Best 50mm prime for $500?

[blahblah]

Title says it all.

[mhood]

For a 7D? Canon EF 50mm 1.4 USM.

[Huy Vu]

Zeiss ZF 50mm f1.4, a better choice than the EF for film since it's fully manual.

[blahblah]

You have expensive taste...as do I. But the budget is $500 and the Zeiss in question is 600 euros on the Zeiss website. That's nearly doubled in Canadian dollars.

[Huy Vu]

It's $550 from Cinevate.

http://www.cinevate.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=98&osCsid=4942aed9c2138a9b438176a64bf2e988

[atomick]

Clarification/question...The Cinevate ZF mount you link to is a Nikon mount, isn't it? The EF mount 50mm from Zeiss is this one:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/583975-REG/Zeiss_1677817_Normal_50mm_f_1_4_ZE.html
...and it's $660. Out of OP's price range, but just a hair, and if you research it, it definitely has some pretty sweet characteristics than makes the Canon feel a little, I dunno...staid? I think it's a subjective difference, but it's look is IMO really elegant. Point it at the sun and you get really nice light wrap, flare, and pinpoint blowouts...very "filmic."

[Huy Vu]

Get a cheap Nikon to EF adapter and you're ready to go.

[blahblah]

The Zeiss is tempting. Does anyone have filmmaking experience with it? On slrgear.com, this lens is praised for being of the highest build quality, but criticized for being unacceptably soft wide open. Apparently stopping down to f2 or f2.8 solves this problem, but that isn't entirely satisfying for me. The manual control and tank like structure are sexy though. A bhphoto review claims that the bokeh is fugly with this lens. Note: These reviews have been in response to still photography.

[Luis Caffesse]

Get a cheap Nikon to EF adapter and you're ready to go.

A cheap adapter would seem to negate getting a top notch lens in the first place.
I have a couple of cheap NIkon to EF adapters, and they all seem to throw off the backfocus a bit.
I haven't seen one yet that is consistently well machined AND 'cheap.'

Not as big a problem with a prime as with a zoom, but still wouldn't seem the ideal scenario if lens quality is the primary concern here.

[rallymatt]

SMC Pentax 1.4 ~$100

[Barry_Green]

Get a cheap Nikon to EF adapter and you're ready to go.
Or just get the Canon-mount version. Zeiss sells those lenses in a variety of mounts, including Nikon, Canon, and Pentax Screwmount.

[Barry_Green]

The Zeiss is tempting. Does anyone have filmmaking experience with it?
I shot this on that lens, on a 7D.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=190630


On slrgear.com, this lens is praised for being of the highest build quality, but criticized for being unacceptably soft wide open. Apparently stopping down to f2 or f2.8 solves this problem, but that isn't entirely satisfying for me.
Well, that's the way it is. Open it all the way wide and yes it gets soft, and lots of purple/green chromatic aberrations around high-contrast fine detail. Thing is, on a 7D, does it matter? The 7D's only got about 720p resolution anyway, so even though the lens goes soft, it probably still delivers enough sharpness to deliver more than what the 7D can take.

In video -- then again, in stills, yep, you'll definitely see the softness and the purple/green fringing at wide-open.

Actually, I should test that assessment -- of whether the 7D can see the ZF 50mm's softness at 1.4... I'll get back to you on that.



A bhphoto review claims that the bokeh is fugly with this lens. Note: These reviews have been in response to still photography.
Well, look at the closeup of the girl I linked to -- there are out-of-focus highlights back there, so you can see what the bokeh looks like and make your own decision.

[Barry_Green]

Okay, phase one of the comparison is done. This is how the Zeiss ZF 50mm lens performs on a Canon 7D, in still photography mode, at two different apertures. The following is a pixel-for-pixel extraction from the full large-sized frames. The differences in sharpness, texture, and color are due solely to what happens to the ZF at full wide open.

http://dvxuser.com/barry/ZF-Still-Comparison.jpg

[Barry_Green]

Okay, so now the fun begins. The following images were taken from the 1080/24p video stream of a 7D shooting the exact same chart. These are pixel-for-pixel extractions of the 7D footage.

http://dvxuser.com/barry/7D-ZF-1-4.jpg

http://dvxuser.com/barry/7D-ZF-5-6.jpg

Wow. Wasn't expecting that! So, yeah, the color still goes crappy on the 1.4, and the contrast isn't there, but the resolved sharpness is about the same. (Don't believe me? I took the same shots into photoshop and tweaked the contrast and brightness to get them about the same, and this is the result):
http://dvxuser.com/barry/ZF-Extract-Comparison.jpg


