Contax G 35/2 Planar and its "lack" of sharpness

[Pontus]

For some reason the Contax G 35/2 Planar is often looked down upon as a lens lacking the bite that the other lenses in the series have.

This lens is an almost exact optical copy of the Leica M-Summicron IV (pre-asph) "King of bokeh" except that the Leica has 10 aperture blades and the Contax only has 7. The Leica and the Contax both have somewhat busy bokeh wide open but stopped down a little to f4 or so the bokeh becomes very neutral and smooth. I have not compared the Contax with the Leica but because of the fewer aperture blades one could expect the Leica to have the smoother bokeh stopped down of the two. I love the punchy Zeiss colours.

The Leica is getting very expensive and the Contax is a bargain in comparison. I think that the Contax is misunderstood, it is at it's best stopped down a bit and most people have tested the lens wide open. Here's a snapshot from today. RAW from my NEX-7 at ISO 100 and f4 through Aperture with only white balance and exposure adjustments made. Sharp enough for me:



100% crop

[sonyrokkor]

Very sharp to me too.

Nice exposure, a deep grey, almost black, that let us see the details in the cat.

What kind of meter did you use with your N7? Spot?

[Pontus]

I didn't meter, I shoot fully manually and adjust exposure according to a mix of what I see in the viewfinder, the histogram and the screen. And I do the final exposure adjustment in Aperture (works well since I shoot RAW).

[ForenSeil]

Here's a pic of this lens:


Compared to most other fast 35mm-40mm lenses I tried it's already sharp wide open imho
It's simply not as good as it's ultra-good Biogon 28/2.8 brother which causes "bad" reputations
Bokeh at wide apertures is really busy indeed, but I like it anyway for most situations
I really loved it optically but sold it due bad haptics

Here some more sample shots, mostly wide open, some F2.8





Here's a 100% crop - wide open according to the crappy bokeh and thin DOF! Who says it's soft wide open?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54671350@N02/6890416938/sizes/o/in/photostream/