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Contax Sonnar 3.5/100....Something impressive
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:36 am    Post subject: Contax Sonnar 3.5/100....Something impressive Reply with quote
I'd like to show you something impressive.

This is photo #015 in my Carnival 2008 2nd Sunday series.
The photo is obviously resized and slightly sharpened:

http://www.oriofoto.net/temp/carnevale2008_2/slides/carnevale2008_2_015.html

What follows is the 100% size non-sharpened jpg from the original EOS 5D RAW file.
The photo was taken with Contax Sonnar 3.5/100 at approx. f/4
(which is half stop less than wide open):

http://www.oriofoto.net/temp/015_100.htm

Please make sure that your browser is not resizing the picture. Use the scrollbars to navigate the image.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 7:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
blimey! you can count the hairs!


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
That is truly impressive Shocked I think you have an exceptional copy of an already good lens. Congratulations It is all ther color, sharpness, contrast, everything. It is a very light and easy to handle piece as well. Cool


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I think that lens resolves pretty well Smile


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
not impressive at all, every contax have this resolution at f4 Cool
seems it's first time you go at 100% Wink


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
not impressive at all, every contax have this resolution at f4 Cool


Oh yes it is! Even a fantastic MF lens needs someone to turn the focus ring. It's Orio's eyes and skill that are impressive.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:12 am    Post subject: Re: Something impressive Reply with quote
Orio wrote:

What follows is the 100% size non-sharpened jpg from the original EOS 5D RAW file.
The photo was taken with Contax Sonnar 3.5/100 at approx. f/4
(which is half stop less than wide open):
http://www.oriofoto.net/temp/015_100.htm
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Thats a very crisp image while keeping unrippled transitions and smooth gradations. Very nice.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio - as always, nice photo Smile Very good sharpness and nice, creamy background - I like it!


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
not impressive at all, every contax have this resolution at f4 Cool
seems it's first time you go at 100% Wink


Well, I have a few Contax lenses, but I never obtained such 100% with any of them (or any of my Leicas, for that matter).

Go to the bottom of her dress: you can count the micro lines of the fabric in transparency!
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio
your image is 7.5mb and the hairs are full of artifact, stairs and washed shadows
It's obvious that your converter manipulate the image and sharpen it even if you don't ask it.
Look at 1 full size photo with acr, 0 sharpening or manipulation
only 1mb (limit of photobucket) so a lot of degradation from jpg
That's what the hair look without sharpening
tell me what zoom lens was used wide open

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc62/par12345/reso.jpg


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
Orio
your image is 7.5mb and the hairs are full of artifact, stairs and washed shadows
It's obvious that your converter manipulate the image and sharpen it even if you don't ask it.
Look at 1 full size photo with acr, 0 sharpening or manipulation
only 1mb (limit of photobucket) so a lot of degradation from jpg
That's what the hair look without sharpening
tell me what zoom lens was used wide open

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc62/par12345/reso.jpg


I don't know what lens did you use but the DOF is very disturbing for my eyes, it gives me headache whilst in Orio's picture is extremely smooth, creamy I may say.


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Himself wrote:
the DOF is very disturbing for my eyes, it gives me headache

that's funny, I kept this photo only because I like the bokeh Laughing
seems everyone see bokeh in a different way Wink


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
Orio
your image is 7.5mb and the hairs are full of artifact, stairs and washed shadows


Question
The only artifact apart from the obvious JPG quantization that must occur when you compress an image detailed like this one, that has detail changes at pixel level, is a hint of moiré on the centre of the hair, in form of some small red and green tiny blots, caused by the sensor of the 5D.

There is a hint of green chromatic aberration on the stick that the little girls holds, in the right of the photo, but I think it is forgivable.

I don't know what you mean by "washed shadows", if you mean lack of shadow density, the shadows seem to me to be optimally dense.

Don't know, it seems to me that you are wanting to be polemic just for the sake of it.
What can I say? Whatever. You go your own way, I go mine.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
2 weeks without polemic was not normal Wink

I know very well that your photo is perfect and that the 100 3.5 is the sharpest contax
I want just to point that your raw converter don't seem the best one to me, you should give a try to acr or dpp


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
F16SUNSHINE wrote:
That is truly impressive Shocked I think you have an exceptional copy of an already good lens. Congratulations It is all ther color, sharpness, contrast, everything. It is a very light and easy to handle piece as well. Cool


Yes, and the best thing is, it does not cost a fortune.
At 170 Euros it's not really cheap, but still on the affordable side for everyone, I think, with a little money saving.
Sincerely, If I had this lens before, I probably wouldn't have bought the Planar 100. Now I am thinking about selling it, because I don't see it getting much use anymore.

peterqd wrote:

Oh yes it is! Even a fantastic MF lens needs someone to turn the focus ring. It's Orio's eyes and skill that are impressive.


Peter, you are too kind Smile it's mostly the luck of still having a good sight. OK there's a bit of practice too. But I take blurred photos also. It's just that I don't show them Wink

@ all those who commented about the nice bokeh: I agree. The lens has a very very good bokeh! Surprisingly, for a lens this sharp. A further evidence, I think, that Sonnars have better bokeh compared to Planars.

