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I had the opportunity to attend the Professional Imaging fair in The Netherlands this weekend. It's a relatively big fair with a lot of interesting booths and lots of gear to play with! Sony had a beautiful booth with parrots as models and all the new FE-lenses to test. (And also a rental service for the day.)
I got the chance to play with the CZ35mm F1.4 and 90mm F2.8 G macro for a couple of hours. Tried the 28mm F2 to a lesser extent. The 28-135 and 24-240 I touched and tried a bit, but the booth was very crowded. Of course, with more time and different lightning, parrots keeping still and not everyone hanging over your shoulder to test the new lenses, I would've tested these babies more thoroughly, but I can give you my very brief first thoughts
Firstly, the build quality of the lenses does not come as a surprise, the body is full metal (the hood of the 90mm G is round shaped and made of plastic keeping the weight low (although some would've preferred a metal hood...); it's just as we're used to from Sony. The build is simply great! You feel the quality when holding the lens in your hand.
The Zeiss 35mm F1.4 has an aperture ring which you can set to clicky or clickless, particularly useful for videographers. For people who are not too keen on turning the aperture ring on the lens, there is also an A-setting which allows you to change aperture as you are used to on the camera body.
Shot with the Xperia Z3 compact in candlelight and instagrammed:
How's AF speed?
Well, no complaints whatsoever about the Zeiss 35mm F1.4, it's swift, it locks on the subject in a breeze. Also tried the lens in the street in the (late) evening with only streetlights illuminating the subject...with the A7II, it had no difficulties! (and the aperture wide open)
The story of the 90mm G macro is slightly different, it's not exactly a speeddemon in indoors lightning, but that was somewhat expected. Macro lenses tend to be a bit slower than the average non-macrolens, but this G lens has a few tricks up its sleeve: there are 3 focus(limiter) modes on the lens itself: full range (I used this mode deliberately, also when doing close-ups), 0.5m-infinity and 0.28m-0.5m for macro shooting. So as a photographer, you control the way the lens behaves.
How are the lens characteristics?
No lab testing, just booth testing but enough to say confidently that both the Zeiss 35mm F1.4 and the macro 90mm G are real beauties! The sharpness is incredible, no matter where you put the focus in the frame. In the center of the frame or in the corners, it doesn't really matter, sharpness is superb! (as long as you do no recompose, which you actually never should wth mirrorless )
Three guys were standing next to me watching me use the 90mm macro, we looked at the first shot i fired with this lens and we almost simultaneously said a big "wow" when we zoomed in the picture. I (or better we) was soooooo amazed by the sharpness wide open of the G macro! Stopped down, can it even get better? I was expecting sharp, but this kind of sharp?
The optical image stabilisation OSS (with the IBIS of the A7II) of the G macro was also really, really good! Below you'll find a sample at 1/10th of a second, while hanging over the desk of the shooting range and leaning with my left elbow on the desk. It was not a lucky shot, but I haven't been doing a lot of slow shutter speed testing either.
Below are a few examples for bokeh-rendition, sharpness or anything else you are interested in looking at. Only thing you absolutely CANNOT judge by these pictures is vignet as I like to add some in post processing. All shots made with an A7II in raw, converted to DNG and processed in LR4.4. Contrast, clarity, all the usual processing parameters and sharpening (between 50 and 75 and locally as I always do) were added to taste .
Note that these pictures are just samples, no thorough testing, wide-open (so it only gets better) and not even at the lowest ISO!
35mm F1.4: close background rendition (ISO320, F1.4, 1/250th)
35mm F1.4: close focus, far background rendition and sharpness wide-open (ISO100, F1.4, 1/250th)
100% crop:
35mm F1.4: (ISO250, F1.4, 1/250th)
100% crop:
90mm F2.8 G macro: off-center sharpness, bokeh, testing OSS (1/10th, F2.8, ISO 100)
Leaning with my left elbow on the desk, hanging over the desk to get closer to the subject.
100% crop
90mm F2.8 G macro: sharpness (F2.8, ISO 100, 1/100th)
100% crop
90mm F2.8 G macro: sharpness (although at ISO 400) (F2.8, ISO 400, 1/100th) This parrot was also shaking its head quite a bit, but nevertheless still worth showing IMHO.
100% crop at ISO 400
90mm F2.8 G macro: sharpness (although at ISO 500) (F2.8, ISO 500, 1/100th)
100% crop at ISO 500
A few more samples from both 35mm or 90mm macro (all shot wide-open):
Really looking forward to getting hold of the 90mm G lens, how does the focus speed compare to the 70-200 f/4 indoors ?
I can safely say that the 70-200 F4 is (quite a bit) faster! Did not try them on the same subject, but I like the speed of the 70-200 a lot (the zeiss 24-70 is also very quick, but different as shorter focal lenghts always "feel" faster).
I may just wait for the rumored 85mm then I've found the 70-200 a bit slow in low light; the 24-70 is definately faster !
For people interested in how the 90mm macro looks like with the lenshood (taken with a smartphone, therefore a bit distorted )
What do you think of the new Zeiss 85mm F1.8
Are you getting one?
It looks like the perfact lens for my needs So yes, I will most probably be getting one although I may leave it a couple of months until the price comes down a bit (or sell a bit more of my Canon kit to pay for it !!)