Lenses

[Cinegain]

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

I think they're rental only.

Ya just had to find their site: https://zerooptik.com/nikon-ais/58mm-t13-noct-nikkor-rehousing / https://zerooptik.com/lens-rehousing

[noone]

4 hours ago, jonpais said:

I think they're rental only.

THAT would not be cheap either!

Given they made not that many more than 10,000 copies of the lens in two variations and it hasn't been made for 21 years, it must have been hard to get good ones to rehouse and would not have been many available.

[webrunner5]

Pretty good summary from B&H about fast glass.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/amp/photography/buying-guide/the-fastest-glass-money-can-buy

[padam]

14 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Pretty good summary from B&H about fast glass.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/amp/photography/buying-guide/the-fastest-glass-money-can-buy

Phew, I almost got triggered by scrolling down and not seeing a Noctilux

[Geoff CB]

3 hours ago, padam said:

Phew, I almost got triggered by scrolling down and not seeing a Noctilux

Honestly I really don't like the noctilux rendering. Highly overrated in Leica's lineup.

[webrunner5]

Well at $11,295.00 I can't say I have tried one LoL. I would be afraid to even Hold it at a camera store!

[docmoore]

45 minutes ago, Geoff CB said:

Honestly I really don't like the noctilux rendering. Highly overrated in Leica's lineup.

I briefly owned the newest 0.95 Noctilux ... found that it worked for me about 30% of the time ... and

I could not pre-visualize when it was going to work. Rest of the time the OOF was very distracting and

when viewed on my 5K monitor ... made me dizzy ... near nauseous.

Much prefer the Summilux ... great fall off and effect ... or the Apo Sumicron.

Were I to win the lottery ... a couple of Summicron C Leicas ... 35 and 100.

http://www.madeinwetzlar.com/filming-with-the-leica-sl-summicron-c-lenses

 

[padam]

2 hours ago, Geoff CB said:

Honestly I really don't like the noctilux rendering. Highly overrated in Leica's lineup.

All is relative, I think it sold well, so it has its own appeal. It was more special when it came out a decade ago (gosh, makes me feel old...)

One photographer who I liked wrote, that the reason he was able to take nice street portraits with it was people approaching him with great interest, starting a conversation, etc.

[jonpais]

I’ve been following Sigma with interest for years, marveling at how a manufacturer of middling third-party lenses has gone on to become one of the world’s leading producers of superb optics.

But lately I’ve come to think of their approach as a bit old-fashioned. Their ART lenses may be a bargain, but their massive size and weight is a big downer.

I thought of this when setting eyes on a prototype of Panasonic’s humungous full frame 50mm f/1.4 L-mount lens announced at Photokina and hearing of their proposed partnership with Sigma. It almost looked like a grotesque caricature of an ART lens.

I also couldn’t help but remark how much more beautiful Olympus’s 12-40mm rendering looked when compared to Panasonic’s rather pedestrian 12-35mm in recent videos shot with the batcam. Panasonic has not exactly been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to optics as far as I can tell.

At least Olympus features clutch manual focus on their PRO lineup, and most seem to feel that their lenses rely less on software correction than Panasonic’s.

Fuji introduced a feature in their X-H1 that enables linear response when manually focusing; Canon’s EOS R allows the user to change the direction of focus and they’ve added rings to both their adapters and lenses for added functionality;  Nikon’s S line is supposed to have little to no breathing; and Sony’s G Master lenses appear to be prioritizing light weight, performance and appealing bokeh. 

What do you think? Is Panasonic really headed in the right direction partnering with Leica and Sigma when it comes to innovative approaches to optical design and state-of-the-art performance? 

 

[Cinegain]

Isn't it Sigma that created some of Olympuses optical formulas for them?

I like Sigma. They've always claimed ART is for the best quality. Size and price on the backburner. Hence they have the Contemporary line-up as well. Those were supposed to strike a better balance between the three. Though, given, they haven't been doing much of those... and those that have come out... were actually pretty dang huge, lol.

