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When a 3% pincussion makes you a "serious shooter"..

Chuck Jones

Subscriber Member
Thanks for that, Chuck! :)

One small correction- if Zeiis were to come out with one of their newsletters on certain special lenses, I can supply some samples that they may not have seen in real life. I don't know where batus belongs be it Zeiss or Tamron.

BTW, don't you think Michael articulated one issue very well? :)
I have no idea about the Zeiss or Tamron thing, though again I will say these Batis are right up there build quality wise with the OTUS, just a whole lot lighter and smaller. At about one third the cost! Fastest autofocus lenses I've had on my A7S too, so that lighter glass seems to assist autofocus speed as well.

Michael's issue is something I'm not fully understanding I guess. My friends who are architectural photographers use tilt shift lenses to do this correction in camera. And for exactly the reasons Michael brings up they most often shoot tethered to a laptop to check each shot. I can be witness that the electronic "level" in the A7R is a bit of a joke - its never accurately level!

Anything you shoot where your worried about parallax without a T/S lens tethered to a laptop, your always going to have the issue of not knowing exactly where the end frame lines are going to fall until you finish your corrections in post. Shoot tethered, and use a T/S lens, and you should be able to correct with a couple degrees of rise and/or shift in camera and see what your going to have on your laptop screen before you get home. Software enhanced lenses have nothing to do with that one way or the other. Your live view is only going to be accurate if you T/S correct the parallax distortions in camera. Since neither Batis presently announced is a T/S lens, I don't see the difference.

I like to get it right in camera whenever possible anyway. Not only saves potential for later problems, it sure simplifies the workflow.
 
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Vivek

Guest
The Sony FE 28/2 also AF s very fast on the A7s. I doubt anything will be slow on the A7s. It is the camera and not the lens.
 

philip_pj

New member
Dunno what went wrong with Roger's test, but distortion is an outer frame phenomenon, as is clear from any CZ data chart. And of course a mass market Canon zoom is not a CZ prime, is it? Not in any way, shape or form.

BTW, Roger also recently reported the mighty Zeiss 21/2.8 - a veritable landmine of distortion according to some - and found it grew an arm and a leg when used on the new Canon 50Mp bodies. No surprises to anyone who uses one.

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/06/canon-5ds-and-5ds-r-initial-resolution-tests

And I do hope the naysayers jumped all over Leica S and other medium format lens producers relying heavily on s/w distortion control. ;-) When you have more to start with (IQ), it becomes a viable design option, and many users don't even correct for distortion (which may in any event increase the impact of the image).

"..other high-end cameras have been doing it for years. Every single Hasselblad H-series body (those with a dedicated digital back) corrects for its 28mm f/4 lens this way, as has Phase One. And that Leica S system? Yup."

http://friedmanarchives.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/the-most-distortion-ridden-zeiss-lens.html

And distortion also varies widely with focal distance and may not play well with FLEs.
Zeiss have always said that 2% is the target threshold, below that is near to invisible if consistent in form. This BadAss 85 is primarily a *portrait* lens and a damn fine one at that. Good luck searching the image OOF at f1.8-f4 for that extra 1%.

As much is indicated in the 3D Kraft review, which incidentally also shows the Nikkor 85/1.8G to be horribly inflicted with LoCA and ugly OOF character:

http://3d-kraft.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=175&catid=40&Itemid=2

So the BadAss 85 looks like a fantastic lens to me - IQ barely below Otus 85, and ahead of 100MP and ZM 85/2, comfortably so in fact. Zeiss merely chose which aberration to trade off for the lovely bokeh/OOF fade character and super MTF, and as they nearly always do, did it with panache and judgment.

It has unbeatable ergonomics for the small bodies, a fine hood, excellent construction. Put on a new a7rII you have an industrial grade street/travel weapon - a ~1000 gram combo of the best new high resolution sensor (with even better sensitivity than a7r), IBIS, fast AF and lens IS. What are the opposition doing? What they have always done. ;-)
 

philip_pj

New member
In their pressers, CZ are trying to hint that many serious 'results oriented' new age photographers have to be much more governed by practical concerns.