So here's the crazy thing -- even though the wide-open lens turned the still picture to dog poop, ... I think it looks BETTER on the video image. Look at the color aliasing on the 45-degree wedge -- it's a lot less color-contaminated on the softer frame. Look at the horizontal wedge (90-degrees) -- it looks HUGELY better. It looks like it's using only actual image detail and not aliased ringlets, all the way to about 650 lines. And look at the edge enhancement/sharpening -- the flatter contrast of the wide-open lens looks like it even minimizes the amount of edge enhancement that gets applied, which, when I contrast-corrected it (in my quick lame terrible I-don't-do-post fashion) makes the edge enhancement far less visible, making for just cleaner-looking images overall.

Look at the vertical column -- it has proper detail down to the extinguishment point, at about 700 lines, with none of that bogus aliasing artifacting like on the f/5.6 image (starting at about 1200 and stretching to about 1600).

So -- overall... I think the image looks better from the softer lens. Which, I guess, does make sense -- aliasing happens when the lens passes too much high frequency detail, and the camera doesn't filter it out properly. A softer lens would be somewhat inherently a bit of a filter, as it would trim off the highest-frequency detail (which is not high-def information anyway, it's just contamination).

So -- heck... shooting with the highest-quality glass you can get may actually be making your 7D/5D images turn out worse, overall! Who would have thought it? You might be able to save a lot of money on glass and get overall better-looking images in the end. Hah!

Lesson 2: if you're gonna use the still mode, you def. want the best glass you can get, and if you're using something like the ZF 50mm, stop it down some because wide open is nasty.

[blahblah]

Barry, this is an amazing comparison; the kind I wanted yet did not expect to receive. For that, I thank you. I have some follow up questions...

1. "The 7D's only got about 720p resolution anyway, so even though the lens goes soft, it probably still delivers enough sharpness to deliver more than what the 7D can take."

I don't understand.

2. Going back to the topic question of this post, is the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 your choice? It seems to be the most cine-like. I've read that the Nikon 50mm 1.4 D is impressively sharp wide open. Then again, that's still photography and i don't know what the motion picture implications are.

[macgregor]

They are all sooooooo soft wide open... buy the f1.8 and spend the rest of the money in something else, like a vacation in Vegas. Then bet the remaining $400 in the rulette, on red. If you win, buy the ZF. If you loose, you still have a wonderfull lens that is sharper than most L glass anyway.

[dadoboy]

The Nikon 50mm F1.8 and F1.4 breathe quite a bit - not terrible, but not like on most cinema lenses.

Does anybody know if the Zeiss ZF 50mm has less breathing than the Nikons?

[DrDave]

There's lots to choose from, the basic Nikon is a total steal, unless you really need more save your money; the Pentax is nice as well. The Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM was very highly rated at DPreview as "class leading".

[Barry_Green]

1. "The 7D's only got about 720p resolution anyway, so even though the lens goes soft, it probably still delivers enough sharpness to deliver more than what the 7D can take."


I don't understand.
I'm saying that yes, the ZF goes very soft wide open, but does it matter? It's delivering about all the sharpness that the 7D can handle. Any excess sharpness is just wasted as aliasing. Read the aliasing article for more.


2. Going back to the topic question of this post, is the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 your choice? It seems to be the most cine-like. I've read that the Nikon 50mm 1.4 D is impressively sharp wide open. Then again, that's still photography and i don't know what the motion picture implications are.
I have always been a Zeiss fan. I bought one of these to try it out, and I'm considering just plunging forward and getting the rest of them. I think it's important to have a matched set.

I'm not a fan of buying a Nikon this, and a Tokina that, and a Sigma "the other". I like 'em to match. And I do love the crispy crispy sweetness that the ZF delivers when stopped down some. The ZF is basically the same glass as in the Zeiss Compact Primes PL-mount cinema lens set, and those lenses cost $4,000 apiece. However, I like the glass to match in terms of color & contrast as much as possible, so I'd say get a bunch of lenses from the same basic batch.

That said -- I seriously don't think you're going to see a sharpness difference on a 7D, between a $500 ZF or a $50 ebay Canon lens. You'll see color/contrast differences, but probably not sharpness differences, and furthermore, even if the lens is a little softer, it's still going to deliver as much or more true resolved detail so that the 7D's picture is properly imaged.

