Best 50mm prime for $500?

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.
 
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."
 
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.
 
Huy Vu said:
Get a cheap Nikon to EF adapter and you're ready to go.
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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.
 
blahblah said:
The Zeiss is tempting. Does anyone have filmmaking experience with it?
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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.
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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.
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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.
 
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.

ZF-Still-Comparison.jpg
 
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.

7D-ZF-1-4.jpg


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):
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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".
 
blahblah said:
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.
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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.
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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.
 
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.)
 
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