The user groups targeted by CZ with the Batis range are now morphing from well-heeled gentlemanly elders setting up up tripods at their leisure for an afternoon's enjoyment with giant heavy DSLR and correspondingly large Zeiss ZEF prime lenses..towards keen eyed shooters who can actually use high level optics on cameras with class leading image quality, rapid AF for focus acquisition, high sensitivity and several stops of stability. These users need high hit rates and consistency in a variety of locations without huge time commitments. This is a good working definition of travel photography.

Seen this way, 700g-1100g Zeiss manual focus lenses simply won't work. They are an exercise in frustration for all travel shooters, weigh too much, frighten small children and animals...they simply don't work in the field! Which renders any advantage they possess in minimal distortion and tiny gains in performance...absolutely moot.

So that is the paradigm shift away from the older ZE/ZF/Otus DSLR ranges into the new age FE range, emphasising high impact and high utility. For some of us anyway, it just gets better and better with Sony and CZ.
 

jaree

Member
Good points. Don't forget the cost of producing that "perfect" lens. $1,200 for the Batis 85mm looks like a bargain when you factor in AF, weather sealing, OSS and superb build quality. Not to mention the actual field results look solid.

The question is what is one supposed to do now with the collection of Leica R's - APO 100, APO 180, etc? The new AF lenses look very tempting for the A7 system. Not having to deal with adapters or manual focus is a big plus.

In their pressers, CZ are trying to hint that many serious 'results oriented' new age photographers have to be much more governed by practical concerns.

The user groups targeted by CZ with the Batis range are now morphing from well-heeled gentlemanly elders setting up up tripods at their leisure for an afternoon's enjoyment with giant heavy DSLR and correspondingly large Zeiss ZEF prime lenses..towards keen eyed shooters who can actually use high level optics on cameras with class leading image quality, rapid AF for focus acquisition, high sensitivity and several stops of stability. These users need high hit rates and consistency in a variety of locations without huge time commitments. This is a good working definition of travel photography.

Seen this way, 700g-1100g Zeiss manual focus lenses simply won't work. They are an exercise in frustration for all travel shooters, weigh too much, frighten small children and animals...they simply don't work in the field! Which renders any advantage they possess in minimal distortion and tiny gains in performance...absolutely moot.

So that is the paradigm shift away from the older ZE/ZF/Otus DSLR ranges into the new age FE range, emphasising high impact and high utility. For some of us anyway, it just gets better and better with Sony and CZ.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Take photos of the things you love and the 'distortion' and 'technical limitations' are COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT.

We're seriously in danger of forgetting why you take photos in the first place. Who gives a **** about perfection - not me at least.
 

Malina DZ

Member
I have no interest in acquiring Batis 85/1.8. I'm very happy with the results I get from a 85mm Planar.
Everyone is free to decide how to spend his hard earned money.
It's up to Zeiss to choose how they achieve "no compromise" lens designs. And if one doesn't care how they solve intricate optical aberrations, there are others who would love to be explained to, since there's no guarantee that the lens data profile will be read by future camera models or be available in your choice of RAW converter.
Do you really want every other manufacturer to start publishing MTF, distortion, vignetting graphs after algorithmic corrections by image processor?
I think this might be the concern. How much you can "see" of this in actual use can be discussed at length here in the forum :talk028:
My concern is the distortion that a profile doesn't/can't fix entirely.
Later in comments Roger adds:
"2) The differences aren't just 'better or worse'. The type of distortion, resolution of the image, distance of the shot, depth of field, aperture of exposure, contrast, etc., all could have an effect."

Though he might be relating to resolution loss only, 3D objects are tough to correct for distortion in post unless you have a computerized axial tomography scan of the object in your profile database that could take into account all the aspects above.
But hey, it's up you to decide how important a proper line rendering is and how much distortion you wish to deal with.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Stop staring into your navels and shoot enjoyable images. The (**** - theoretical) pixel peeping will drive you to unnecessary distraction ...

My $0.02 again :grin:
 

davidstock

New member
Like I say, I'm withholding judgement for a while, and will give Zeiss the benefit of the doubt.

But people who think that heavy pincushion distortion in a $1200 85mm f1.8 lens is a non-issue are, IMO, making an unwarranted leap of faith. This is not a focal length that's super hard to correct. Even relatively inexpensive 85's from Nikon and Canon and Sony have practically no distortion. And some of them are lightweight and sharp, too.