So basically don't sweat it. As Macgregor said, you could buy a whole set of used ebay lenses versus the cost of one of these ZF's new. And 50mm is pretty long for a cinema camera anyway; you're going to want a 35mm for normal view and a 28 or 25 for wide-angle and an 85 for long lens work; at the ZF prices that'll set you back someting like $4,000; you could probably buy all those off ebay used for under $1000.

[ydgmdlu]

Thank you, Barry, for another heretical test! Now we finally have the results to support a point that some of us have been making, that lens sharpness is not that important for HD video on the DSLRs. I hope that these results will finally put all of the sharpness hype to rest.

(Though of course, if one still needs top quality stills, then of course a sharp lens is best.)

[Kholi]

Barry, what was your sharpness set at?

[Isaac_Brody]

I'd love to see this same chart shot with the cheapest 50mm you can find just for comparison.

[Kholi]

Ditto to the above.

Just received my Zeiss lenses, 21, 28, 35, 50 and 85 (no 100 =( ) in the ZF brand. Gonna put the 50 and 85 against my CY 50 and 85 for some testing, then the 28 and 35 against each other of the either set when I get back home...

No charts, but in actual shooting, between crappy glass (Tamron) and my Zeiss CY there has been a major difference.

[Barry_Green]

Barry, what was your sharpness set at?
Standard, default settings.

[Barry_Green]

I'd love to see this same chart shot with the cheapest 50mm you can find just for comparison.
Cheapest one I have is an old Zeiss Jena 50mm, but that's over in Thailand with PK right now.

[Barry_Green]

No charts, but in actual shooting, between crappy glass (Tamron) and my Zeiss CY there has been a major difference.
Contrast or sharpness though? Shoot with your 1.4 at wide open and it looks horrible. But adjust it to bring up some contrast and you'll see the resolved sharpness is just as much (at least in the 7D's video mode).

If you don't adjust the contrast, you'll be sick at how nasty the 50mm 1.4 looks at wide open...

[Kholi]

Contrast or sharpness though? Shoot with your 1.4 at wide open and it looks horrible. But adjust it to bring up some contrast and you'll see the resolved sharpness is just as much (at least in the 7D's video mode).

If you don't adjust the contrast, you'll be sick at how nasty the 50mm 1.4 looks at wide open...

I think we're seeing a different image? It may be because I don't use the Standard profile, neutral with everything dialed down. At 1.4 on the 50 ZF and the 50 CY it looks much better to my eye than the 50 1.4 Nikon. My 50/1.4 Super Takumar actually "Looks" sharper wide open than the ZF and C/Y, but by 2~2.8 it falls behind swiftly.

I don't know if it's the way the Zeiss lenses handle Micro Contrast, they clearly look better to me than a lot of the glass I've tried, with the infamous zooms coming close to or matching, yet with a certain "Soft" overall quality to it.

[DrDave]

Amazing chart, thanks for the info. It really is a great example of real world testing, even if it is a chart.

[docrock]

Back to the OP...I've got a nifty fifty, the Canon 1.4 and Canon 50L...as well as the Sigma 50. No Zeiss or Nikor comparisons....but, I LOVE my Sigma 50. Easily one of my most used lenses in my arsenal and to me, no comparison between it and my two Canons (1.4/1.8). My Canon 50L does fair a bit better than the Sigma, but not by much. Certainly not in the video arena. For stills, I have a hard time distinguishing between the two. 90% of my lenses are Canon...but I have a couple of Sigmas and the 50/1.4 is my favorite! Definitely tough to beat at the price point.

Definitely take a look at the Sigma and Canon 1.4. IF you are going to shoot stills at all with your 7d, the 50mm is an excellent walk around lens...on a 1.6 crop, gives you the perception of an 80mm lens.

[trez]

They are all sooooooo soft wide open... buy the f1.8 and spend the rest of the money in something else, like a vacation in Vegas. Then bet the remaining $400 in the rulette, on red. If you win, buy the ZF. If you loose, you still have a wonderfull lens that is sharper than most L glass anyway.

Good advice. However, I'd buy two - just in case you drop one of them onto the floor. These Canon 50mm f1.8 are crappy plastic lenses (with great optics, though).
One important factor - forget about pulling focus with it. The entire focus ring rotation range is ~60 degrees, has significant play and you won't be able to mount the gearring on it.
BTW...MacGregor - are you Polish?

[Ian-T]

I'd love to see this same chart shot with the cheapest 50mm you can find just for comparison.
Also combined with one of those filters you bought.

