Manual beauties: the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4 ZE

Finally there are enough photos to present the next review in this series. I already wrote a quick post about the lens right after it arrived. It has became my favourite prime since then. That's not a suprise, as 50mm focal length is considered to be the standard for 35mm system. Let's start with a few images of the lens itself.

 

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4 ZE front



 Markings on the front show the usual data including serial number, focal length and speed. Of course big, white "Carl Zeiss" and "Planar" text, moreover the famous red T* are also there to always remind you what you are shooting. ;-)

 

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4 ZE with lens hood



"Lens made in Japan" - Cosina, Zeiss' manufacturing partner, really knows how to build great lenses! The Planar is made of metal including the mount and filter ring as well. Although I love vintage lenses, none of them is as well made as this one. (Including Contax-Zeiss!)

A metal lens hood also comes with the lens. Fortunately T* coating ensures high contrast and strong flare resistance, so I rarely need to use it. (But certainly a nice addition)

 

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4 ZE DOF scale



The Zeiss ZE lineup contains pure manual focus lenses. Lack of autofocus makes it hard to shoot action, but at least the focus indicators are working in the camera during the focusing.  It's also good to see a proper DOF scale these days...

 

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4 ZE posing

 

 

Now let's continue with some real images! I grouped them by aperture value.

 

F1.4

 

 

Symmetry

 

 

Performance at this aperture value is not the strongest from technical point of view. The slight overall softness might not be ideal in every situation, but I it also helps to create a dreamy atmosphere. Anyway, Zeiss has just released Otus 1.4/55mm, which is marketed as the "perfect standard SLR lens". However the price point is clearly different compared to the Planar.

 

 

Bench

 

 

Vignetting is also heavy without correction. Adobe Lighroom has the Planar's profile, so this shortcoming can be easily fixed, just like the slight barrel distortion. But I actually like the vignetting, so I only corrected the distortion on images shown here. Real world performance after sharpening is not that bad, just have a look at the following crop.

 

 

Crop

 

F 2.0

 

Center sharpness becomes pretty usable at this aperture value. In fact the sharpness across the whole frame improves a lot. Actually I used this setting the most in the previous weeks.

 

 

Anchored here

 

 

Bokeh is creamy and smooth in nearly all situations.

 

Crop

 

Crop showing sharpness in the center of the image.

 

 

Renault

 

 

Aperture is nice and rounded as it can be seen in the highlights. I have to mention that strong OOF highlights can be a little disturbing, but that's true for other fast 50's as well.

 

 

Fallen green leave

 

 

Bokeh even can be swirly sometimes!

 

F 2.8

 

Sharpness reaches acceptable level across the whole frame at this setting. It still improves until F5.6, but improvement is not immidietaly conspicuous. That's what cheaper lenses can't achieve; my Pentacon 50mm F1.8 or Helios 44M F2.0 just can't capture such level of detail below medium aperture settings.

 

 

Hearth of the machine

 

 

I was able to nail the focus here, so all the small details of the metal door were captured. Have a look at the following crop showing the edge of the frame.

 

 

Crop

 

It's pretty sharp, isn't it?

 

Above F 4

 

Everything above F4 aperture is super sharp. Basically I choose the aperture based on the expected DOF, and don't have to care about sharpness anymore.

 

 

Old granary

 

I left the barrel distortion uncorrected here, just to show you some kind of "brick wall test". Distortion is not visible, but landscape images benefit from correcting it. (Both images were shot at F5.6)

 

 

Going nowhere

 

Another thing I like in Zeiss lenses is the neutral colour reproduction. Pictures need very little post processing to get the colours right. This saves me quite a lot of time, because images just look good right after I import them to Lighroom.

 

 

Crop

Amazing level of detail!

Conclusion

It must be obvious that I liked the Planar. In fact this is the most powerful and versatile lens I have at the moment. Maybe it is not as special as other lenses in the ZE lineup, like the hyped wide-angle Distagons or Makro-Planars. I still feel that this lens IS special, and performs extremely well in all conditions. You can expect even more samples in the near future... Stay tuned for the next post!