Olympus 50mm F1.4 Impressions on NEX-7
This lens came with the OM-2N I purchased. Serial is 291952. I believe you can find these lenses for under $100, there appears to be several variants of this lens on OM mount. This is an early version without multi-coating.
I shot it using a NEX-7. It has very interesting rendering characteristics over the normal Zeiss lenses I’m used to. It has much less of a heavy touch in terms of global contrast and it has smoother bokeh.
Read below for a ton of photos and impressions.
A paid shoot with the Olympus OM-D E-M5
The last time I took my OM-D for a paid shoot, it was a backup with my NEX-7 doing most of the work.
This time, I just took my OM-D.
An interesting observation is that at least up to 2000×2000, I can’t tell much of a difference in quality between the Panasonic 14-45mm and the modern 4/3rd Olympus ZD 50mm F2 Macro for this distance. Of course the Olympus can go to 1:1 (in 35mm terms) which is much closer but 14-45mm… I mean I can’t complain about the resolution.
If Olympus comes out with a F1.4 or F1.2 16mm that is amazing, I’m not sure how I can justify keeping my NEX-7 ZA 24mm combo.
Sony RX100 UnBoxing
Hey look what came in the mail today!
Review and comparison coming soon. I’ll be comparing it to a NEX-7 and NEX-C3 and Olympus OM-D E-M5.
Just another day with an amazing lens.
I was just testing out a wireless flash trigger I got and shot what was on my desk. It is essentially my daily carry. Although I rotate watches once in a while.
NEX-7 with Zeiss Sony 24mm F1.8 ZA
Rolex 5513 Spider Dial and Prada Wallet
Long Island is not bad and Rolex 5513
I forgot I went to highschool around here. This was around Oyster Bay, Northport, Centerport, Huntington Bay, etc.
Will post my Costa Rica / Bremont and my Colorado / Tudor pictures when I get around to it this week.
Hope you enjoy!
Ignore the A-850 24mm spec, for some reason the chip EXIF shows that even though it’s really the Zeiss 24mm F2.8 ZF.2 that is Leitax adapted.
Much more pics after the jump below.
Sample shots from Sigma 19mm F2.8 on Sony NEX-7
It has been very difficult to find a decent performing wide angles lens for the NEX-7. You can use an adapter and go with a big wide lens but that isn’t ideal if you want a compact solution. The rangefinder lenses have almost all shown magenta shift on the corners on the NEX-7 such as the Voigtlander 15mm and 12mm. Even the Sony 16mm F2.8 shows magenta shift and smearing at infinity in bigger apertures.
This is why it’s delightful when Sigma comes along out of nowhere with the lens equivalent of a double barrel shotgun. The Sigma 19mm and Sigma 30mm F2.8 lenses are both excellent lenses that are compact and high performing. What they give up on aperture speed they make up for in image quality.
The Sigma 19mm does show some CA but it’s very manageable and easily mostly removed with the auto chromatic aberration correction tool in Lightroom 4. It’s strength seems to be close up performance but it also does well at infinity. The colors are magnificent. At $200, this is a must buy lens especially right now with the shortage of good E-Mount lenses.
Here are some samples on the nex7, No saturation or vibrance added, except for 1 where it’s obvious.
The color separation and just fine detail close up is easily that of a $600 lens.
Click Below for Many More Sample Images
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Sony NEX-7 and ZA24 F1.8 Zeiss Samples
There is a lot of money tied up for me in this combination. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it.
I know there’s also a lot of interest in this combo as well so I thought I would share my experiences.
From reviews on sites and forums, it seems to me that people are thinking that the lens is optimized for close range use and lacks for landscapes.
I’m inclined to agree.
On this first day of shooting, I notice quite A lot of purple fringing and chromatic abberation wide open even in the center if there are bright highlight edges with a strong contrasting background. When Stopped down to F5+, center CA improves a lot but the corners remain somewhat softer and CA never goes away completely.
From my initial impressions though, this lens has the Zeiss look. Think of it as a weaker smaller autofocus Zeiss 35mm F2 Zx. The wide open center rendering is remarkably similar, high contrast with high saturation. Actual resolution is above average but not spectacular. That improves when stopping down but the contrast is really rather exceptional.
AF is fast enough but not ZA 24-70 SSM fast. I’m still a little confused on how NEX does autofocusing, should read the manual. It seems to sometimes to go huge screen box and sometimes small boxes…?
Center sharpness and contrast is good even wide open. It only improves slightly when stopping down. Objects have high saturation and have a dimensionality to them.
Files out of the camera feel like they need very little post besides fixing the CA if you had branches against a white sky.
I can’t wait to shoot it more. Tomorrow is the New York Public Library.
Click Below for Many More Sample Images