[macgregor]

Hi Trez! I live in Warsaw city center but i´m not polish. I´m just having some long vacations here. What do you for living here?

About canon 50mm lenses... after owning the 1.2, the 1.4 and the 1.8. they all perform the same at f.2.8 and they are all soft and bloomy wide open. So if you are under a tight budget the 1.8 is the best way to go. Don´t be afraid of performance since this cheap plastic lens will outperfom most canon lenses in sharpness and resolution.
The f.1.4 focus ring breaks after some use.
The f1.2 is so bloomy wide open that hardly you´ll find a situation where you want to shoot wider than f1.4.


Now the advantage with the zeiss for video mode is that is fully manual (but a great disadvantage for stills since DSLRs don´t have focusing ground glasses and it´s actually impossible to accurately focus by eye with a manual focus lens).

[Kholi]

Hi Trez! I live in Warsaw city center but i´m not polish. I´m just having some long vacations here. What do you for living here?

About canon 50mm lenses... after owning the 1.2, the 1.4 and the 1.8. they all perform the same at f.2.8 and they are all soft and bloomy wide open. So if you are under a tight budget the 1.8 is the best way to go. Don´t be afraid of performance since this cheap plastic lens will outperfom most canon lenses in sharpness and resolution.
The f.1.4 focus ring breaks after some use.
The f1.2 is so bloomy wide open that hardly you´ll find a situation where you want to shoot wider than f1.4.

That's the thing about 50mm lenses, they're generally all great performers and cheap. I do prefer my Zeiss 50's (ZF and Contax) over everything else, but I think it's a MicroContrast thing.



Now the advantage with the zeiss for video mode is that is fully manual (but a great disadvantage for stills since DSLRs don´t have focusing ground glasses and it´s actually impossible to accurately focus by eye with a manual focus lens).

Unless you activate the video screen, which you can certainly focus with before taking a still, just the still mode becomes slow. It is definitely hard as hell to focus, though, with manual glass through the Viewfinder.

I've been testing out my new Zeiss glass (ZF/ZE) and finding the differences between the ZE/ZF line-up and Contax to be minimal but relevant in decision making. In comparison to a an 85/1.4 Nikon there's really no comparing, to my eyes... both Zeiss 1.4's kill the Nikon image.

Gonna start up a Zeiss Still Lens Info Thread soon.

[politplastika]

Gonna start up a Zeiss Still Lens Info Thread soon.

Please do :love4:

How good are the focus rings on the zeiss lenses (for video focus pulling usage) ?
They look real nice...

[Barry_Green]

How good are the focus rings on the zeiss lenses (for video focus pulling usage) ?
Exquisite.

And you can get them converted to a more cinema-appropriate configuration by Duclos Lenses; for $250 they'll de-click and lubricate the iris ring, add focus gears, and add a standard 80mm front on them.

[mediamilitia]

I've shot all of my D90 stuff with ZF primes. They are amazing you will definitely enjoy the quality of Zeiss lenses for both stills and video.

I am about to try my set of ZF's on a 7d. I can't wait.

I am currently shooting on the 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm & 100mm.

[Barry_Green]

Hey Kevin, which 50mm? 1.4 or the macro? And how's the focus racking/breathing on the 100?

[Kholi]

100/2's a Macro as well, it's pretty silky as far as racking. A very long throw, as well. The 85's the same way.

Right now I've got 21/2.8 (omfg), 28/2, 35/2, 50/1.4, 85/1.4 and still waiting on the 100/2

I'm on the fence on whether to go full ZE, however, because I also have copies of the 50 ZE and 85 ZE and not having the manual iris ring hasn't been an issue, to be honest. Which sounds silly, but even if you WERE to get the Manual Iris lenses and you were trying to do an on-the-fly-exposure ramp, you would have to get the lens professionaly de-clicked which costs more money.

Doing Stop Splits with ZE's is no issue, as you jump from 1.4 to 1.8 to 2 and so on and so forth anyway with 1/2 INcrements. Activate 1/3 increments and you get more.

1.6, etc.

So, I'm trying to figure this one out. Do I stay ZF, future protect for other camera bodies or do I go ZE, skip the lens adapters (which eliminates lens play) and suffer if the next great camera body is Nikon?

I must say, though, the 21/2.8 is astonishing. Close Focus + That wide on either the 7D or the 5D is just insane.

[Kholi]

Please do :love4:

How good are the focus rings on the zeiss lenses (for video focus pulling usage) ?
They look real nice...

