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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Contax Zeiss Survival Guide

Bill Sepaniak said:
I don't want to feed your addiction ... or be your pusher ... or cause a break-up in your marriage or relationship ... but KEH has a "like new" 21/2.8 Distagon for $1,950.00. A little more than $1,000.00 over what I paid for my copy ... but knowing what I know now about that lens ... I would jump on it in a heart-beat.
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Is the Distagon 21mm the same glass as they use in the Compact Primes? My 21mm CP.2 is probably my favourite lens that I own, lovely, lovely piece of glass.
 
@Yean: I'm 99 % sure it's the adapter then. Have a look at Kipon for something decent or Novoflex for first class – a Zeiss deserves it.
 
Yean Loon said:
It's definitely not lens breathing. It's more like the image jumps! I remember someone doing a test a when the epic first came with stills lenses and noticed it too. I'll definitely look into my adapter. It's cheapass ones I got from China. $2 each.

Yean
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Yeah, definitely sounds like the sloppyness that comes from a cheap adapter. You need a very firm, solid connection otherwise the lens is going to be bouncing around and give you that "jumping" you are seeing.
 
Mark K. said:
Is the Distagon 21mm the same glass as they use in the Compact Primes? My 21mm CP.2 is probably my favourite lens that I own, lovely, lovely piece of glass.
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Mark, if you look at Zeiss's MTF charts, and compare the lens designs, they are ALMOST identical. Only one of the 16 elements has been tweaked in the new ZF/ZE/CP2 design. The MTF scores are also almost identical, except the ZF/ZE's maintain sharpness a bit better to the edges (again, it's subtle).

That being said, the Contax 21 2.8 is also the only outrageously expensive Contax. They are a collector's item, and prices have reached as high as $3000. So no one's going to fault you for getting the ZF/ZE/CP2 instead. The trick is to scour ebay and Keh methodically till you stumble on a real affordable one (too me over a year).

Happy hunting!
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Nick,

you have written a great extensive and comprehensive post on the Contax Zeiss lenses, BRAVO!


Only thing I can add to those going the Contax Zeiss route, is that it is important to understand that because of the age of this lenses, despite their original high quality glass, this with age tends to shift in color rendering, especially so on the wide side, so its imperative that any conversions be done by an expert, and that such conversion is not limited to the mechanical but also to the Extreme Careful cleaning and polishing of the Glass element themselves.


Other then that, I just like to Specify, that when you said as good as T* coated glass as in the Hasselblad's, this is only true for the older Hassy glass, when they were produced by Zeiss, as current coatings and elements polishing techniques have greatly changed as the elements themselves as they are no longer produced by Zeiss.

Again, great job, and this is what this community yet again should be about, sharing our collective knowledge for the benefit of us all... ;)
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Thanks Ketch for dropping by, really appreciate it! Reduser is the only place I can share this stuff and not feel like a weirdo. I feel like a trekkie at a convention.
 
Joshua D. Lassing said:
Shervin, thank you so much for posting those R3ds. Great help. All of you, thank you.
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Josh, not a problem. I added a few more R3D's to those posts for you guys to tinker around with.

My dog makes a great model for judging sharpness and micro-contrast. She's a natural born star!
 
Shervin Mandgaryan said:
Finally found the old MTF charts for each of the Zeiss Contax lenses. Check it out: http://web.archive.org/web/20071012034108/http://www.geocities.com/ilprode/TestZ.htm
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Hey Shervin, these guys on your link have plotted out an MTF "score" per F-STOP for the majority of the Contax lineup. Super cool! Do you know where they got those findings? A lot of what their numbers actually lineup pretty well with a number of Contax musings I've heard numerous times (that you can't already deduce from Zeiss's MTF diagrams)...such as that the 60 2.8 Macro actually outperforms the 100 2.8 by a hair, etc, etc.
 
I'm not too sure where they got their findings, but apparently this was a series of tests possibly published on Zeiss's website. I'm only saying that because the guys on the photography forums use these charts to compare numbers with other lenses... they all refer to that page as the 'source'.
 
I'm in a bit of a quandary....

As it stands right now I have an equal number of Zeiss and Samyang lenses. In an ideal world I'd love to get a bunch of ZEs (work well with my DSLR for timelapse and I've never once needed to do an iris pull in 15 years so electronic iris isn't an issue for me). However, I'm at the end of budget until the next big job comes in.

I need an 85mm but am thinking for the price of the Contax 85mm f1.4 Zeiss I could pick up a Samyang Cine T1.5 85mm PLUS a Canon 100mm Macro.

Furthermore, I currently have a Samyang 24mm f1.4. Was toying with the 25mm f2.8 Contax (although I really really want the ZE f2 25mm but it's out of my budget). Do you reckon it would be worth it? Zeiss is Zeiss, but two stops is not to be sniffed at, especially as I don't often have a ton of lights at my disposal. Thoughts?

Worth jumping on the 2.8 25mm and the 85mm f1.4 Contax or should I save the money and get the ZEs when I can?
 
Oh, just to add I was watching the BBC drama 'Ripper Street' last night when I noticed a couple of shots with fairly extreme ninja star bokeh... No technical information on IMDB as to what it was shot on/with sadly but you never knwo
 
Shervin Mandgaryan said:
I'm not too sure where they got their findings, but apparently this was a series of tests possibly published on Zeiss's website. I'm only saying that because the guys on the photography forums use these charts to compare numbers with other lenses... they all refer to that page as the 'source'.
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Hmmm...def Zeiss's MTF pdf's are "the source", I have them all downloaded from here:
http://www.zeissimages.com/mtf.php

(I've also grabbed docs for Hasselblad, and other Ziess lenses from here too. Very cool source, fyi).

