Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

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David Kilpatrick
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Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

It's taken a while, and no new images over the last two or three days due to truly awful light quality and gales, and too much to clear away inside...

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/2011/12/2 ... -reviewed/

But the review is now done.

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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by Dusty »

Now I just need $4000. 1200 for the lens, and another 2700 for the A900 to put it on!

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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by bossel »

I wonder how well the new CZ 24/1.8 on the NEX will do...
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artington
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by artington »

bossel wrote:I wonder how well the new CZ 24/1.8 on the NEX will do...
Or the Zeiss ZM 25/2.8?
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by bossel »

I had the Minolta 24/2.8 MD and sold it. I am just not too experienced and/or patient for manual focus. It might be better with the new viewfinder, but on the display of the NEX 5 it was just so-so (for me).
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by artington »

bossel wrote:I had the Minolta 24/2.8 MD and sold it. I am just not too experienced and/or patient for manual focus. It might be better with the new viewfinder, but on the display of the NEX 5 it was just so-so (for me).
I have one of these and love it on the NEX-5. As i do my MD 58/1.2. As for MF i personally find it very easy on the NEX-5 with MF assist - better than AF unassisted for my 60 year old eyes - and I imagine it will be easier still on the NEX-7. Its been a revelation getting back to MF. I've mainly found AF ok but harder for precision differential focusing. I tried for years with manual rangefinder focusing but it was too hit and miss, particularly at close range so the advent of the NEX and MF Assist has been a real boon.
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by youpii »

Thanks for the review.

I agree it's a great lens. I'd say it only have two flaws:
- Size, almost as large as the 24/1.4 from Nikon & Canon, much larger than the Minolta 28/2.
- SSM battery drainage. I can take about 33% less photos with it than the Minolta 28/2 with the same battery.

Here are some photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ephankim/t ... gon2420za/
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by agorabasta »

David,

I have to totally disagree on your comments over the SEL 16F28 focus plane shape. In fact, the little thing has a very straight focus plane. And I insist that all the four copies of that lens that I have/had to the moment (I mean all three regular-bad ones and the one abnormally good one) they all have a near-perfectly flat focus plane. And if that focus plane curves, it does so the most at f/2.8, and that 'most' is very small, and it curves inwards/closer, actually.

The corner smear is a by-product of the older Nex5/3 bodies. And the smear is dependent of the absolute contrast of the corner parts of the image. The later C3 produces no corner smear. The later yet 5N is also rather good about the absence of corner smear, but it introduces some excessive vignetting into the corners that measures with that lens about 1EV at f/2.8 and only goes down to 0.7EV at f/9.

The normal bad SEL 16mm differ from the rare good ones in the quality of moderate blur. The rare good ones produce blur that is almost symmetric in both radial and tangential directions. The regular bad ones compress the tangential blur and exaggerate the radial blur to the point that, the blurred parts of the image in the corners may actually look doubled in radial direction. But almost all of the both good and bad 16mm pancakes produce very good results in case of infinite DoF and in the case of very thin DoF, like with very close focus at f/2.8.

The only one abnormally good SEL 16F28 that I have has an S/N of 0731272, and it came with the C3. The normal bad ones were the 022xxxx, 023xxxx that came with my older Nex5's and the 083xxxx that came with the 5N.

That good one is at least as good in the centre as both my Samyang 14mm are, and those look perfect with current APS sensors. But that good one has better contrast when used with the Nex's than the Samyangs do since those are FF lenses and let in too much light, unnecessary for the APS sensor, to spread into the chamber.

And one more thing to add after seeing your samples - a regular good Samyang 14mm when used on a good APS body produces better results than that 24 ZA does on that FF. I now have absolutely no doubt about it. And that's no good news to me...

Thank you for a very decent and straightforward review!
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by agorabasta »

bossel wrote:I wonder how well the new CZ 24/1.8 on the NEX will do...
The raw samples in the DPR Nex7 review are rather unimpressive. But the lens appears to have virtually no LoCA in the OOF parts of the image. So some SAL 35F18 with adapter would be sharper, but the LoCA ruins the impression far too much.
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

I can only speak for the 16mms I've tried, probably four in total, at least three - but I've not noted down serial numbers. I'm not talking, anywhere, about the smearing which you identify in some image corners; I'm only talking about actual focus, where an object positioned at a different distance will appear sharp. Since it's possible to get perfectly sharp rendering in the edge of the 16mm field at wide aperture, but necessarily at the focused distance or in that plane, that's how I assess the lens.

What I have learned, since my earliest days chart testing lenses back in 1974, is that the flatness or otherwise of the focus field is actually the main factor responsible for peripheral softness in a well-assembled lens (where coma, residual spherical, astigmatism, decentering or strong chromatic faults are minimised). I think this is important because real-life subjects are three dimensional, not test charts.

