Wide & Super Wide Angle Lens on Digital Sensor Belong to Zeiss

[pham_minh_son]

I have tested extensively Canon, Leica and Carl Zeiss lens on Canon Digital sensor. I come to the general conclusion that when it comes to Super Wide and Wide Angle (WA) lens there is no lens better than the Carl Zeiss Distagon T* lens on Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras.

There are several factors that I love my Distagon lens include the following:

1) Well control Chromatic Aberration (CA); purple fringing.

2) Extremely high Micro-Contrast (MC) and Macro-Contrast (MaC) that lead to 3-D image looks as compared to the Canon lens.

3) The well even resolving power across the whole image plane. Canon and even Leica lens has the tendancy to be sharp in the center and soft in the corners whereas the Carl Zeiss lens are very sharp in the center and on the edges. This is extremely important since we cannot tilt with these lens and thus the plane of sharpness from the center to the edge cannot be enhanced such as large format camera. Therefore, these Carl Zeiss Distagon T* lens application are very useful optical tools.

4) High MC, Mac, and Saturation; these lens applications are great not only for color photography but also very important in B&W photography.

5) Very compact and yet extremely high in performance for your applications.

6) For the first time we see something that is collectible and yet the performance is second to none.

The two areas that Carl Zeiss Distagon T* lens out performed the high quality of the Leitz's SWA and WA lens are a) CA and b) Corner sharpness. However, Leica lens is the only lens that render beautiful red color and this is where Zeiss fall behind and has the tendancy to overblown the red. This is where the macro lens are very essential to have Leitz glass. Here I recommend the Leitz Apo-Summicron-R 100mm F2.8. As you know there is no perfect system but there are so many areas that makes the Carl Zeiss Distagon T* as my choice of SWA and WA lens.

-Son

 

[wang]

Well, I agree with you most of the time apart from the choice of macro, at least in my case we prefer Zeiss.

I used to have a Canon 10D and used it for before and after photos in cosmetic surgery. I am no good in managing the colour balance of digital photos and I prefer to use the photos straight away after shooting. To me, the fine details and the skin colour is of paramount importance, so is the contour of the face.

On a 10D, we tried various lenses including Contax 100 2, Contax 100 2.8 macro. For Leica we have 60 2.8 macro, 90 2 Summicron. We tested which are better to suit our task. We always use studio flash, never use direct flash.

In terms of the skin tone, Zeiss lenses produce the best result, I don't have to do any colour balance in the photoshop. For Leica, the skin colour is never right the first time. I always have to go to photoshop to do colour balance. Redness is an important component of the skin colour, it does not look right for my Leica 60 or 90

This photo is taken by Leica 60. To me, the colour is not right.

If Contax lens is used as in this ex&le, I don't need to go to the photoshop to do colour balance.

To me Zeiss render redness more close to reality than Leica in general. Althought apo Sum 100 2.8 has such a good reputation I can see this as no exception. You said Zeiss overblown the red, but I don't see this as the case. In the processing of prints, most lab compensate for colour red. As the general public uses Leica,Canon, Nikon and other brands more often than Zeiss, the lab. tends to add more red to the endresults. They very often overcompensate the redness when they process my prints when I am using Zeiss. Overblowing the redness is not a problem of the lens, but a problem of the lab. In the ex&le I showed, more redness should be added to the photo.

 

[pham_minh_son]

Chi Yuan Joseph,
I agree with you when it comes to macro I still enjoy my Zeiss S-Planar 60mm F2.8 for head shot and face shot like what you do. The bokeh of the Zeiss S-Planar 60mm F2.8 and the Makro-Planar 100mm F2.8 are simply among my favorite Zeiss lens thus I listed them among my 15 favorite Zeiss lens. I do not like the Leica 60mm macro lens. In close up the Zeiss 100mm F2.8 is even sharper than the Leica Apo-Summicron-R 100mm F2.8 macro. However, when you get the chance to try out the Leica Apo-Summicron-R 100mm F2.8 macro you will see the color that it renders is very pleasing and the resolving power is also very high. The only time that the Zeiss Makro-Planar 100mm F2.8 can beat the Leica Apo-Summicron-R 100mm F2.8 Macro is in very close focusing distance such as 1:1. The Leica macro 60mm F2.8 is not a good lens. Thus, I am not surprise to see your results posted here. Thanks for sharing your view.

-Son

 

[fotografz]

How come the Leica 60mm photo looks so much better than the Contax one?

 

[thedruid]

I have to agree with Mark, to me me the Leica 60mm looks better. I assume you took them one after another, same lighting, just switching lenses?

 

[djg]

With the Elmarit 100mm APO ... I do like your models better

...

 

[wang]

I think the colour of the apo R100 2.8 should be very similar to my apo M90 2 ASPH.

To Marc, I choose these two to post just to point out the difference in skin colour, to me the colour from Contax bears more resemblance to reality.

In this posting, there are three photos, all three have three different colours. The two from my collections have not gone to the photoshop. The one from Leica 60 has a stony complexion, this is typical in those old generation Leica lens. In my situation, it does look like patients with renal failure.
The current generation of Leica lenses does have a better skin tone as shown by the third posting.

 

[wang]

The last sentence should read as the current generation of Leica apo 100 2.8 does have a better skin tone as shown by the third photo posted by DJ.

 

[albert4321]

Since we are a little off the thread here...

What about the skin tone for the C645 planar 80mm f/2?

Shot with ND.

 

[albert4321]

or this one?

Same lens, available light also.