Like Barry said, quite nice. HOWEVER, I do have a set of Zeiss Contax and for Follow Focus operation, they're more intuitive. For handheld and pulling off of the barrel, the Zeiss ZF's and ZE's work better.

Go figure.

Lots of stuff to think about between the two sets, though. more soon!

[dust'n the callipygous]

this question has probably been answered, but is it not difficult pulling focus with a follow focus on the ZF lenses, when they focus backwards from just about everything else? they seem to be the most commonly packaged lens sets with follow focuses (redrock, cinevate, etc.), but every other lens focuses the other way.

[Barry_Green]

Nikon lenses all focus backwards, it's what I find quite annoying about Nikon gear and why I've always gone for Canon. But many follow focus units let you reverse the direction.

[Barry_Green]

I'd love to see this same chart shot with the cheapest 50mm you can find just for comparison.
People seem to complain a lot about charts, even though they're the only way to do precise qualitative analysis.

So, instead, I used the cheapest 50mm I can find, which is a tiny little c-mount Bell & Howell lens from an old Filmo 16mm movie camera. Put it on the GH1 (because you can't put c-mount on a 7D) and shot out my front door. Brought the footage frame grabs into PhotoShop, did the typical "auto contrast/auto tone/auto color" to equalize them out, and presented here are the results:
http://dvxuser.com/barry/GH1-ZF-vs-BH/BH-50mm-Frame-Grab.jpg

vs.

http://dvxuser.com/barry/GH1-ZF-vs-BH/BH-50mm-Frame-Grab.jpg

Now, that's a $10 lens vs. a $550 lens. Both shot at f/5.6.

I'll say it again -- the way the movie mode works in these SLRs is a HUGE equalizer among lenses. If you want better glass for stills, or for bokeh, go right ahead. But if you can't afford the better glass, don't sweat it -- the cameras can't take advantage of the better resolving power anyway, when in video mode.

For those who want to pixel-peep, here's a multi-layer photoshop document (http://dvxuser.com/barry/GH1-ZF-vs-BH/50mm-Frame-Grabs.psd)with pixel-for-pixel extractions from the frames, overlayed so you can hide the top layer and see the differences (or, largely, lack thereof) between them.

[tflak]

Pretty amazing comparison really. I would never have thought there would be so little difference.

Guess you don't have many birds hanging around your place, eh?

[Barry_Green]

Oh, you might be surprised. A couple of days ago we had a flock of at least 5,000 come through. I've never seen anything like it. I actually grabbed the 7D and shot some of it. First time I've gotten "mud" on the 7D, with so many flapping wings and grass detail and handheld and long telephoto... but yes, sometimes we get overloaded with birds here. It was awesome.

[xbourque]

I'll say it again -- the way the movie mode works in these SLRs is a HUGE equalizer among lenses.

Actually, crappy soft lenses might act as a low-pass filter and reduce aliasing in video mode in these DSLRs. :-)

[Barry_Green]

Actually, crappy soft lenses might act as a low-pass filter and reduce aliasing in video mode in these DSLRs. :-)
They may indeed. As long as they pass enough resolution for what the camera can resolve, anything more is just wasted.

I'm not advocating people buy cheap lousy lenses, of course. Better glass is always better. But I think that low-budget folks just shouldn't even worry about it. If you had a little money and you were thinking of spending it on a $500 lens, or a better tripod, get the tripod. Or the external sound recorder. Or the light kit. Or the Z-finder. Or, well, pretty much anything else that you need that will actually have a serious iimprovement in the quality of your productions, because the glass just really isn't gonna do all that much for an HDSLR.

Of course, when we start talking about the Scarlet or the next generation of cameras, that better glass will definitely come into play.

Trust me, I would rather see a *huge* difference between these $20 lenses and my new $1,000 lenses. But it just isn't there, in video mode on either of my HDSLRs. (It is in still photography mode, yes... but not in video).

[sammysammy]

Barry,thanks for this test,but how about in the gh1 case, why do you think people say the 20mm 1.7 is "sharp" in video mode, is that something else ? or is it because its auto focusing and getting a better focus?

[tflak]

Oh, you might be surprised. A couple of days ago we had a flock of at least 5,000 come through. I've never seen anything like it. I actually grabbed the 7D and shot some of it. First time I've gotten "mud" on the 7D, with so many flapping wings and grass detail and handheld and long telephoto... but yes, sometimes we get overloaded with birds here. It was awesome.

Of course, I was just making a joke about the empty feeder, but that flock you describe does sound pretty awesome! Have never been lucky enough to witness something like that.