Don't think Lumix lenses ever looked... amazing. Especially in the GH2 days lenses like the 14-140mm and 20mm f/1.7 were popular. They were relatively compact, flexible and well-priced. But they had a very poppy modern character. Contrasty, sharp, but a bit stale at the same time as well. They did a good job, don't get me wrong, but they sorta lacked an organic vibe. It's like Samsung smartphone displays and their too vibrant respresentation of things. Think the new generation looks better. Think it was around the time the 42.5mm f/1.7 OIS and 30mm f/2.8 Macro were introduced. Quite like their looks. Have a bit more character. Of course it gets more interesting with the Leica glass. But... I guess you pay for what you get. Think Olympus PRO is still more of precision tools. Not too much of that 'ooooh look at that character, it's so legendary, ooh it has the Leica badging (but a Lumix lens cap)', just good lenses that sorta speak for themselves. It's no secret that I love their AF/MF solution with the de-clutch. That should be on every lens out there. Yeah, Olympus is doing very well out there. Not sure where the L-mount partnership is going, but I think it's an interesting team-up. Not actually the greatest fan of the mount. It's being surpassed by the E- and Z-mounts in terms of potential and flexibility. And great that there's an existing lens line-up, but... I was hoping more of a fullframe Lumix-like system, rather than a premium boutique-style one where everything is big, fluffed up and expensive. But... too soon to judge.

Still having a blast with MFT and the strides they've made post-GH4 is admirable. Think there's plenty of future for me there... especially if one considers massive size and weight a downer, then that's a system that's got you covered with plenty of options to keep that in check.

[heart0less]

I was on a lookout for a quite compact and bright 35mm for my A7. Sammy 35/2.8 is perfect, but its rather slowish aperture often forced me to use high ISO in low-light scenarios.

Native 35/1.4 lenses for Sony E would be nice, if not for their size and weight. Can't imagine myself walking around with these cannons on my neck.

 

So I browsed the internet and found out that Samyang 35/1.2 (meant for mirrorless APS-C cameras) covers full frame quite nicely.

 

I wouldn't be me if I didn't test it, therefore I rented one today. 
Here are my results:

The 1st and 2nd photos were not cropped at all, the 3rd and 4th were cropped vertically just a little. All of them shot at f/1.2

To remove the most noticeable vingnetting, an uniform 1.1x crop would do. 1.2x to remove it completely.

 

The next 6 photos are comparisons between 35/2.8 at f/2.8 and 35/1.2 at f/1.2

35/1.2 seems to be a tiny bit wider than 35/2.8.

 

All in all, in my opinion this little lens is quite useable. Definitely not for images that require corner-to-corner sharpness, but for a fast walk-around glass - why not? 

[Geoff CB]

3 hours ago, heart0less said:

I was on a lookout for a quite compact and bright 35mm for my A7. Sammy 35/2.8 is perfect, but its rather slowish aperture often forced me to use high ISO in low-light scenarios.

Native 35/1.4 lenses for Sony E would be nice, if not for their size and weight. Can't imagine myself walking around with these cannons on my neck.

 

So I browsed the internet and found out that Samyang 35/1.2 (meant for mirrorless APS-C cameras) covers full frame quite nicely.

 

I wouldn't be me if I didn't test it, therefore I rented one today. 
Here are my results:

The 1st and 2nd photos were not cropped at all, the 3rd and 4th were cropped vertically just a little. All of them shot at f/1.2

To remove the most noticeable vingnetting, an uniform 1.1x crop would do. 1.2x to remove it completely.

 

The next 6 photos are comparisons between 35/2.8 at f/2.8 and 35/1.2 at f/1.2

35/1.2 seems to be a tiny bit wider than 35/2.8.

 

All in all, in my opinion this little lens is quite useable. Definitely not for images that require corner-to-corner sharpness, but for a fast walk-around glass - why not? 

Very nice. Love discoveries like this.

