I decided to break down and rent two lenses for a month. One of those lenses is the lovely Zeiss Makro-Planar 100mm f/2.0! I’ve been lusting over this lens for what seems like forever. It’s a pretty expensive lens if purchased, in the neighborhood of US$1800 I think. I decided to rent it to see if I would like it enough to consider it as a future purchase. After all, if you’re going to spend $1800, what’s another $250 in rental costs to try it out for a month!? But really, this rental was just for the fun of it more than anything else.
My initial thoughts on the build of the lens are that it’s sturdy and simple. It comes with a metal lens hood that is really nice, but seems as though it could fall off easily when attached to the front of the lens (snaps in place, but not securely enough). I don’t use lens hoods when shooting macro so I didn’t use it. It also doesn’t have the option for Auto or Manual focus, which is just great: exactly the way a true macro lens should be because you focus by moving your body to and from the subject and then use the fine adjustment on the lens to get the image sharp. Kind of like a microscope.
I took the lens out for a test run this afternoon, shooting everything at f/2.0. After taking each shot, I was just in awe as I reviewed the shots on my camera’s LCD. Simply amazing. I could tell without even looking at the shots at full size on my LCD that I was getting some tack sharp shots and the color saturation that I was able to achieve was out of this world! In fact, some of the shots were so saturated that I had to tone it down a notch.
When I got home and reviewed the photos, my initial thoughts were true disgust and disappointment. The first dozen frames were just drowning in chromatic aberration (purple fringing). I had never seen such bad CA except with poor quality lenses. However, it seems to have dissipated and went completely away after that first dozen. Kind of strange. Almost like the camera adapted to the lens and the optics were just how they should be.
Anyway, my review of this lens is AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME! It is everything that I would expect from a Zeiss lens and more. The images at f/2.0 are so incredibly sharp that it blows the sharpness of every lens that I own out of the water. My own macro lens is the highly sought after first generation Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro. Tamron still makes this lens, but I don’t know if they are as sharp as these originals.
The drawbacks of this lens:
- It’s not 1:1, but 1:2 magnification. What this means is that subjects with be half life size at 1:2. True to life would be 1:1.
- The fine adjustment focusing barrel takes several turns to reach full focus and is slower to turn than all other lenses that I’ve used.
- The chromatic aberration…which I’m hoping was just an initial problem and not continuous. I suppose I will find out.
- It’s really expensive.
This was written after only using the lens for a couple of hours and these are my initial thoughts. This Zeiss lens is a TRUE macro lens and great for the avid macro photographer. If you use autofocus, forget this lens…it doesn’t even have it. I can’t say how this lens would be for portraits, but given that it seems to take forever to turn the focus barrel, I can definitely see that would be an annoyance for portrait work.
Anyway, here are some shots from the lens. More to come in the future!
holy. crap. these are beautiful. how weird about the CA, though.
While I feel flora & fauna can often be overdone, yours just rock the house! Nicely done! What did you decide to do on the purchase?
This is a great review, and shows how creamy the bokeh on a high quality lens really can be.
One potential consideration: do the macro shots sell well enough to justify the cost? How long before the lens can pay for itself, if ever? Would a 2.8 macro give you “good enough” results at one-third the cost?
All that said, the results are quite dreamy.
It’s more about the glass than the aperture in the case of this lens. Zeiss and Leica use the best glass in the world for their products… even better if it’s an MM lens from Germany in the case of Zeiss!
Great review!
Thank you everyone for the compliments and the comments! I have made some small edits to the post above to clarify things.
I rented this lens for the sole purpose of fun and I’ve only give it a go of a couple of hours at this point. So I can’t make any final say of whether or not I would run right out and purchase it.
So after I give it more of a test run, I will come back with a more concise review.
Macro photography is one of my biggest interests and this lens is tailored specifically for that use. It is strictly manual focus so if you use autofocus a lot and want it for additional purposes, this lens is probably not for you. I rarely use autofocus for any of my photography and since I do a lot more macro work than most stock photographers, the idea of this lens is intriguing to me.
However, I disagree that this lens is more about the glass than the aperture. I think that the two qualities go hand in hand. All of my macro photography is generally done from f/5.6 to wide open. Those wide apertures are extremely important to me and many other macro photographers. There’s no point in having a fast lens if you’re not going to use it for that reason. I’ve used lenses where the images are hazy or have chromatic aberration at wide apertures, making the image completely useless to me. And I’ve seen it happen on supposed “high quality glass”. I agree that Zeiss and Leica are well-known for their high quality lenses, but I try to keep an open mind. You can only imagine how much my heart sank when I opened the first image and saw horrible CA (which I do plan to report on later). But basically what I’m trying to say is that you can’t have a good quality image at f/2.0 unless you have good quality glass to go along with it. The image is sharp as a tack, but that CA is definitely a downer. Every lens has its faults.
Sweet sweet lens. That’s odd that the body could perceivably adapt to a new lens. Could it have been a specific lighting condition? Perhaps there’s a slight defect in the lens? Granted it’s Zeiss glass so there are gonna be fewer lemons, but it still happens.
Odd that it only goes to 1:2 though for such high quality glass. Do you think you’d crop further to achieve a false 1:1 or just deal with it?
I agree with you completely about glass and aperture going hand in hand… Thats just physics. My comment was in response to kickstand who pondered if a 2.8 would be good enough…
I was merely stating that I felt like the Zeiss lens would be better at 2.0, 2.8, 5.6… Or most any aperture simply because of the amazing glass that Zeiss uses. I am only commenting because I’ve used this lens for 10 years and have never found another macro (or any other lens) to be more sharp - I’ve used Canon, Nikkor, and Tamron macros in that time as well.
My best guess for the CA that went away… Maybe the lens wasn’t seated perfectly and wiggled it’s way into position after a few shots. This shouldn’t happen with machined parts designed to fit ‘perfectly’ but we all know there’s lemons from any manufacturer. Just a guess though.
Also, I am biased when it comes to Zeiss since I’ve had nothing but good luck with them so my opioion should probably be discarded as and outlier.
The only thing that matters in the end is that the images are what they were meant to be… sharp or soft or good bokeh or whatever!
These are great shots in my (biased) opinion!
These are gorgeous. I especially love the 3rd picture.
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