[Leica] OT: Zeiss ZF 85/1.4 for Nikon

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

conspicuously missing is the 90 APO apish which comes in M and R flavors and
I'd think be the king of the list.



mark@rabinergroup.com
Mark William Rabiner



> From: Marty Deveney <freakscene@weirdness.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:28:35 -0500
> To: <lug@leica-users.org>
> Subject: [Leica] OT: Zeiss ZF 85/1.4 for Nikon
> 
> The short tele shoot-out
> 
> A few years ago I did an assessment, mostly informally (i.e. by shooting 
> and
> looking at pictures) with the following lenses which I begged and borrowed 
> (no
> stealing was required):
> Pentax 85/1.4 AF
> Minolta 85/1.4 AF
> Nikkor 85/1.4 AF
> Nikkor 85/1.4 AiS
> Leica R 80/1.4
> Canon FD 85/1.2 L
> Canon EF 85/1.2L
> Zeiss 85/1.4 for Contax
> Leica M 75/1.4
> Leica M 75/2 asph
> Recently I got a chance to use a Zeiss ZF 85/1.4
> 
> At the time I was shooting a lot of portraits on black and white film.  I 
> was
> perfectly willing to buy a body to dedicate to any lens that didn?t match 
> the
> cameras I mostly use ? Nikon SLRs and Leica M rangefinders.  I found that 
> all
> these lenses are great: they should be ? this is a focal length and speed
> where designers have a lot of flexibility and can create a really great 
> lens
> and build it to a realistic price.  The differences I discuss below are 
> subtle
> and at times subjective.  I tested the Nikkors on a range of Nikon MF 
> bodies
> (FA, F3, FM2n) and some film AF (N90s, F100, F5) and digital (D200 and more
> recently D3) cameras.
> 
> My informal trial with the Cosina built Zeiss ZF showed it to be almost
> identical to the older Kyocera-built Zeiss for the Contax cameras.  The 
> Zeiss
> is probably the most famous fast 85, but I could never figure out why.
> Spherical aberrations were slightly over-controlled, meaning that the bokeh
> was not as good as the best lenses in this class.  If you think having good
> bokeh is not important in a fast short tele, you need to consider buying a
> slower lens: when you use it wide open, you are going to see a LOT of 
> bokeh.
> The Zeiss does not have a floating element or an aspherical element, so the
> close-up performance suffers visibly (this also happens with all the other
> lenses that do not have a floating element).  It is sharp across more of 
> the
> image field wide open than either of the Leica lenses and performs very
> similarly to the Nikkor AiS.  The Nikkor focuses to 85 cm while the Zeiss 
> can
> only focus to 1 m.  This makes a big difference for portrait work, but may 
> not
> matte!
>  r to some.  
> 
> Optically, the Canon EF 85/1.2 is probably the best of the fast SLR lenses 
> ?
> it has an aspherical element, a floating element and two high-refractive 
> glass
> elements, which aid performance admirably.  But Canon EOS cameras drive me
> spare.  The Leica 75/2 asph is its RF equivalent ? experience with Hoppy?s 
> has
> made me want one.  These lenses represent the current pinnacle of lens 
> design
> for this lens type.  Both these lenses are optimised for small image
> structures ? they render fine detail with incredible sharpness.  I haven?t
> seen MTF charts for them but it wouldn?t surprise me if the 40 lp/mm
> transference was very high.  The Leica M 75/1.4 and R 80/1.4 lenses both
> appear to be optimised for larger image structures and their resolution is
> slightly lower.  This might matter if you use very fine-grained film or
> digital at low ISOs and need to retain a lot of image detail, e.g. if you
> enlarge a lot.  Since I usually use medium-speed black-and-white film it
> didn?t matter to me.
> 
> The bokeh of the Leica lenses, the Canon FD and EF and the Pentax were all
> good; their character does vary but this is purely personal preference - 
> none
> of them showed any double line or other nasty tendencies.  The Minolta came
> next, then the Nikkor AiS, which were both fairly neutral.  The AF Nikkor 
> and
> the Zeiss were a fair way behind and showed a lot of double-line tendency 
> in
> the behind the sharpness plane bokeh.
> 
> Colour rendition may be an issue for some.  The Leica R and M and Canon EF
> lenses were the best in this characteristic, followed by the Pentax and
> Minolta, with the others occasionally showing some differences in
> transference.
> 
> The AF Nikkor has some visible chromatic aberration created by its optical
> design and could be induced to flare a little more than the other lenses.  
> The
> Pentax resisted flare the best but the AF was slow.  The Minolta was
> excellent, but not visibly better than the others and the AF was also slow.
> 
> Digital vs film use makes a difference.  The lenses without a floating 
> element
> display some focus shift, which wide open and close up, you will see with
> digital more clearly than with film because the emulsion depth is absent 
> and
> cannot provide latitude for back focus.  The Leica M 75/1.4 is very 
> difficult
> for me to use wide open, close up on the M8, even after camera-lens
> calibration by Leica.  As received from Leica, my 75/1.4 focuses ever so
> slightly in front of the object focused on wide open, but as you stop down 
> the
> focus shifts backwards but within the depth of field.  If you get your M
> camera and 75/1.4 adjusted so that focus is dead on at 1.4, it seems that 
> it
> will backfocus outside the depth of field to f8.  This is most important 
> for
> rangefinder bodies, but you sometimes see effects with SLRs where you focus
> wide open but the lens stops down to take the image.  There are two ways to
> fix this: chipped lenses can tell the camera body what the focus shift is 
> at a
> giv!
>  en aperture and adjust appropriately (I don't think any manufacturer has
> implemented this, possibly because AF systems are still not as accurate as 
> you
> might think) or optical design that minimises focus shift.  The latter 
> seems
> popular.
> 
> AF didn't matter to me much - I can manually focus quickly enough.  If you
> like AF, that limits your options.
> 
> I ended up keeping the Nikkor AiS 85/1.4 and the Leica 75/1.4.  None of 
> these
> lenses focus close enough for a really tight face-only portrait.  I got the
> Nikkor 105/2 DC for this.  These days I?d be tempted by the Zeiss 100/2 
> Makro,
> descended from the really amazing Arri/Zeiss master Prime movie lenses and
> with Zeiss? newest, best coatings.
> 
> I?ll try to get some more examples online soon, but already up:
> Cale ? Leica 80/1.4
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/Portraits/File0585.jpg.html
> Rachel ? Mixture of Nikkor 85/1.4 AiS (842,3) and Leica 80/1.4 (844,5,6)
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/Rachel/
> Simone ? Leica M 75/1.4
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene/mate/L1002529.jpg.html
> 
> The 85 mm f1.8 and f2 SLR lenses from these manufacturers cannot be 
> considered
> equivalent to these fast f1.4 and 1.2 lenses: their characteristics differ 
> in
> a number of ways (they tend to be much more conservative designs, for
> starters) and they are often built to lower specifications, confounding
> optical comparisons because of sample variation.  Two Nikkor 85/1.8 AF 
> lenses
> I have tried have been particularly mediocre.
> 
> I would be delighted if Nikon redesigned the AF 85/1.4.  Zeiss probably 
> should
> have thought about doing the same with their fast 85, particularly since 
> most
> of these lenses will be used on high end digital SLRs.  I also
> 
> An even further OT observation I made during this was that the Canon New F1
> camera is great: somewhere between there and the EOS 3 they seriously lost 
> me.
> 
> Marty
> 
> 
> Gallery:
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/freakscene
> 
> 
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