Jure Dobelsek said
am May 9 2008 @ 11:06 am
Ja, tile zeiss objektivi so men zakon. In to samo zaradi tega, ker so tako super grajeni. Kot tank. Jaz imam eno starejšo verzijo, sem tudi naredil en tak laični review na blogu. Pa se mi zdi dokaj oster, čeprav je zelo težko ostrit manualno. Tuda CA ima presenetljivo dober, zelo majhen tudi pri f1.4. Je pa verjetno malo daljši v osnovi, a ima notranje ostrenje.
Glede ostrine pa se mi tale zdi vsaj toliko oster kot moj 85L II. Zgleda, da sem res dobil limono…
Uf, cena je pa tudi rahlo navita za moje pojme, za takšen denar se dobi 85LII.
Jure
Peter Bernik said
am May 9 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Opa, nekdo ima (spet
) nov lens. Od kdaj pa to?
Ja poglej moje sample s 85L. Za isti denar ga pa ne dobiš, usaj pri nas ne. Je 85L za polovico dražji.
Peter said
am May 9 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Meni se zdi to za tako hiter objektiv popolnoma spodobno.
Res, meni se zdi tole super! Ok, ajt kromatske je nekaj, samo vseeno je fajn.
Sam vem, da sta Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 in Canon 200mm f/2.8L slabša od tega kar se tiče ostrine.
Jure Dobelsek said
am May 13 2008 @ 12:42 am
Kakšna 2 meseca ga že imam. Dobil sem ga pa za 1300 eur brez DDV-ja. Sem naletel na eno dražbo na ebay-u, oz. je blo kar buy now, sploh ni bila dražba. Se pravi fizična oseba bi dala zanj 1500 eur, jaz sem vzel na firmo.
:)
Ko sem zagledal ceno sploh nisem razmišljal, sem takoj kliknil. Ker ga z lahkoto prodam za isto ceno. Ga pa sploh nisem nameraval kupit, ampak za takšno ceno se nisem mogel upret. Pa še mal sem notr padu u tele fiksne hitre lečke…
Ja sj tvoje semple sem že videl, nore fotke, ampak mojega je skoraj sigurno treba skalibrirat, ker res nisem zadovoljen. Niti pri bolj zaprti blendi ni neke hude ostrine.