DHart
New member
Ah yes, I discovered the lens hood dilemma right after I clicked the Buy Now button on eBay. I will use mine with backlit situations mostly and knew I would need a hood for sure. When I went to look for one I realized the problem of hard to find/very high cost. I was able to find a rubber one, however, for $55 which I considered a bargain vs $250 for a Zeiss metal one.Thanks, DHart. The last one is probably at f/4. It's cropped a bit, so the distance is longer than what it appears to be. The lens is amazingly sharp from f/2 to f/8, but also f/1.4 is very good. The contrast is much lower when shooting towards the sun, even when the sun is not in the frame. I'm looking for a shade. Will probably buy a generic one, since the original is difficult to find and a bit complicated with a step-up ring for each lens.
I wound up going with a Canon new FD 50/1.4 and Voigt 35/1.2 aspherical for my other legacy lenses. The Canon is ho hum at 1.4 but very good at 2.0 to 8. Color with the Canon is colder than Zeiss. But I only shoot RAW and do all my color work in post. The 35/1.2 is ok at 1.2 but sharpens up very well at 2 to 5.6 very nicely. All of these are low contrast wide open, but that can be dealt with in post.Colourwise, the GH1 and Zeiss lenses seems to be a perfect match. I don't do any adjustments whatsoever. The 50/1.4 is very good also, of course, and I plan to buy the 135mm f/2.8 as well. For wider lenses, there are more convenient alternatives around, particularly those from Voigtänder, and obviously the native m43 lenses.
I found in comparing tests with these three legacy lenses to the 20/1.7 that the little Panny pancake is truly a stellar, must have lens. The sharpness on the little Panny is stunningly superior... Including wide open!