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Sony Zeiss 16 - 35

edwardkaraa

New member
Carsten, Yes for both.

Seattleducks, Your experience with this lens is typical. As you see in the photos, the curvature becomes quite flat at 28 to 35mm. It also coincides with the zoom physically reversing the movement of its elements which might mean that these 2 settings could be just "optical magnification" of the 24mm setting, which might explain the flatter curvature. As I mentioned earlier, it does help a bit to slightly front focus with the lens for better corners.
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Here it is: http://www.lemondedelaphoto.com/Qualites-optiques-Le-pique,1870.html

It seems this lens suffers from curvature at all settings, the best focal length being at 28mm. (it shows mistakingly 24mm in the review).

At 35mm, the lens shows the worst performance wide open, as is widely believed on Sony forums, but as you can see, it outperforms the other focal lengths once stopped down to f/8-11.
it also looks like F8 is the sweet spot for the 16-35mm I think i will stick with that as I try to conquer landscape work here in Arizona.

Steven
 

kuau

Workshop Member
The Zeiss MTF charts show this complex wavy field curvature. I had the 16-35mm for a short time, was thrilled at the prospects for this lens on my A900 as part of my landscape shooting kit, but even at f/11 most of the corners and some of the edges were unacceptably soft for me, most especially at 20mm and 24mm (although the performance was excellent at 28mm and 35mm). Of course the center sharpness was stunning and the microcontrast very high. I ended up going with Minolta legacy glass, the 20mm f/2.8 and 28mm f/2.0 which had cleaner corners at f/8-f/11 but do have a mellower drawing style compared to the snappy Zeiss.
Ross, when I got my 900 I started with Minolta 20mm also, which I found worked well, but.. What made me go to the CZ16-35, was the convenience, shooting in Arizona, lots of dust blowing around and the prospect of changing lens in the field was not verp appealing. Yeah the corners at f8-11 may not be "as " sharp as the primes, yet after printing them up at lets say 20x30 the corners look fine and most people are not looking at the corners when viewnig a lanscape. Well at least I think they are not. Just my 2 cents
Steven
 

edwardkaraa

New member
I can't read french, I think that's what it is, but F8 again is the place to be on the 24-70, but at 70mm it really falls apart.
Steven
Steven, you're right that f/8 seems to be the sweet spot of both zooms.

As for the 24-70 at 70mm, please note that it falls apart when tested on a flat resolution target. I have been using this lens for 4 months now and I fail to see the lens weakness at this setting. As Dr. Nasse states in his article about reading MTF, you should remember that MTF charts are two-dimensional but real life is three-dimensional.
 

kuau

Workshop Member
Steven, you're right that f/8 seems to be the sweet spot of both zooms.

As for the 24-70 at 70mm, please note that it falls apart when tested on a flat resolution target. I have been using this lens for 4 months now and I fail to see the lens weakness at this setting. As Dr. Nasse states in his article about reading MTF, you should remember that MTF charts are two-dimensional but real life is three-dimensional.
Thanks Edward for setting me straight on Dr. Nasse article. It' so easy today to get caught up in all these tests and then sometimes come up with the wrong conclusion.

Steven
 
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