If you only shoot low depth of field portraits, and never do landscape work with this lens, or don't care about the distortion in your photographs, I guess you're good to go. For what I do, I need straight lines and sharpness everywhere, including the corners. Both. This is absolutely not too much to ask for an 85mm lens.

If it turns out I can get what I need using software correction, I may pony up for the Batis after all. It's smaller and lighter than the 90mm macro. But I need to be convinced. I'm not giving Zeiss a free pass on this one.

And frankly, I'm surprised that they are featuring a distortion curve based on in-camera correction in some of their publicity materials. Did they adjust for in-camera correction when they calculated their MTF charts?
 
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Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I'm going to go by my reality on this one. First I need the damn thing but second a well known lens cheap by any standard the Samyang 14mm before, during and after a PT lens correction. The darn lens corrects very nicely even in the pixel peaking world. One would think with 42mpx cam this small loss of correction we could easily make up in post with a good sharpening technique. One also has to wonder and no one knows this answer yet as to what truly is the difference between corrected and u corrected. Is it a 5 MPX loss in detail or 10 or what. It's all guessing at this point. Ask yourself this also what does 3 percent truly mean with a 85mm lens . Is it more severe than the Samyang 14 or less severe. I say this your buying it new anyway. From Amazon you get a month to test it, from B&H you get 14 days for your returns. I think it maybe worth a leap of faith and try it out see how it works to your style. What I'm reading on the forums is panic and it's really a guess at this point . Maybe I'm a optimist or maybe I'm just not overly concerned. One thing I do know for a fact, I can learn to live with the workaround if need be.
 
Like I say, I'm withholding judgement for a while, and will give Zeiss the benefit of the doubt.

But people who think that heavy pincushion distortion in a $1200 85mm f1.8 lens is a non-issue are, IMO, making an unwarranted leap of faith. This is not a focal length that's super hard to correct. Even relatively inexpensive 85's from Nikon and Canon and Sony have practically no distortion. And some of them are lightweight and sharp, too.

If you only shoot low depth of field portraits, and never do landscape work with this lens, or don't care about the distortion in your photographs, I guess you're good to go. For what I do, I need straight lines and sharpness everywhere, including the corners. Both. This is absolutely not too much to ask for an 85mm lens.

If it turns out I can get what I need using software correction, I may pony up for the Batis after all. It's smaller and lighter than the 90mm macro. But I need to be convinced. I'm not giving Zeiss a free pass on this one.

And frankly, I'm surprised that they are featuring a distortion curve based on in-camera correction in some of their publicity materials. Did they adjust for in-camera correction when they calculated their MTF charts?
I'd be honestly surprised if any lens in the 80~120mm range has more than 1% distortion, but 3% on a prime from Zeiss? ouch! And I always thought the 1% barrel on my Canon 85LII was on the high side.

This is almost certainly going to see 99% of it's use in portraits, where neither the distortion nor resolution loss from correction are going to be noticed, but for what seems to be a premium product, it just shouldn't be this way. simply out of principle.

Ask yourself this also what does 3 percent truly mean with a 85mm lens . Is it more severe than the Samyang 14 or less severe.
In theory, it should be less severe than the same 3% on a wider lens, since you'll get fewer objects into the frame, especially near the corners, but only if you generalize based on what 85mm lenses are "traditionally" used for. In practice I have used my 85L on everything from portraits to landscape and architecture to studio photography, and had a few shots where even the 1% barrel distortion of that lens was visible, especially on close-ups. The closer your focus distance, the more distortion kicks into effect.
 

jfirneno

Member
So it seems that the specs for the Batis 85 show high distortion. It's funny because the only one I've seen who has actually tested it seem to like it a lot. Usually that guy at diglloyd is extremely finicky about his reviews. I remember he was all over the shutter shock thing. But apparently he likes the 85 so much he's gonna buy it.

http://diglloyd.com/blog/2015/20150613_1700-ZeissBatis85f1_8-examples-WhiteMountains.html

The shot shown is a landscape scene. Maybe he's missing the problem. Or maybe it's actually a very good lens. Is there anyone who pays for the mirrorless subsbcription there that can render an opinion?
 

mjm6

Member
Distortion has nothing to do with pixel peeping, at least for me. It's easily visible in web sizes.
I'm concerned about values current Zeiss marketing machine promotes.
He clearly never came from a background of large format shooting, or possibly he has forgotten the much lower distortion performance of 'near-symmetrical' lens designs that LF lenses mostly exhibit. Even the best retrofocal lenses for SLRs and mirrorless camera have considerably more distortion, and it is readily apparent to a trained eye, with an appropriate subject.

