Posts tagged ‘Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 ZE’
Almost forgot this one
This image also came off the roll I posted yesterday, but forgot to add it. The mixture of wood tones, reflections in the water and composition made it one of my favorites.
Panther Hollow
Silver Efex works again
I sent the Zeiss 50mm lens back to LensRentals today. I’ll miss that lens quite a bit. The build quality, the contrast, the handling, all wonderful. I do think that when I buy it, I’ll want to change the focussing screen in the 5D to augment my ability to see the parts of the image I want to be in focus. This is really crucial if I want to shoot at f/1.4 or f/2.0, as I mis-focussed quite a bit with those apertures, even with the confirmation beep of the 5D’s auto focus system.
For the time being, I’m going to shoot the 5D with my 17-40mm L f/4, as I haven’t used that lens on the 5D much. I’ll also be developing about eight rolls of b&w film and scanning in the negs. That will happen mostly over the Christmas break, I would think. So we’ll be taking a look at images captured mainly since I returned home in July.
I also have been thinking quite a bit how shooting only with a 50mm lens changed the way I see things. While wide-angle is my choice for landscapes, 50mm has returned to a sweet spot for me lately for walk-around work.
I have also been tempted to give Lightroom 3.0 a bit of a test-drive. I chuckle a bit at that as I don’t think I really know how to use 2.0 yet, and here we have arrived at 3.0 Beta. Oh well, we’ll see what happens. I really was happy to audition the Zeiss lens, and I think if I was going to go on a landscape shoot anytime soon, I’d seriously consider renting the Zeiss 21mm ZE mount lens for that trip.
Shadow of how it might have looked back then
A few minutes from work
Pittsburgh has a long history of being an industrial city, and as recently as 60 years ago, exerted a great influence on world affairs because it its production of steel. The steel industry has all but vanished, and Pittsburgh is trying to reinvent itself as a tech center.
A few minutes from work (and not very far from ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,’ for those who know that children’s TV show) there is a small area which sits at the bottom of what is known as Panther Hollow. There is some kind of industry there and driving down this tiny road evokes an earlier time in Pittsburgh’s history (to my eye).
Winter is truly here
Yeah, okay, the color is unreal, but . . .
This image happened by accident. I had left the 5D on ‘fluorescent’ white balance, and exposed this frame. When I got the image into CaptureOne, it looked just like this. I kinda liked the accident, so I sharpened and posted.
Zeiss 50mm ZE f/1.4
5D / Zeiss combo
Ok, so this week was busier than I thought with after-effects of the move, but I did get some shooting in. Mainly using the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 ZE I rented from LensRentals. This image above was captured of the dead tree on my front lawn. Some notes about this image:
- Camera: 5D
- Lens: Zeiss 50mm ZE
- ISO: 400
- Exposure: 1/50 @ f/4, -1.7 EV
- Processed in Capture One. Yellow Filter b&w
Whew. Lots of stuff there. I processed this image after I got my desktop setup back in working order tonight, and I’ve been anxious to work in Capture One again with the 5D images. Below is an enlargement of a portion of this image:
Center portion zoom in
So, I really, really like the way this lens draws, especially in b&w conversions. It’s a manual focus lens, and it works really well with Canon’s AF systems: activate auto focus through whatever means you normally do (I use a button on the back of the camera rather than the ‘halfway depressed shutter’ method) and, while activating this system, focus the lens. When a portion of the image over which one of the active focus rectangles comes into focus, the camera beeps and the rectangle flashes as if the lens had auto focused on that point (the ZE models of these lenses are created by Zeiss to mate with Canon’s electronics). It’s kinda the best of both worlds, as it were. I’m not as fast right now as if I was focusing with a screen that supported it, but given the fact that the focusing screen in the camera is not designed to support focusing by eye, as it were, it really helps. The 5D does have such a screen (I think its a split-prism), and I bet that combo would work just great. Research to do.
The electronic mating with the body also supports auto aperture exposure methods, so I’m not exposing manually, either.
It’s Pittsburgh, right, so I can’t really work a lot in, um, color at this time of year, but below is an image of a fence near work:
construction site
I hope the sun shines a little before the lens has to go back.
Another thing I’ve been experimenting with this lens is focusing at f/1.4. Holy crap, the DOF is razor-thin. When I use my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on my 10D, the increase DOF of the crop sensor really saves me when I focus at subjects close by. But with 5D’s full-frame, that aperture results in a DOF that is just fractions deep (if that) at a distance of about three feet. Below is an image where just the corner tip of the cardboard box is in focus.
Here is the full frame:
I focussed on the box edge
And here is the close up of the edge:
I *think* that edge is in focus
So, I don’t know how much use I’d get with this lens at f/1.4 up close.
Still playing.
