An Examination of Lenses: Carl Zeiss Compact Primes.

[Antoine Fabi]

Timur,

What are your thoughts about K35s regarding sharpness, look etc ?

...compared to modern glass ?

Antoine

 

[Timur Civan]

Havent Tested them yet, a fellow REDUSER, and i are trying to coordinate a test. I use an F3 as a standard between the sets, with essentially the same settings so i can get a feel for the image. With the K35's i wanna get them on Clay haskell's Epic so we can see how they cover a bigger chip in combination with the standard F3 testing.

Should prove interesting.

As far as Lseries, well.... they are Lseries. Amazing. Not good for cinema, but as still lenses, just brilliant.

 

[Lenny Manfred]

i read your review. interesting. i had a couple of points to disagree with. one, the issue of the weight, "hollow" feel as you call it. you are comparing them to what you are used to, but i am just glad that they are very light.
also, you speak about having to light for T4, but that is not necessarily true. with the F3 (or the Alexa) I find that it is easier to just up the sensitivity of the camera one or even two stops without seeing any change in the quality of the picture. so light for 2.1 or 2.8, and then up the db for the few times you will use the 18. and if you want to use the 1.5 wide open, just put an nd filter. personally, i only purchased the compact primes that are 2.1 or faster, and then a wide angle zoom (the rouge 16-42). a cheaper way is to get the 85, 50, 35, 28, and 21, but skip the 18, instead get the duclos 11-16, you have a longer range and you stay at 2.8.

i do agree with you that the focus seems unnecessarily heavy, but at least it is smooth.

i don't have a red camera any more, and i find that these cp lenses work very nicely with my F3 or even my Alexa. Maybe it's what you were talking about, good match for 1080.

 

[Tom.Wong]

even with no noise difference, bumping ISO changes your dynamic range scaling. this applies to all cameras, including r1 and epic. lowering your iso will clip your highlights but give you more in the shadows, raising iso will give you more in highlights but less in shadow gradation. it all depends on what you want and are going for, but having a even dynamic/tonal range to work with makes for a better/easier process in post looks generally.

 

[Timur Civan]

i read your review. interesting. i had a couple of points to disagree with. one, the issue of the weight, "hollow" feel as you call it. you are comparing them to what you are used to, but i am just glad that they are very light.
also, you speak about having to light for T4, but that is not necessarily true. with the F3 (or the Alexa) I find that it is easier to just up the sensitivity of the camera one or even two stops without seeing any change in the quality of the picture. so light for 2.1 or 2.8, and then up the db for the few times you will use the 18. and if you want to use the 1.5 wide open, just put an nd filter. personally, i only purchased the compact primes that are 2.1 or faster, and then a wide angle zoom (the rouge 16-42). a cheaper way is to get the 85, 50, 35, 28, and 21, but skip the 18, instead get the duclos 11-16, you have a longer range and you stay at 2.8.

i do agree with you that the focus seems unnecessarily heavy, but at least it is smooth.

i don't have a red camera any more, and i find that these cp lenses work very nicely with my F3 or even my Alexa. Maybe it's what you were talking about, good match for 1080.

I try to avoid using ISO as a compensation for lens faults. The lenses arent sharp till they hit T4. All of them. Yes i agree that the F3 is grainless up to 3200, but i really am not pleased that i would have to shoot at a 3200ISO because the lenses are soft in their first three stops. My 25 year old Cooke Zoom performs better....

I do have a 11-16 and i think you have a sound plan, removing the 18mm altogether and replacing it with the 11-16, 21mm, then the 25mm. Cool. Thanks.