lens decision?

pest22o

pest22o

Well-known member
I want to buy one of these I'm just not sure which one would be better. if you guys had to have only one, which would it be?

The Carl Zeiss Planar t* 50mm f1.4

Or

Carl Zeiss Planar t* 85mm f1.4

I want use it with my d80, is that possible? and can I use it with a 35mm adapter for my dvx? does anyone know?
 
Yes, you can use either lens on both the D80 and any 35mm adapter with a nikon mount - no problem.
(as long as you don't mind using fully manual lenses on your D80 - which means the loss of auto focus and metering).



As far as which one would be "better" - I can tell you that 85mm is just a beautiful lens.
BUT, if you don't have a solid 50mm that you can use right now, that's probably your best bet.
The 85mm is going to be too tight for some interior situations. The 50mm is a great 'all around' lens.
Personally I would start there.

Either way you can't go wrong.
Those are both really nice (in my opinion)
 
I've seen them used on a letusxl flip, really beautiful bokeh! (sharpness doesn't really matter for video, almost all lenses can resolve HD resolutions)
 
You may think the sharpness doesn't matter when using an adapter but if you test any newer zoom compared to the older faster manual primes the zooms are usually sharper and you can tell.
 
I'm having trouble understanding the advantage of going with a far more expensive Zeiss lens vs the cheaper Nikkor 1.4, or even the far far cheaper 1.8. They are touted as two of the sharpest lenses Nikon has ever made. You shouldn't need the increased sharpness (if any) for video from the Zeiss, so what are you photographing that would require a lens like this? Please educate me.
 
its the quality of the image rendered.

Zeiss glass just makes a better looking picture.
 
DivotDan said:
I'm having trouble understanding the advantage of going with a far more expensive Zeiss lens vs the cheaper Nikkor 1.4, or even the far far cheaper 1.8. They are touted as two of the sharpest lenses Nikon has ever made. You shouldn't need the increased sharpness (if any) for video from the Zeiss, so what are you photographing that would require a lens like this? Please educate me.
Click to expand...

What TimurCivan said.
 
It's actually not for my DVX, I just wanted to know if I could use it, since I already have it and you know the whole 1.4 F stop sounds really nice. Plus you know If I'm gonna spend money might as well buy something great now as opposed to buying something good and then later on paying for a great lens. Did that make sense?
 
Interesting. I have an old Sony P&S which has a Zeiss designed lens and I love it.

I decided to do a little snooping around to see what I could find on the old internets. I was poking around on a few other boards and people were just basically arguing with each other. Some thought Zeiss was better and some thought Nikon was better. And as always no one offered any photographic proof to back their point of view. Of course then I ended up on Ken Rockwell's site. I like Ken's site b/c it has a lot of facts. He mixes in a lot of opinion too (you can take or leave his opinions. sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I don't). I thought the history of how this lens was manufatured was interesting. Here is the link for that.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/zeiss/zf50.htm

He also has a 50mm shootout with a bunch of super detailed shots to look at. According to Ken it seems the Zeiss came in last in a lot of his test, although even some of that is just personal opinion. Here is the link for that.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/50-comparison/index.htm

I think I agree with him though, for as sharp as my 50mm 1.8 shots have been, and since the AF-D lens will auto-focus on your D80, and since it is many hundreds of $$ less......I think the 50 1.8 would be my choice. It seems, at least from Ken's review, that there is little to no difference in these lenses.
 
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