These newer lenses go way beyond anything that would ever have been considered acceptable in film shooting days. The fact that they CAN be corrected in PP doesn't mean that they SHOULD be designed that way from the beginning.

Spouting platitudes about pixel peeping and naval gazing are excellent if you want to redirect the focus of a group of beginner enthusiasts, but of little benefit when the discussion is about real issues of performance and the demands/expectations of serious image makers. It actually is counterproductive and worth less than $ .02.

---Michael
 

davidstock

New member
I'm a long time Zeiss lens user. I hope the Batis is a great lens in every respect. I hope the distortion issue was blown out of proportion because of the way Zeiss calculated it. (There are two main ways of reporting distortion that could get confused.) I hope people who have pre-ordered it will be happy with it. I hope it will work for my own photography.

But it is highly unusual for a big name expensive 85mm lens to have obvious pincushion distortion. Zeiss's other 85's don't, Nikon's don't, Canon's don't, Sony's don't. Even half the reported distortion would be high for this focal length.

And we know that correcting distortion does have some effect on resolution. As far as I've seen, nobody has quantified the actual loss of resolution yet for this lens.

So I think this issue should be addressed sometime soon. First of all by Zeiss, openly. (Which is the opposite of what they're doing so far.) By reviewers, of course. By early adopters. And eventually by people like me who are considering the lens for certain kinds of work that require low distortion. I'm sure we'll know before too long. Until then, I'm left speculating. And hoping.
 
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Vivek

Guest
The Zeiss video that Eoin linked is only missing the Make. Belief motto from Sony. it even ends like a Sony video with a "ting". I doubt they will be open at all. :(
 

davidstock

New member
From an older Zeiss paper on lens distortion that I found on the Alpa site:


"Pincushion distortion at an already detectable level in a lens for the 35mm format is described by the following curve:

[Zeiss here includes a curve that looks similar to their distortion curve for the Batis 85mm.]

"The black curve shows that the radial distortion error increases gradually from zero in the middle of the image to 3% in the corner of the image where the focal length is 3% larger than in the middle.

"Looking at this curve, one keeps in mind: "The lens exhibits a 3% distortion", but might then be surprised if a test report claims: "The lens shows 1.1% pincushion distortion". How can we reconcile this apparent discrepancy?

"Well, the test report does not refer to radial distortion, but rather to TV distortion. This is a measure of how strongly the image of a straight line that is situated at the edge of the image (in particular on the long edge of the image in a rectangular format) is curved. This amplitude of curvature is then related to the total frame height and expressed as a percentage value.

"It is therefore very important to note which percentage value is actually meant. The values of TV distortion are always smaller than the radial distortion specified by us."

Tentative conclusion: the Batis 85mm has TV distortion of around 1.1%. Real, but not horrible.

Just to confuse things a bit, Imatest says there are at least two ways of measuring TV distortion, which give significantly different results....
 

uhoh7

New member
Unfortunately, yes.

I would have kept my M9 and (non-ASPH) Leica glass if I wanted approximate composition. That system certainly had that in spades, and I found it frustrating that I couldn't get closer to a well-considered composition with that system.

Well, that and the the fact that I didn't consider their inability to produce a properly functioning piece of electronics to be 'quaint' or part of the 'Leica Charm'...
---Michael
LOL Well in the first few hard months of learning the M9 I would have agreed. Now I love framing with the M9 and detest noisy EVFs, which can give me a serious headache.

As my second body is a Sony A7.mod, I can also add I throw out just as many shots for bad framing as with the M9, and many more shots I throw out for other reasons, like shutter shake.

Practice, Practice Practice.

Many also think the M9 can't focus well at superspeed. However the M9 consistently beats the A7 in this regard as well, with CV 50/1.1 and 75 Lux WO.

As to the 85 and it's compromises: we'll just have to see if they pulled it off. I read that simple barrel distortion is the easiest to correct without huge downside.

This may also be the thinking behind the 10% distortion of the Q 28, looks crazy but simple to fix. Or is it?
 
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