Zebra sonnar test images

[PaulC]

Here are a couple of 100% "pixel peeping" crops from a single-coated Sonnar 135 f3.5 "zebra" lens mounted on a Canon 5D.




I think they were both shot at f3.5 (and ISO 100). The lens has fairly low contrast so care needs to be taken not to make it worse with flare.

[estudleon]

Nice shots.

The second doesn't seem to me as low contrast, but normal contrast.

This normal contrast likes me more than the great contrast of my sonnar MC copy.

You did the first with tripod?

Rino.

[Spotmatic]

Thanks for showing us! Can you also show the resized originals? Just to get an idea of the whole picture.

[PaulC]

Rino - they are both hand-held, the buildings at 1/250 the flowers at 1/400. It might be a tiny bit sharper on a tripod.

Here are the files they are cropped from (standard 5D jpg settings, no adjustments):

[estudleon]

A beauty, the two!!

I asked about the tripod because I can't handhelkd nothing. My pulse is bad.

But your handheld is very good.

Rino.

[onesurvive]

Looks good. I want one!

[PaulC]

[Prometheus]

I think that sounds a bit weird. Here is one of my first images with that lens, handheld and mounted on a 350D. Looks sharp and nice colours and contrast to me?:

[Attila]

Nothing wrong with Zebra, but surely performance is different on shorter distance than with infinity. Personally I love more Zebra than MC, I agree zebra has less contrast than MC in most cases.

[estudleon]

And the zebra had a mechanism that open the aperture blades when you close focus to compensate the real aperture reduction in this situations.

The MC lost it.

Rino.

[PaulC]

Mattias, the lighting conditions and exposure have a large effect on it. My building shot is very slightly over-exposed (the better exposed one had camera shake - it affects me, too, Rino!). Correcting the exposure a bit does increase the saturation and make it look more punchy, but it still isn't as contrasty as modern lens - and I think that is a general feature of single-coated lenses.

I wasn't suggesting that the lens is unsharp, it is very sharp and I think my samples are pretty sharp, too, though a tripod might have added a little bit to them. Remember you are seeing the originals at 72dpi. Your very nice portrait is reduced to a fifth of its original size and probably doesn't show more detail than my reduced-size version (where you can clearly see the cable from the end of the crane jib on the left).

There is nothing wrong with softer contrast. Technically it may be a result of optics not performing at their optimum but the way we handle the image once it hits the sensor or film, in order to bring it up to modern expectations, seems to me to exaggerate contrast and saturation in an unnatural way. That is something that appeals to our primate nature and we are used to seeing reality represented that way but what my eyes see, when I stop to think about it, seems rather "flatter" than the image that comes out of the printer. Or is that just me?

Anyway, here is that building picture with "auto levels", which helps the exposure but still shows lower contrast than a later lens.

[Prometheus]

Good point, I have rarely used it at infinity, more closeup and "halfway" (can't think of a good word but I think you know what I mean ).

I also like the stopping down button, but it takes some getting used to. At the beginning I often forgot to close the aperture and a lot of shots were therefore wideopen

Here I tried this singlecoated in to the morningsun at the swedish midsummers day, something I do sometimes just to see what happens

[Prometheus]

Here is one with macroring (or is it called extensionring... ah, my english is a bit off this early in the day ), this have probably have contrast added in Photoshop though. If I remember correct it was very pale:

http://flickr.com/photos/mattiaswirf/2597478246/

[PaulC]