[Brightcolours]

Very true. In my DSLR days I kept being frustrated with AF unreliability. What's the point of having high resolution sensors using a f/1.4 or f/1.8 lens if the image is rarely 100% in focus? You may as well throw 50% of the pixels away. This is exactly why I fully switched to MFT and I know that whathever I shoot at will be fully in focus (wide-open or not, regardless of the focal length). I enjoy photography much more since.

The lens in question is an MF lens. 

[Brightcolours]

Popo, last week I put an Eg-S screen in my 6D. Will be trying it out with my 55mm f1.2 (among others).

[davidmanze]

Some comments,

                            Yes manual lenses are difficult to focus,especial with moving subjects and Yes AF would be so good for this lens, can Zeiss resist with it's no AF policy?, sooner or later they will have to put it on their lenses!    LV is one answer with focus peaking but it's still a problem with moving subjects. I use MF with peaking and I like it a whole bunch but it's very limiting. 

  LensTip photos always look soft, they proudly announce that they use no sharpning and the net result is they publish soft photos, a little bit of sharpening helps show if a lens is sharp (an almost sharp image will not respond well to sharpening whereas a sharp shot will crackle). Strange policy from Lenstip as all their photos look similar.

    Apart from the corners on FF fully open it seems "the" winner, and the comparisons to the Leica at the same price show how it's in a different league. 

    Finally after seeing some of the responses  it's had  almost as many criticisms as praise, which seems strange as it is the best standard FF F1.4 ever made available to the general public.

 

  PS The bokeh is priceless!

[soLong]

....well i like the pictures i've seen from it, so there's a plus for this page....and, it's odd they do AF for Sony but for no one else, i wonder if it's a contractual thing....anyway it is too many $$ for me....so, it's a look but don't touch....rent maybe....

[JJ_SO]

Brightcolours, if you don't understand my post, it's because it was not written for you.

[Guest]

Manual focus can be tricky (without live view) but some of the newer camers with EVF have nice manual focus assist features. A few have focus peaking (sony) and poor focus peaking (olympus) and even digital split screen (fuji x-e2) and all of them have magnify option in the view finder. While EVF is not for everyone; they do have a few advantages.... (esp in very dark rooms).

[felix]

You hardly can blame a lens for a photographer's mistakes!  :blink:

 

+1

 

Also, it was stated by Zeiss representatives that this lens, in combination with a high-resolution DSLR like the D800E, is meant to compete with medium format cameras (in terms of resolving power). Thus, it is meant mainly for studio-work and landscape photography where manual focus is less of an issue. 

 

I would really like to see some landscape-images taken with the D800E & Otus vs. some taken with a Hasselblad H5D40 & its 80/2.8.

[JJ_SO]

PhaseOne has the better backs. Pros are changing Hasselblad against Phase One for various reasons (not the least is, Phase One offers packages to tempt them). Also, while a D800E is "the only camera" for that Otus and both are together less than 8000$, the medium format plays in a different league - and it's not resolution what matters first.

 

you2, it's nice you list a ll the bodies with focus peaking, EVF and whatever. I hope you realized none of them comes close to a D800E in terms of resolution and dynamic range. Or a Canon, but those have max. 22 MP - that's just about the only mounts the Otus is currently offered.

[Guest]

Actually the sony a7r comes very close to the D800E.....

[Brightcolours]

PhaseOne has the better backs. Pros are changing Hasselblad against Phase One for various reasons (not the least is, Phase One offers packages to tempt them). Also, while a D800E is "the only camera" for that Otus

That is of course silly to say. The Zeiss 55mm f1.4 will be also a great lens on a 1D-X, a 5D mk II/III, or even a 6D. Or a D600, or a D4.

and both are together less than 8000$, the medium format plays in a different league - and it's not resolution what matters first.

 

you2, it's nice you list a ll the bodies with focus peaking, EVF and whatever. I hope you realized none of them comes close to a D800E in terms of resolution and dynamic range. Or a Canon, but those have max. 22 MP - that's just about the only mounts the Otus is currently offered.