Sony Zeiss 50mm Review and Comparison by Jonathan Stewart.
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The brand new Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 SSM lens is set to ship tomorrow according to Amazon US (Click here). And if you want to see how good the lens is you can check out the new “Asian” review at PChome (google translation here). P.S.: at Yodobashi (google translation here) you can read a review of the Sony 50mm lens.
One more thing: if the rumors I am receiving now are correct than this will not be the last new Zeiss lens to come in 2013 🙂
45 Responses
not the last zeiss for a-mount or e-mount? BE SPECIFIC PLEASE
Hope is the Zeiss 35mm f1.4 A-mount that many of us are waiting for.
35mm distagon? ssm weatherproof prime? cross your fingers!
+ 1
Actually, the lens yodobashi tested was the old 50mm, not the brand bew zeiss lens.
If its the old design, the bokeh on the dog photo is amazing. Never seen anything like it. Kind of a mix of shaped bokeh but smudged..very nice.
what are the chances of them redoing the sal85f14z with ssm?
Please give us a hint on the other rumored Zeiss lens.
Is it the 70-200 ZA shown in the previous road-map?
Not A-mount.
According to the rumors published here should be the high performance standard E-mount Zoom, a lot of us also waiting for this lens.
bleah >_>
Are you sure you want a zeiss 70-200?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/857787-REG/Zeiss_1984_159_70_200mm_T2_9_Compact_Zoom.html
The Zeiss 70-200mm T2.9 Compact Zoom CZ.2 for E-Mount is a very niche product with a very specific purpose and audience. It’s for smooth, accurate focus pulling on video and more specifically, it’s designed so that you can zoom the lens while shooting video without your focus changing at different focal lengths.
An A-Mount 70-200mm f/2.8 SMM ZA lens would be priced very differently, as it wouldn’t meet the same needs, and therfore wouldn’t require the same level of R&D as quality control during manufacturing. Plus, since it would be a product that would be targeted at a much wider audience, it would be mass-produced, and would have a price tag that would reflect the nature of a consumer lens versus a professional cinematographer’s tool. (there’s a reason why most DPs rent the lenses they’ll be using on any given film project rather than owning an entire collection of Zeiss Compact Primes!)
I’d imagine that a SONY ZA 70-200mm f/2.8 SSM lens (complete with its blue Zeiss badge) would cost more like $2500-$2800. And I’d hope that they’d opt to style it similarly to the 135mm f/1.8, rather than going with a plastic white look like an old Minolta or a Canon. (but that’s just me)
I received mine a couple of weeks ago from B&H and did a comparison video and review. http://youtu.be/H8XPVYTE3oc
Very nice video. Thanks for that. As a person that needs wide open performance (although I rarely shoot 50) I would say the price difference is not worth $1000, but maybe $800.
By the looks of it, the Zeiss 50mm is better than my previous Canon 50mm 1.4 and Nikon 50mm 1.4. Wide open it appears to resolve (according to your video) as much as the ZE 50mm Makro Planar I used to have when at f2 (which was wide open for that lens)
Very nice.
Thanks Hendrick. My goal in making the video was to do a comparison with the other Sony lens so that people could decide for themselves if the lens is worth the premium. It’s a very individual decision naturally.
updated SAR and included your video 🙂
Thanks for the comparisons.
Thank you for the video. It’s very interesting and well made. @Zeiss: Yes, it’s better (it better should) and it’s a great lens. But you have to be a pro to see the difference without direct comparison. And $1500 for a standard prime is still heavy.
The shooters report was short but worth a read. It does confirm my worries that this lens has frankly awful bokeh. Some of the samples there are quite horrible in the background.
If you refer to the Yodobashi link, it is the old 50mm 1.4 made by Sony/Minolta.
i saw it at 1100 euro in china. tried it on a99 and the colors, sharpness and bokeh all looks so much better than the sony 50 f1.4. I think i’m gonna buy it soon.
my heart pumping hard after watch the comparison. I want this lens so much, but i already own a sony 50mm, i’ll be waiting to see new 70-200 for sony having weather sealed or not and the performance of it to make final decision getting which lens first.
That is great! However, for the difference in cost, the CZ had better be much better than the older 50/1.4 design. For the rest of us, I think an update to the more affordable 50 is in order. Do this and sell it for less than 450 USD please.