However, these official Zeiss MTF charts only tell you TWO things. How a lens performs WIDE OPEN. And how it performs stopped down to 5.6 (or sometimes f8), which (presumably) is where Zeiss designs it's lenses for maximum resolution. So, you get info for TWO different f-stops. That's it.

What fascinating about YOUR LINK:
http://web.archive.org/web/200710120...rode/TestZ.htm

Is that they give you an MTF "score" (whatever that is) for most of the Contax lineup...across ALL F-STOPS.

If their numbers are accurate, then that's really fucking cool. Even if I don't know what an MTF "score" is yet, if these numbers are good...we can FINALLY SEE metrics on these lenses across every aperture...something MUCH MORE than what Zeiss's MTF docs currently give you. And it gives us a better way to compare the Contax lenses to each other (how does the 100 f2 compare to the 85 1.4 at f2)

I know a bunch of photo magazines back in the 90's and early 2000's did comprehensive tests and reviews of Contax, I wonder if they lifted the numbers from one of those?
 
Ben Scott said:
I'm in a bit of a quandary....

As it stands right now I have an equal number of Zeiss and Samyang lenses. In an ideal world I'd love to get a bunch of ZEs (work well with my DSLR for timelapse and I've never once needed to do an iris pull in 15 years so electronic iris isn't an issue for me). However, I'm at the end of budget until the next big job comes in.

I need an 85mm but am thinking for the price of the Contax 85mm f1.4 Zeiss I could pick up a Samyang Cine T1.5 85mm PLUS a Canon 100mm Macro.

Furthermore, I currently have a Samyang 24mm f1.4. Was toying with the 25mm f2.8 Contax (although I really really want the ZE f2 25mm but it's out of my budget). Do you reckon it would be worth it? Zeiss is Zeiss, but two stops is not to be sniffed at, especially as I don't often have a ton of lights at my disposal. Thoughts?

Worth jumping on the 2.8 25mm and the 85mm f1.4 Contax or should I save the money and get the ZEs when I can?
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Tough call. If you like the look of the Samyang and ZE's, then maybe stick with that. They look more modern and "clean" to me. If you like that, stick to that. The Contax's may look a little more organic than you're used to, esp the old ones. Nothing you can't grade out...but FYI.

The Contax 85mm 1.4 can be had affordably though.

The Contax 25mm 2.8 is good, but you may want to consider the 28mm 2.8 which is cheaper, and "technically" better. It's very, very sharp. I prefer the FOV of a 25, but for the budget...the 28mm is amazing. The stills guys LOVE IT. Look for an MM with serials in the 8's. Will look more modern and clean, and the 28 2.8 "MM" was supposed to have been tweaked and improved slightly over the 28 AE.

Good luck.
 
Nick Morrison said:
I know a bunch of photo magazines back in the 90's and early 2000's did comprehensive tests and reviews of Contax, I wonder if they lifted the numbers from one of those?
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That's what I'm thinking, though no official sources have been cited on the tests, it may have been pulled from articles or done independently, not sure. Though alot of the photography forum guys refer to those tests for 'official' MTF results... they're a lot easier to read than Zeiss's graphs and they're all in one place.

The MTF numbers at different apertures are incredible to have. Must have taken someone A LONG time to produce these results. Kudos to whomever did 'em.
 
Oh and I believe that where the results are for "Real Aperture" in those tests may actually be the measured T-Stop? Not too sure but it seems likely.
 
Shervin Mandgaryan said:
That's what I'm thinking, though no official sources have been cited on the tests, it may have been pulled from articles or done independently, not sure. Though alot of the photography forum guys refer to those tests for 'official' MTF results... they're a lot easier to read than Zeiss's graphs and they're all in one place.

The MTF numbers at different apertures are incredible to have. Must have taken someone A LONG time to produce these results. Kudos to whomever did 'em.
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Yeah KUDOS indeed, and you know what? They look legit. Look at how all the numbers line up with conventional wisdom.

The 50 1.7? WOW. That thing explodes on their test.

The 60 2.8 looks amazing, which confirms some of the macro guys saying...hint hint...that it had the highest resolution of any Macro they'd ever seen (remember, it's a 1:1 macro, and even the current ZF/ZE offerings are only 1:2)

The 100 f2 detonates.

You get my drift.
 
Nick,

What I want to acknowledge is your efforts here. To impart the history of cinema/still glass and to also convey a certain passion for glass that is wonderful.
Sometimes we get caught up in the tech specs of glass. The MTF and mechanics ..... We forget that glass is what helps us convey the mood and feeling of scenes, along with our lighting , production design, costumes and maybe smoke.
Thank you for reminding about the emotional component of lens choice
 
Peter Lyons Collister said:
Nick,

What I want to acknowledge is your efforts here. To impart the history of cinema/still glass and to also convey a certain passion for glass that is wonderful.
Sometimes we get caught up in the tech specs of glass. The MTF and mechanics ..... We forget that glass is what helps us convey the mood and feeling of scenes, along with our lighting , production design, costumes and maybe smoke.
Thank you for reminding about the emotional component of lens choice
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Mr. Collister, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. I didn't realize my romantic love for glass leaked through so much! But you are right...I do believe that glass makes a huge difference...emotionally. Thanks for seeing that.
 
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