Coming back to the roots. Alternative roads sometimes offer incredible perspective. Well done. Davai
Something about the lens + sensor rendering is falling short in my eyes. I am trying to work past it, but I am not sure I can.
You are a great photographer Peter, be sure you will do. Courage for it.
Peter, have you ever tried using diffusion filters on the lens? Zeiss glass is already so sharp even wide open then combined with the D800, I’d experiment with a 1/8 or 1/4 Black Promist . The emotions are there in your photos for sure !
I haven’t, but sharpness is not what I’m wrestling with… it’s the skin tones, and the ability to hold detail in the shadows when shooting against light. These were easily handled with the M9 + 50 Lux combo.
I don’t know Peter. This photo has your signature look to my eyes. Tweak, tweak, tweak, you will get there. The depth and dimension is lovely.
Thanks Cory… we’ll see.
Firstly, I think this is a great photo Peter, and you certainly have a gift when it comes to capturing raw emotion!
Although i cannot see anything wrong with the photo technically, you may well be noticing the same that I did when moving from my M9 and 50 lux asph to the Sony A7R and zeiss 55 1.8. Sharpness was great, certainly as good as the lux, but I didn’t like the way it rendered out of focus areas. It was like the photo had a point of focus and then a lot of smooth, artificial looking other stuff, lacking in detail. This was particularly obvious when shooting against the light. The camera was great with handling the highlights, but seemed to struggle with detail in the darker areas of the photo as well as skin details. My lux and M9 just seemed to render more true to me.
Since the sensors in these cameras are pretty much the same, I wonder whether you are noticing the same thing? I have to confess, I probably didn’t stick with it long enough, and purchased another M9-P after a couple of months. I’m interested to see if you find a workflow that gets around these initial concerns.
Yes… shadow detail and skin tones… the files don’t hold up as well for these. The out-of-focus rendering of the Otus is very good though.
I agree that the skin tone is not very good on the picture. But maybe the book itself reflected some colors on your daughter’s face?
Yes, it definitely was being reflected, and that’s skewing the skin tone. It’s too bad, really, because it confounds my evaluation.
A signature “dish” Peter!
Skin tone in the hands are fine (albeit a small sample) though controlling that reflective light on the face (it’s almost like a flash!) is the challenge. You’d almost have to underexpose 1/2 stop perhaps to see what the effect was or play with the temperature slightly in LR with the localised tool….maybe ;-)?
Or with Viveza from the Nik software/collection.
Unlike the rather average Nikkor 58/1.4, this lens is of cinema quality. Perhaps it is not necessarily the best thing to have that astonishing sharpness, but at least you won’t have to sharpen in software. 🙂 The Sigma Art is highly spoken of but there is a reason why it is only $1,000. It’s better than the Nikkor for less money – that is its achievement. The Otus is not equaled by anything else at f/1.4, save for actual cinema lenses.
Bokeh is of course another matter. Dare I say that the Otus has a distinct signature? It’s clean and smooth and rather nice. Not as dramatic perhaps as the Noctilux.
The Otus is definitely not an old-school lens, but one thing is certain, in my mind: there is nothing bad about the way it performs. Not as compact as the Summilux ASPH but you can’t have it both ways. 🙂
Prosophos 
Coming back to the roots. Alternative roads sometimes offer incredible perspective. Well done. Davai
Something about the lens + sensor rendering is falling short in my eyes. I am trying to work past it, but I am not sure I can.
You are a great photographer Peter, be sure you will do. Courage for it.
Peter, have you ever tried using diffusion filters on the lens? Zeiss glass is already so sharp even wide open then combined with the D800, I’d experiment with a 1/8 or 1/4 Black Promist . The emotions are there in your photos for sure !
I haven’t, but sharpness is not what I’m wrestling with… it’s the skin tones, and the ability to hold detail in the shadows when shooting against light. These were easily handled with the M9 + 50 Lux combo.
I don’t know Peter. This photo has your signature look to my eyes. Tweak, tweak, tweak, you will get there. The depth and dimension is lovely.
Thanks Cory… we’ll see.
Firstly, I think this is a great photo Peter, and you certainly have a gift when it comes to capturing raw emotion!
Although i cannot see anything wrong with the photo technically, you may well be noticing the same that I did when moving from my M9 and 50 lux asph to the Sony A7R and zeiss 55 1.8. Sharpness was great, certainly as good as the lux, but I didn’t like the way it rendered out of focus areas. It was like the photo had a point of focus and then a lot of smooth, artificial looking other stuff, lacking in detail. This was particularly obvious when shooting against the light. The camera was great with handling the highlights, but seemed to struggle with detail in the darker areas of the photo as well as skin details. My lux and M9 just seemed to render more true to me.
Since the sensors in these cameras are pretty much the same, I wonder whether you are noticing the same thing? I have to confess, I probably didn’t stick with it long enough, and purchased another M9-P after a couple of months. I’m interested to see if you find a workflow that gets around these initial concerns.
Yes… shadow detail and skin tones… the files don’t hold up as well for these. The out-of-focus rendering of the Otus is very good though.
I agree that the skin tone is not very good on the picture. But maybe the book itself reflected some colors on your daughter’s face?
Thomas
http://www.thomasveyre.wordpress.com
Yes, it definitely was being reflected, and that’s skewing the skin tone. It’s too bad, really, because it confounds my evaluation.
A signature “dish” Peter!
Skin tone in the hands are fine (albeit a small sample) though controlling that reflective light on the face (it’s almost like a flash!) is the challenge. You’d almost have to underexpose 1/2 stop perhaps to see what the effect was or play with the temperature slightly in LR with the localised tool….maybe ;-)?
Or with Viveza from the Nik software/collection.
Unlike the rather average Nikkor 58/1.4, this lens is of cinema quality. Perhaps it is not necessarily the best thing to have that astonishing sharpness, but at least you won’t have to sharpen in software. 🙂 The Sigma Art is highly spoken of but there is a reason why it is only $1,000. It’s better than the Nikkor for less money – that is its achievement. The Otus is not equaled by anything else at f/1.4, save for actual cinema lenses.
Bokeh is of course another matter. Dare I say that the Otus has a distinct signature? It’s clean and smooth and rather nice. Not as dramatic perhaps as the Noctilux.
The Otus is definitely not an old-school lens, but one thing is certain, in my mind: there is nothing bad about the way it performs. Not as compact as the Summilux ASPH but you can’t have it both ways. 🙂