…now, let me use this opportunity to play back my broken record:
imagine you are a Canon or Nikon owner, and have always been very concerned about having the best glass there is for your cameras (leaving aside for the moment whether or not that actually matters). You have bought all the high end lenses that were of interest to you from your respective camera manufacturer and you were very proud owning only the very best. Now if Sony were to come out with a FF camera that is as good, or even better than your current pro grade DSLR, you wouldn’t even consider buying it since you have a lot of very good lenses that you would have to sell at a loss to buy a completely new set of lenses for the A-Mount. I can’t think of many people crazy or fortunate enough to do such a thing. However if there somehow were a way to put that superb A-Mount 50mm/1.4 Zeiss lens onto your pro grade camera you’d be happy to spend a couple hundred dollars to get the appropriate adapter. The trouble is, there is none.
That is to say there actually is. It is for Sony but it’s not for a FF pro grade camera at the moment, and it isn’t even made by Sony. It is made by a small niche company operating out of Hong Kong and it provides full AF, IS, aperture, and EXIF compatibility for all Canon EF lenses on a Sony E-Mount camera. It’s made by Metabones and is made possible because of the short flange distance of the E-Mount allowing for enough space to have an adapter placed between the camera mount and the lens mount.
Now getting back to the afore mentioned Canon or Nikon owners: If there were a pro grade Sony FF camera as good or better than the current pro grade DSLR’s from Canon or Nikon, but with the possibility to use the Canon or Nikon lenses with full AF, IS, aperture and Exif compatibility, those owners of Canon or Nikon might actually consider buying one, especially since such a camera would also gain those photographers access to a few very high end lenses in the Zeiss/Sony portfolio which they had always been burning to own but never could unless they were willing to sell all the lenses they already own. Better still, some other combinations are conceivable with such a camera. Imagine you could finally buy the Pentax 31mm and 77mm Limited lenses and use them on a FF digital camera (even Pentax themselves don’t have one at the moment), If you have always wanted to have the Nikon 14-24mm 2.8 lens, but prefer your Canon tele lenses, now you can choose to have both. Suddenly you could choose to get the lenses you want rather than getting the lenses that come with your camera, a privilege that has always been reserved to view camera owners who could buy a Linhof, or Sinar, or Arca Swiss and stick a Rodenstock, Schneider, Fujinon, or Nikkor lens on it.
I believe that if Sony had the courage to bring to the market a camera with their own pro grade series of adapters to every lens ever made, with full support of AF, IS, aperture and Exif (where applicable), it would soon become the highest selling pro grade camera on the market. I believe that because I am confident that Sony has the technical resources and ability to build the most innovative and performant camera today, if only they could convince their own marketing people to do so, rather than pursuing silly ideas of sticking a hump on a compact mirror less camera to make it look like a DSLR, or getting rid of the mirror and the prism in their pro grade cameras, but keeping the same housing because it presumably looks more professional rather than being more professional. Why do marketing people always seem to assume that consumers are idiots. Should it really be because they are?
As I said: broken record…
I believe your broken record plays only for DSLRs, but for nothing else.
In DSLRs, another broken record again, Sony is not a stills only camera. If you were to measure a99 for stills capability only, there is hardly any reason to switch from Canon or Nikon. If someone likes the EVF approach instead of OVF, they will do, regardless of any other metric you put in front of them.
However, being a stills and video camera, the a99 is arguably the most capable. If does not have the best codec, no. Many do not need it (I would love to have it, trust me, but many don’t need it or cant see the difference) However, when I was lugging my 5D2s around I had to have a loupe. An LCD loupe not made by Canon to attach to the back LCD to see what I was filming. The LCD is hardly the screen to check focus properly from and there was no diopter for my loupe. That Zacuto loupe is grand theft for its price.
So, EVF allowes me to stop using a loupe. Focus peaking allows me to focus better. Easier zoom and scroll functions allow me to make sure I am in focus all the time in the part of the frame I want. And…AF Carl Zeiss lenses. How nice it is to have AF, which works, while recording. To top it up, for me, The smaller size of a NEX 7 made it all worth it. So I switched. That was my criteria and still is so I cannot ever think of even carrying an SLR weight lens…ever. Its so nice, so unobtrusive, the NEX, RX cameras today. The IQ is great too (hell, my RX1 can go up against anything)
Now, my colleagues do not have the same priorities and that’s fine. But many of them see the work I can do with NEX and RX and they always think whether they could give up their SLR safety net. That’s the truth.
Sony may not be the most amazing SLR company, but they have a bright future with mirrorless and their cybershot line. You just have to wait for the new A cameras coming up. Then you can tell yourself, if you need SLRs only, whether you can stay with Sony or switch, or go back, whatever. Those who need something specific, there is always something out there to cover it. I am unsure whether Sony wants to be dominant third or have 33% of the SLR market. I don’t know. What I do know is that they are the most innovative.