I don't know the Samyang 14mm well enough to comment, Armen sent me images but it would not easy to say it was better than the 24mm f/2 (mainly because it is not an f/2, or a 24mm). There are too many subjective aspects to assessing lenses, which is why I shoot a familiar set of subjects - I can't always test side by side, but at least I'm familiar with the 'best' renderings and worst.

What you would need to compare the Samyang 14mm with might be, for example, 21mm Zeiss manual focus or perhaps the 20mm Sony f/2.8 on full frame - or with one of the various zoom choice for APS-C used at 14mm. I don't see how it relates to the 24mm f/2 used on either format, 14mm being significantly shorter than 16mm. I guess you could compare it on Nikon with the 14mm f/2.8 end of the 14-24mm zoom.

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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

youpii wrote:Thanks for the review.

I agree it's a great lens. I'd say it only have two flaws:
- Size, almost as large as the 24/1.4 from Nikon & Canon, much larger than the Minolta 28/2.
- SSM battery drainage. I can take about 33% less photos with it than the Minolta 28/2 with the same battery.

Here are some photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ephankim/t ... gon2420za/
Eric, I noticed that some of the shots are made with a 14/2.8 and some with 85/1.4 but yet in the same album.
Very nice shots, btw.
A99 + a7rII + Sony, Zeiss, Minolta, Rokinon and M42 lenses

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David Kilpatrick
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

The issue of SSM battery drain is something I had not considered since all my lenses now are either SSM or SAM except a few like the 16-80mm CZ - I assume the 24mm is not worse than other SSM or SAM designs.

I guess we have yet to see how much for example the NEX-7 with its small battery (the one aspect which disappoints me, I had hoped it would use the same battery as the 900/77) is hammered by using an LA-EA2 and the 24mm.

I seem to be use manual focus with peaking a lot now anyway on the A77, which removes the whole SSM battery drain question.

David
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by agorabasta »

David,

The 14mm may be cropped to 21mm by max upscaling in Lr3.x (maybe as good in ACR6.x too, but then maybe not). Then some more crop to 24mm. Upscaling with cropping of a 24Mp sample by 150% brings the whole image down to effective 10.7Mp; then further cropping to 24mm leaves you with about 7.7Mp effective. That's still a good res to compare the worst parts of the image. So some meaningful comparison is still possible.
Or you could just compare the 14mm upscale-cropped to 16mm on APSC against the 24mm on FF, the APSC would still deliver tons of res. That's much the same you did in your review when comparing the 24mm FF to the 16mm APS.

One more thing - the SEL 16F28 has its greatest problem with blur asymmetry which is the same as astigmatism, but applied to the (slightly) blurred parts of the frame. And that means that the 'best focus' in the worst parts of the frame may be achieved at different actual focus positions depending on the subjective judgement. That's because the minimum total area of a point source image happens at a focus position different from the minimum diameter of such image, that's simply because the image blur is not circular. In other words - the radial lines get in best focus at a different position than the tangential lines do. So the perceived focus plane curvature may well be an illusion.

And finally - please do try a few copies of that 14mm Samyang. After all, they are stupidly cheap. And they delivered me quite a revelation, serious.
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

I'd still prefer to compare like with like - it's valid to show the 16mm f/2.8 on NEX versus the 24mm on A900, it would have been better to have shown the 16mm on NEX-7 but that I was not able to do.

Sagittal/meridional (what we used once to call radial and tangential) focus shift certainly does happen with the 16mm, but I don't think we are seeing two different curvatures of field - just a single field curvature which may be exaggerated with some directional qualities of subject detail, and ameliorated with others.

I remain surprised by what can be captured by using manual focus in the extreme corner of the frame at full aperture, just to check what's happening. Obviously it is soft, but there's a core image there with high resolution.

David
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Re: Zeiss 24mm f/2 review now posted

Unread post by agorabasta »

David Kilpatrick wrote:I'd still prefer to compare like with like - it's valid to show the 16mm f/2.8 on NEX versus the 24mm on A900, it would have been better to have shown the 16mm on NEX-7 but that I was not able to do.
I'm quite sure that a 24Mp APS cropped from 14 to 16mm is closer to 24Mp 24mm FF than is a 14Mp 16mm APS in the like comparison.
David Kilpatrick wrote:Sagittal/meridional (what we used once to call radial and tangential) focus shift certainly does happen with the 16mm, but I don't think we are seeing two different curvatures of field - just a single field curvature which may be exaggerated with some directional qualities of subject detail, and ameliorated with others.
With my 'bad' 16mm copies I see 'best focus' planes for the radial/tangential elements to diverge in different directions from the basically flat focus plane.
Then my 'good' sample shows just a little bit of inward curving into the corners.

But I think there's a field too wide of variations for different copies of that thing.
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