[noone]

7 hours ago, heart0less said:

I was on a lookout for a quite compact and bright 35mm for my A7. Sammy 35/2.8 is perfect, but its rather slowish aperture often forced me to use high ISO in low-light scenarios.

Native 35/1.4 lenses for Sony E would be nice, if not for their size and weight. Can't imagine myself walking around with these cannons on my neck.

 

So I browsed the internet and found out that Samyang 35/1.2 (meant for mirrorless APS-C cameras) covers full frame quite nicely.

 

I wouldn't be me if I didn't test it, therefore I rented one today. 
Here are my results:

The 1st and 2nd photos were not cropped at all, the 3rd and 4th were cropped vertically just a little. All of them shot at f/1.2

To remove the most noticeable vingnetting, an uniform 1.1x crop would do. 1.2x to remove it completely.

 

The next 6 photos are comparisons between 35/2.8 at f/2.8 and 35/1.2 at f/1.2

35/1.2 seems to be a tiny bit wider than 35/2.8.

 

All in all, in my opinion this little lens is quite useable. Definitely not for images that require corner-to-corner sharpness, but for a fast walk-around glass - why not? 

Did you crop in post or use Clear Zoom?

Clear Zoom works great for jpegs and video and you can effectively turn the lens into a 2x zoom for video with little loss of quality and use it while filming.

13 hours ago, jonpais said:

I’ve been following Sigma with interest for years, marveling at how a manufacturer of middling third-party lenses has gone on to become one of the world’s leading producers of superb optics.

But lately I’ve come to think of their approach as a bit old-fashioned. Their ART lenses may be a bargain, but their massive size and weight is a big downer.

 

 

Sigma has come a long way.

I have had four things Sigma,

A 28-200 zoom lens that came as a kit lens with a Pentax film camera (Pentax and Sigma had the same distributor in Australia so Sigma lenses were often bundled as kits), it was ok with film but terrible with 6mp Pentax DSLRs.

A 200mm MF lens I had briefly before I destroyed it-    Was a failed experiment by Sigma I think (had an extra adjustment ring from memory) and it was by far the worst lens I have had that wasn't broken or damaged.

An adapter that turns Minolta MC/MD manual focus lenses into auto focus A mount ones (similar to a Pentax 1.7x auto focus adapter and a few others).

A 150 2.8 APO macro (non OS version).      This one I love though it does play up adapted to FF E mount.

The latest art lenses look excellent and quite good value but are a bit too big for my liking generally.

[heart0less]

42 minutes ago, noone said:

Did you crop in post or use Clear Zoom?

Clear Zoom works great for jpegs and video and you can effectively turn the lens into a 2x zoom for video with little loss of quality and use it while filming.

I cropped in post.

That's right, I love this feature and use it regularly. Shame it can't be used to crop RAWs in-camera (Sony JPEGs are not my thing) - it'd greatly help me compose photos the moment I take them. Right now I'm not entirely sure, how the image will look like after I crop it in post.

[noone]

I find there to be very little difference between Jpegs and RAW (straight conversion with DXO) with Sony so I mostly shoot Jpegs.

With my old Canon that I am using while my A7s is broken, I pretty much HAVE to shoot RAW as the Jpegs are woeful by comparison.

Just makes Clear Zoom much better for me and would be especially useful in video in some uses.

[jonpais]

Which is more bokehlicious?

[Geoff CB]

A for me it's A, I prefer the catseye effect to the edged circles. Obviously prefer the lighting in B.  

[webrunner5]

I find them both too distracting to the main subject. Neither one to me is good. Instead of drawing your attention to the model, it is Bucky Balls that are the Focus, or out of focus in this case. But I am sure it is a frame grab in the movie you shot, so it would be a minor blip in the production, therefore irrelevant to the overall outcome. ?

[BTM_Pix]

48 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

It is Bucky Balls

The bravest cowboy in the west.

[webrunner5]

12 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

The bravest cowboy in the west.

Actually I was referring to Buckminster Fuller and His Bucky Balls LoL. Not that I really have Ever seen His balls in person! ?