2 Primes and a Zoom

I had a rare free day today and decided to go to Kingston Lacy Bluebell Wood to do a bit of photography.  I chose to take the Nikon D700 body as there is no penalty in quality when raising ISO a bit to get depth of field by stopping down, or when shooting in low light.  It mainly omits the need to carry a tripod and makes shooting very flexible...I spend lots of time crouching, kneeling or laying down to get more intimate angles when shooting these flowers and a tripod would be awkward, slow and in many cases impossible to use.

As an interesting exercise I took the Carl Zeiss 100mm f2 Macro Planar, the Zeiss 85mm f1.4 Planar and Nikon's 14-24mm f2.8 zoom.  I was curious to see how my use of the lenses and their qualities or issues would affect the images with each.

I am not one who subscribes to the concept of shooting all landscape type images at f16.  I love using wide apertures and selective focus to highlight what I want and blur other areas of the image.  This controls the composition, aids perspective and leads the eye to the subject, then draws it away into a softer background.  In fact its surprising how much you have to stop down to get sharp focus through the whole image depth on full frame cameras...and its only really possible at all at wide angles.

First up was the Zeiss 100 f2:

At f3.2 fairly close up, the flowers and foliage zing with colour and contrast and the background is there and recognisable but soft.  Specular highlights are smooth and controlled

Focused on seat at f4.  The lens handles the contrast between shadow and highlight very gracefully, managing to hold detail in all.  Nice smooth blur into the background but objects retain their form and identity

Much closer focus at f3.2 has completely blurred the background to a smooth wash.  The flowers in focus really pop with contrast and sharpness.  There was a big tonal range here with a bright backlight and the lens has again controlled that gracefully

Wide open at f2.  No evidence of spherical aberration and nice blur and control of contrast.  Personally I like the natural vignette and its very easy to focus this lens.  This lens is very sharp and contrasty at f2 already.  There is a slight contrast increase at f4 but that's it. Awesome.

Next up was the Zeiss 85mm f1.4:

Straight into wide open at f1.4.  Focus is on the tree trunk and rendition is sharp.  Often this lens has a very hazy look due to spherical aberrations wide open and it is evident elsewhere here, giving a very graceful blur.  This is a hit...at least 50% of the f1.4 images were a miss.  Not easy to focus either wide open or stopped down a bit (owing to focus shift).  The minimum focus distance is 1 metre, so no macro!  Same colour correction as the 100f2 but the blur is slightly different.  Edges are somewhat more defined, but have a rounded, soft quality and again, extreme contrast is rendered well.

Stopping down to f2 gets rid of most of the haze, though interestingly it is still evident here on the point of focus, which was the branch across the path.  Lovely colour and handling of the highlights from sun illuminating some areas

Stopped down to f2.8 its goodbye to spherical aberration... at f5.6 the lens is popping with contrast and sharpness while still handling the backlight well.  f5.6 is nowhere near enough to render focus throughout and the point of focus is the tree in the middle distance.  Nice softening into foreground and background.  This lens keeps getting sharper to f5.6

Finally it was the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8:

Wide open here at f2.8. Despite the wide angle there is quite graceful blur off the narrow focal plane.  Love the vignette at the widest setting of 14mm as it so highlights the subject.  Sharp wide open.  I did have an unexpected issue focusing at 24mm wide open, when it was back focusing at close focus distance...never noticed that before....I know it focus shifts a bit but not wide open.

f5 and close up.  Its amazing how wide this lens feels on full frame...actually quite hard to get good compositions lots of the time as shots look "empty".  As a result I spend lots of usage at 24mm, as here.  Great sharpness all over the frame and nice background softening of the trees.

A natural, traditional type of shot for this lens.  24mm at f8.  Not far off front to back sharpness and lovely and crisp into the corners with no chromatic aberrations, despite backlight and high contrast edges.  

f5.6 at 24mm.  Very nice rendering in strong backlight.  This lens can be prone to flare with its massive front element.  In sharpness terms the centre is pretty much there from wide open with the corners sharpening rapidly to perhaps f5.6.  The corners are probably out of the focal plane much of the time owing to field curvature.  Are the blown/specular highlights controlled as well as the Zeiss lenses?  Not sure.  This is one of the later Nikkors with Nano crystal coat and they seem to have good contrast rendition.

The Zeiss 100mm f2 is as close to a flawless lens as I have come upon.  Its fully and easily usable wide open.  Yes you need a good eye to focus, but when it looks sharp it is and there is no spheical aberration.  it drops into blur quite rapidly and because it focuses close up, backgrounds can be totally smoothed away.

The Zeiss 85mm f1.4 seems to give inconsistent results when used wide.  This is probably a function of the spherical aberration making the actual focal point difficult to determine and making focus inconsistent.  There is plenty of detail there but its sometimes hazy.  Some images pop and look great...others have no real sharp area.  The drawing is very gentle and even though its not possible to get the extreme blur of the 100mm, bokeh is rounded and smooth.  Stopped down it loses the RSA and gets sharper to f5.6 but has major focus shift, which makes it a good idea to check results and focus bracket a few shots.  Despite its close focal length to the 100mm, its a very different lens and gives a special look to certain images.  You do have to learn how to use it and accept plenty of misses along the way!

Both Zeiss lenses handle colour and contrast the same when at peak performance.  They also have a knack of retaining detail in shadows and highlights and where highlights are blown they are generally graceful and inoffensive.  Manual focus is a joy...smooth and precise.  My 85mm is fully manual with an aperture ring and no electronic coupling.

The Nikon 14-24 f2.8 is undoubtedly the best wide angle zoom there is and up there with the best primes.  Maybe I'm just not good at wide angle, but I find 14mm too extreme for most stuff on full frame, but when I do use it its great.  The lens is sharp, contrasty and has nice blur, often highlighted when using its ability to focus quite close and make a composition interesting.  Close focus is such a big issue and makes the lens much more versatile...without it compositions of subjects like flowers would be empty.