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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:

I want just to point that your raw converter don't seem the best one to me, you should give a try to acr or dpp


I use Breezebrowser Pro (BBP), which is based on the original Canon SDK, as used in DPP.
To avoid to pass through the raw filtering, I obtained the image from the "view actual image" command, assembling three screenshots of it (as it was too large for the screen).

This is a 100% crop of the hair taken from a Rawshooter Pro (RSP) processed image with sharpening off:



Although the image is less contrasted than BBP's, I still see the scaling in the hair in the centre. Obviously this is both a jpg quantization consequence and a limit of the sensor: the lens resolvance surpasses the ability of the 5D sensor, and scaling is the result.
I think that if I lower the contrast on the BBP's image, or raise it in RSP's, I would obtain a similar result.
What is not there anymore, in the RSP image (or perhaps remained but in very very little amount), is the moire effect. Now there are two possibilities for it: either RSP lowers image contrast when "translating" Canon's raw files into it's own "language", or, Canon's SDK applies some opposite bland sharpening as default, to balance the AA filter on the camera.
Maybe both things are true (RPS lowering contrast and BBP appliyng some sharpening).
But I personally think that it's more likely that RSP lowers the original contrast of the image. This because both BBP and DPP show the moire artifact. RSP does not, or it does in almost imperceptible amount. So it must be RSP that processes the image in such a way that the moire disappears.

In any case, I don't think that what BB does can be regarded as such a sharpening that induces artifacts. If it was, then all curved edges would show artifact, but if you look at the girl's cheeck, or at the outer hairs, you can not see any.

I tried Adobe's Camera Raw since it came out. I an unable to obtain faithful red tones with it. It turns every Canon red, even crimson red, into an unlikely fishy vermillion (orangeish) red. I love vermillion red, but I would like to see also other shades of red in my photos.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Now I'm a little bit confused.
What is Rawshooter ?
The Adobe's Camera Raw is not the same thing with RAW feature from CS3?


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Himself wrote:
Now I'm a little bit confused.
What is Rawshooter ?
The Adobe's Camera Raw is not the same thing with RAW feature from CS3?


Rawshooter (Standard and Pro versions) was an excellent third party RAW developing software, that Adobe bought in the summer of 2006 in order to kill it and free the way for the upcoming Lightroom release.

Adobe Camera Raw is an old plugin that Adobe introduced years ago when the first digital cameras with raw files appeared.
The software always had problems with colour profiles for several cameras, in particular with Canon EOS cameras. Problems that are not resolved yet and were inherited by Lightroom, which, by blind decision of Adobe's heads, was set to maintain 100% compatibility with ACR files - this way hurting its own development.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
This is a 100% crop of the hair taken from a Rawshooter Pro

This one look perfect and natural to me.
I don't see any artifacts on my lcd.
And yes the resolution is very high, limited only by the sensor


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:

This one look perfect and natural to me.
I don't see any artifacts on my lcd.




In red, I evidence scaling in the hair
In blue, residuals of moire effect (others are masked by the arrows).

All hair scaling that you see in the BBP picture, are also there in the RSP picture. You only notice them more in the BPP because BPP respects the original high contrast of the file (and of the lens, more importantly), while RSP lowers visibily both the original contrast and saturation, creating a "dull base file" that you have to enhance using built-in tools (as opposed to BBP philosophy which is that to respect Canon's parameters and interpretation of contrast and saturation).

In other words RSP transforms Canon's file into its own concept of raw file. Better or not than BBP, this is subjective, but it's obvious that is RSP to transform the original image, not BBP.

I prefer BBP, because RSP transforms my photo into a dull photo that may be taken with anybody's autofocus standard lens.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:22 pm    Post subject: Wow, that's good , samples from the 100/2.0 for comparision Reply with quote
These are unprocessed 100% crops from RAW files shot with the Contax Zeiss 100/2.0 on a 5D for comparision.







Looks like they've got this range nailed!


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Wow.
My Planar 100 is not even nearly as sharp when unprocessed. I think I have a poor copy, although I bought it new.
Is your copy MM or AE?


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
The planar is drop dead. Thanks for making us drool


patrickh


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
My head is swimming on the technicalities...

All I know is:

1. The bokeh, even in the closeup of the hair, is outstanding (to me)

2. The very FACT that you can get down to where the SENSOR can't touch the sensitivities of the film, and you have to have these "micro-detail" discussions to determine sharpness and accutance, is AWESOME.

3. Based on the limitations of viewing something even on my calibrated and high-end monitor -- the image is so sharp, yet so "creamy", that it almost hurts my eyes.

Somehow, I think you might have gotten a Sonnar that just "all came together" at the factory?


PostPosted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
Somehow, I think you might have gotten a Sonnar that just "all came together" at the factory?


After my lucky finding at the camera fair, I have two copies of this lens right now, and both perform identically. I bought the second one for resale but after having seen how it works in the field - no way.
It's just a pity that this lens is so rare. Zeiss took it in and out of production quickly, because people seemed to prefer the slightly faster Sonnar 2.8/85 for portraits, probably because of it's long time tradition as Contarex lens (while the Sonnar 100 was a new design).
Anyway, the result of the above is that today copies of the Sonnar 100 are rare - well not exactly rare as in RARE, but rare enough to be not easy to find. Which is a pity, because if this lens was produced in the amount of the Sonnar 85, today we could find this excellent lens for around 100-130 Euros average price.

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Last edited by Orio on Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:01 am; edited 1 time in total
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