If you are old enough you should also remember Contax. It always played third or fourth in the world. Always. But glass and engineering was always first. They were the first to have a FF DSLR, not Canon.
…looks like we are pursuing similar paths. I too had a Canon 5DM2 and yes I sold it when the NEX-7 came out since I was tired of hauling around a the weight of the camera, the viewfinder, lenses, and sometimes shoulder rig and small steadycam (because you never know whether that comes in handy on a reportage). I got the Nex-7, got a couple of manual RF lenses and a skyler minicam, fit all of it in a little handbag and couldn’t be happier (better video quality and better handling too, at least for video) My only qualm is build quality and my biggest wish is a FF sensor to use all the RF lenses I got the way they were intended to be used. Yes the rubber grip came off after only about four months. In fairness I have to say that they did repair it at no cost and it took a mere four days including shipping. My LCD screen looks like the plastic it is made of will soon dissolve, but it all works fine it just makes me wonder how long it will last. So whether or not they consider the Nex line as a consumer product only concerns me in as much as I would still like to see at least a rugged and whether sealed housing and of course a FF sensor in a Nex-7 successor. I am just worried that with their efforts focused on high end A-Mount and a marketing department pushing appearances rather than solid technological innovation, they might not do it.
I do remember Contax, I actually own a Contax 645, still love it and still use it quite a bit. Sadly Kyocera left the Contax partnership with Zeiss otherwise we might have seen some development for a FF pro grade digital RF version of the G2, probably with Sony tech and maybe even with a square sensor (another broken record). I could imagine a Zeiss/Sony partnership to build a version of such a camera, but sadly I somehow doubt it.
Then again one should never give up hope.
In the meantime I do use and love to use my Nex-7 and should it fail to function one day I will most likely buy it again.
Bob
I made some comments simmilar to you.
See them in the Sony Tidbits post.posts
Sounds like the Alpha Fox systm if they include IBIS and thier best sensor.
Sounds like the Alpha Fox system if they include IBIS and thier best sensor.
I have been wanting such a camera forever. In reality the glass is most important these days but a matching sensor would be perfection but I doubt such a thing will happen unless you build it yourself.
+1000
For me personally the mighty 135/1.8 still is the best glass on this planet.
This lens with SSM would be heaven. 🙂
Besides this upgrade, I would love my 85/1.4 with SSM, too.
Additionally I’d kill for a 35/1.4 and a 100/2 Macro.
So, why not to use the Sigma 35mm F1.4, which is available in a-mount. According to reviews this is the best 35mm f1.4 on the planet regardles of manufacturer and mount. And you can have it with A-mount for about $900.
Agreed. This Z is overpriced.
What became of the Touit 50/2.8 macro?
got one but sent it back. bokeh was very edgy
I really want to see this lens compared to the sigma hsm 50mm 1.4 not the sony 1.4
What I’d really really like is a Zeiss 17-50 f/2.8. I know it’d probably be a crop-sensor lens (and I shoot crop sensor camera). But I want one frickin’ awesome general purpose lens that I can pack light and just bring that and the body on trips. The Tamron / Sigma effort is nice, but I think it would be justified to get ultra-high quality glass for everyday shots.
It’d certainly get a lot of use from me…
1.
For a crop sensor you need F2.0 or F1.8 to have reasonable control over DOF. And a lens like that has just been announced – Sigma 18-35 F1.8 in the new Art series.
The initial previews are very good and the price is right – ~$900.
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/sigma-18-35-1-8
The problem is that it is only available in Canon, Nikon and Sigma mounts. Sigma figred out that there is no future in A-mounts for them.
2.
16-50 is not enough reach at the long end for a general purpose APS-C travel zoom. You need at least 16-80. You have a Zeiss 16-80 F3.5-5.6 available for A mount. Not a bad general purpose zoom and reasonably priced. You can augment it with small, cheap and sharp Sony 35mm F1.8 SAM for when you need better DOF control.
Sigma figured out what? We see these assumptions all too often when the Sony and Pentax versions come out a bit later:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/983905-REG/sigma_210_205_18_35mm_f1_8_dc_hsm.html
Sigma figured out what? We see these assumptions all too often when the Sony and Pentax versions come out a bit later:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/983905-REG/sigma_210_205_18_35mm_f1_8_dc_hsm.html
The Amazon lied. The status of this Zeiss 50mm lens just become “Temporarily out of stock.” from “This item will be released on July 14, 2013.”
Or….they temporarily ran out of stock…
I just contacted Sony about my preorder and its not set to ship until 8/20. Not sure what’s going on with the shipment of this lens but there sure doesn’t seem to be many in circulation yet.