Advice needed: C/Y ZEISS 85mm f1.4 or Summicron 90

[imperian]

I know these were discussed over and over again on 85mm lens but I cant really decide to go with either of them. i know both are awesome lens but really need some advice from you guys for my first ever MF lens for 5D.

Both for the best MF potrait lens but I heard ZEISS is less sharp wide open and lots of CA. Hardly found wide open portrait shots with Zeiss in flickr as reference but the f1.4 is really tempting compared to the one stop slower cron90.

Thanks, using this for portrait only....

[rbelyell]

hi

dont have the cron, but i can speak unreserved praise about the zeiss. easily the best lens ive ever used, fabulous IQ and sharp as a tack. and the cost is less than half the cron...

as for wide open performance, my understanding is the cron is a 2.0 vs zeiss 1.4. obviously wide open the cron will perform better because its a full stop higher, so the DOF will be almost double that of the zeiss. i daresay at 2.0, which it seems to me where the real comparison should lie, they will be much more even.

now i dont want to come off like a jerk, but may i ask the importance of primarily shooting wide open? i can understand it if your shooting style takes you to predominately low light situations, or if you are trying to achieve a certain artistic effect, but other than that i wonder what the photographic theory is behind the 'always shoot wide open' choice?

if its for bokeh, typically the FL lenses youre talking about have very narrow DOF, so great bokeh can be achieved probably up to F4, certainly bokeh will be great below that, so you have F2 and 2.8, ensure tack sharpness AND still have amazing bokeh behind your portraits. this being the case, what benefit, besides shooting in very low light or portraits of tiny objects, does one get from shooting wide open?

[poilu]

I don't know the Summicron but I shot often the contax wide open
some samples

http://forum.mflenses.com/medieval-rose-festival-of-rhodes-contax-851-4-t28381.html
http://forum.mflenses.com/contax-851-4-wo-5dii-t27905.html
http://forum.mflenses.com/contax-851-4-5dii-3200-iso-t31581.html

[imperian]

[rbelyell]

if to you the IQ youve seen is very close, why not take the one that costs much much less and use the savings to buy another great zeiss lens!

[imperian]

[Orio]

My personal experience from shooting both lenses (and a few others):

1- the Contax Planar (can not speak for the new Z lens because I did not try it) is sharper than the Summicron-R last version (I mean the last before the APO lens release)
at all apertures, and especially wide open, where the Planar at f/1.4 is noticeably sharper than the Summicron-R at f/2.
The Summicron reaches a very respectable sharpness at f/5.6 and f/8 but still lags behind the Contax Planar;

2- The Contax Planar shows noticeable purple fringing wide open, which decreases stopping down. The Summicron does quite better
than the Planar in this department, but it's not free from purple fringing either;

3- the wide open bokeh highlights of the Summicron-R are less "edgy" than those of Planar. This is the consequence of the spherical aberration in the Summicron-R
being LESS corrected than in the Planar, and has obviously a side effect in the inferior sharpness as noted in point 1;

4- both lenses have excellent micro-contrast and are well suited to the "3D" which I prefer to call "dimensional rendering", although 85mm
lenses are not the best focal lenght to achieve good dimensional rendering (because like all tele lenses they tend to flat out whatever objects are outside
the focal plane)

5- both are quality lenses and the subjective factor (the personal preference) is decisive for a choice. I have personally decided to keep
the Planar because I love the way it renders. Surely, if I need to photograph something where purple fringing can be an issue, I choose another lens.
I have also decided to sell the Summicron-R because it is significantly less sharp than the Elmarit-R 90 (last optical version),
which I have kept and which is a fantastic 90mm lens, especially for skin rendering, if you don't need the f/1.4 or f/2 apertures.

[BRunner]

I don't have experience with Planar, but I agree with all Orio statements regarding Summicron. I'd add, that in addition to low CA wide-open, it shows very high contrast and rich colors at this aperture. It isn't pixel-sharp until f4-5.6. But at wide apertures, there is something addictive in it's rendering, what forces me to keep this lens.

Summicron-R 2/90 @f2 on 5DmkII - just snapshot under bulb light without significant PP.

[F16SUNSHINE]

Very pretty. Thankyou for posting this lovely portrait.

[dude163]

Out of all my lenses I sold to get my M8 I miss the Planar 85/1.4 I had, it was an absolutely fantastic lens!

I'd grab that and use the left over money to buy a few more of them in different focal lengths , I also had a C/Y 50/1.7 and that was easily the sharpest lens i have ever owned, some websites say it is the sharpest 50mm ever made.......


85mm shot:

look at the glass!! its saying BUY ME!





pics taken with it on a 8 MP RebelXT!!!!!

[nixland]

Orio experience number #4 is in line with mine.
The Zeiss 85/1.4 C/Y and Summicron 90/2 (mine is the first version) give more pop-out images compared to my other portrait fast lenses so far.

Below are the minimum focus distance shot from Zeiss (above) and the Leica.

[imperian]

[nixland]

[RTI]

Might seem a bit of offtop, but still - maybe someone has compared the Sony AF version of ZA 85/1.4 with the manual Contax, I'd consider that lens too, if it has the same IQ as the manual Zeiss, AF is a nice bonus to have, in case one has alpha cameras.

[Orio]

[RTI]

[Orio]

This is just my guess, because it's not really in Zeiss' style to make simple telephoto lenses with so many elements inside.
Also looking through Zeiss history, you see that the simple 6-elements scheme of the Planar 1.4/85 was carried from Contarex through Rollei, Contax,
and finally to Z series, almost unmodified. So it would be very strange that for Sony they would make a completely different lens
that is different from their style and that would require a lot of work starting anew.
My guess is that Sony ported over that lens scheme from Minolta.
Which does not necessarily mean it's a bad thing because Minolta used to have very good lens designers.
But surely it looks different from a Zeiss lens.

[imperian]

I have just made payment for my zeiss 85!!!! Cant Wait for my lens to ship all the way from Japan.

any adaptor to recommend, i see leitax sounds cool. but is a bit too expensive for my buget.....

[Orio]

[imperian]

[Orio]

The last generation of EMF chips are very good
there are two main types, basically. They both work well.
I perhaps prefer the Russian one to the Chinese one, but it's a matter of taste,
both do the job.
Just make sure it's programmable, not preprogrammed
Programmable cost more but they are worth the expense due to they have programmable focus point for your lens.

[imperian]

Thanks bro for EMF chip. Btw, is the adaptor reliable as I noticed that the flange thickness is kinda critical?

[DSG]

[imperian]

[DSG]

But the EF 85mm f1.2 mkI and MkII are completely different lenses to the two manual focus FD version's, both optically and mechanically, so they perform differently too..Some say the FD versions are actually better lenses than the EF versions...And I'd have to agree so dont rule out getting one just yet.
The FD 85mm f1.2 S.S.C Asperical is almost identical optically to the later FD 85mm f1.2 L, but they differ mechanically and the latter has one less Iris blade.
The S.S.C Asperical weighs 756g and has an MFD of 1m but the "L" weighs just 680g and has an MFD of 0.90m.
The EF MkI is virtually identical optically to the MkII...They both weigh a hefty 1025g, and have an MFD of 0.95m.
Here are the optical diagrams showing how different they are: