Zeiss 50mm f/2.0 Makro Planar Review

Check out my website at www.DarrenMiles.com - Southwest Florida Photographer
BUY THE ZEISS 50mm f/2.0 Makro Planar for CANON HERE:
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/666445-REG/Zeiss_1762_851_50mm_f_2_0_Makro_Planar_ZE.html/BI/19363/KBID/11419
BUY THE ZEISS 50mm f/2.0 Makro Planar for NIKON HERE:
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/662721-REG/Zeiss_1771_845_Makro_Planar_T_50mm_f_2.html/BI/19363/KBID/11419
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF B&H PHOTO'S DAILY DEALS HERE;
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CONCLUSION:
Ok, time to wrap up this review and draw some conclusions about the zeiss 50mm f/2 makro, in a nutshell, it goes like this;
BUILD QUALITY: it's great, and it lives up to zeiss's lofty reputation. It's a precision piece of equipment and it has a stylish metal finish. The focus ring is silky smooth and perfectly dampened offering an ideal amount of resistance that lends itself well to accurate manual focussing. It's really heavy, coming in at over a pound making it feel really substantial. Zeiss also includes a high quality lens hood. On the downside, the lens isn't weather sealed and alas, there's no AF motor - like nearly every zeiss lens. Negatives aside, the zeiss is still a physical specimen that sets a benchmark for build quality. The only thing that prevents the zeiss from a perfect score is the fact that it's not weather sealed and at this price point, it frankly should be. For build we gave it a 9.5/10
FOCUS: as you know by now, the zeiss is manual focus only, but the lens isn't dead as there's electronic aperture control and focus confirmation, and the focus confirm is very accurate, but I wouldn't use it to chase the kids around the house. Given that it only has focus accuracy, the zeiss is only eligible to be graded for a maximum of 5 points, and it makes that easily, for focus accuracy we gave it a 5/5.
OPTICAL QUALITY and QUALITY of RESULTS: I'll be the first one to admit that I don't shoot a ton of macro photography, however, I've been having a ball with the 50mm f/2 - the more I use the zeiss, the more familiar and accustomed I get to the manual focus and the better my results keep getting. Just a couple of things, I recommend turning the focus confirm beep on to insure accurate focus and if you shoot macro, use a tripod, and zoom in with live view, if you do, you'll be rewarded with some awesome images. And it's the optics of the zeiss that set it apart from all the other 50mm competitors. For downsides, it vignettes pretty heavily at f/2, but that's about it! We gave it a 9.5 for optical quality and a 10 for the quality of the results.
VALUE: at $1,283 the zeiss is really expensive, but it's optics are just amazing - in the zeiss's favor is amazing build quality, and as we've stated several times killer optical quality. On the downside, no weather sealing, no AF and it's really pricey, it's up to decide if the optical quality difference is worth the difference in price, but from my view, the zeiss can justify a premium, but I'm not convinced the gap should be this wide. For value, we only gave the zeiss a 6.5/10
OVERALL: 40.5/45 and just barely squeaks out a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED rating
The Final Word: If you want top notch optical and build quality along with very capable macro capability, the you have to consider the Zeiss 50mm f/2.0 makro. Just keep in mind that you're going to pay top dollar for a manual focus lens, but at least it has a really smooth and precise focus ring and focus confirmation - so if you don't have the best eyesight, then you'll still have a fighting chance of capturing your shot in focus. This is Darren Miles with Darren Miles Photography based here in beautiful sunny naples, FL, if you like these reviews, please don't forget to "Subcribe!" Thanks so much for watching, and until the next time, happy shooting...

[@zackchoy1969]

Hope to see more lens reviews !~ especially Zeiss !~Planar, Distagon, etc etc

[@miike111]

It' good to see your new review of the Zeiss 50mm Mackro lens. Love the pictures and video. I too am interested in the new Sigma 50mm f1.4 A lens. It might offer real competition to canon and Nikon.

[@TerryPhoon]

Hi , really awesome reviews . great presentation , straight to the point and very informative. and yeah , like BKPM said , slotting some stills examples will make it more awesome . and the new sound effect of the " scores " are a lot better :).

[@GarryBurgess]

The Zeiss Milvus Distagon 50mm f1.4 ZE is weather sealed, and worth a look.

[@AlfredThomaz]

Thank you so much for this wonderful review. simple and to the point, though sometimes feels like too much repetition, but bearable. And when you are reviewing such expensive products, could you please suggest the next best alternative. Thumbs up!!

[@thebrandonkm]

Love the review! Something I would recommend though is spacing out some of your showcase photos throughout the video, it can be a little monotonous at times just looking at someone talk.

[@DarrenMiles]

That's great feedback, thank you! Glad you like the review and you're right, it's always better to change up the scenery. I'll incorporate some more videos/stills during the monologues in future reviews.

man u have talent for this , awsome videos, what did u study that u express so well?

[@DarrenMiles]

fastbraintv thank you very much! I was a corporate sales guy with a global company for awhile, so that probably helped :-)

[@atyl1972]

darren greta review, would you happen to know if this will work with the focus peaking of the sony a7r, and would the a7r peaking work with any lens?

[@parratt-world]

Flat repro-quality copy of drawings and other small artworks for is an important component of my work. I need a lens for 35mm film Nikon F100, and a D300 with smaller sensor. I still use Zeiss S-Planar on Hasselblad 500C for some of this work, and paintings up to 80x100 cm. I'd love to see what this 50mm f/2.0 could do, compared with the Optar 85 f/1.4 in the "medium to close range" area.

[@8smena]

zeiss benefits are strong contrast, a very strong contrast, saturated colors and microcontrast. For small artwork 100mm would be better, you will be further away from artwork and you can set up lighting without blocking the lights. f5.6 would be the highest and most optimal aperture. 100mm would be little bit too much for crop sensor, you would need around 2m away from a4 format to get it framed, but definetely go with 50 or otus if you have spare money. zeiss hood is not so good, I owuld prefer square like shape, so I can rest my lens while shooting handheld, zeiss should also ship additional hood, and lens cap is bad quality. metal ring is easy to scratch if you dont care.. you can also get sigma, it has great saturation, contrast and extreme sharpness, but zeiss has different look or character. Mainly zeiss wins over other lenses for colors contrast and sharpness.. and there is also zeiss obsession ..you will want to have all zeiss lenses.. and addiction.. you will shoot every day and everything.. older vintage zeisses are not as good as modern..

[@parratt-world]

***** Thank you Ray.

[@8smena]

Kevin Parratt No problem, I used 100 for scaning artbooks,family photos, textures, and for fun.. .. it has flaws, if you shoot outside it can make pruprle fringing around white areas and that along with shallow dof can make problems, you can not use f8 since you will loose details, if you use f2 it will have pruprle fringing and shallow dof will blur details. 135 APO would be better for textures, and art but it is not macro. Canon, sigma and others can make sharp lenses but zeiss has different glass (schot or something like that) and it transmits wave lengths and saturated gradients,, I did not use otus but they are all distagons and not for macro. you can use focus stacking but that is hard, also zeiss lenses bread-change focal length for different focus distances. here is a raw file of Zeiss 100mp on a crop body. tccin3d.com/files/temp%20delete/texture%20wall%20metal%20(f2.0-%20ISO125-Canon%20EOS%2060D-100mm)%20Thursday,%20September%2012,%202013%20by%20Tccin3D.CR2 right click save as

[@jjjamincom]

Love your vids man keep It up

[@DarrenMiles]

Thank you sir!!

[@fxvsdx35]

Nice video. Thanks. How about fitting older Zeiss lenses made for Contax/Yashica mount. They are available used much cheaper. I have quite a few of them,but unfortunately they cannot be fitted to Nikon. May be my next camera will be ILC .

[@DarrenMiles]

I have an old Zeiss Jena 180mm f/2.8 that was for the old Pentacon mount (1950's - 1960's era) and I paid a crap ton to have it re-furbished - it's like new now - but I don't use it that often - I should as it's a bokeh monster :-) They're wonderful lenses - you can pretty much buy an adapter for just about anything these days and I just did a brief search on google, C/Y adapters are available for Nikon mount cameras... So maybe you can use them after all :-)

[@fxvsdx35]

Darren Miles Thanks for your reply. I own two of those adapters for Zeiss C/Y mount to Nikon. The first cannot focus to infinity,because Nikon mount is too deep, so the Zeiss C/Y lens fits ,but it is kind of a very short extension tube. The other adapter (Fotodiox) uses an optical glass to correct for infinity, I did not use it yet, so I cannot judge the degradation that is caused by the added glass element. I know that I can buy Sony A7 series full frame, but I like to stay with Nikon having many cameras and lenses. I like your pictures.Hope to see more soon.

[@boozarr]

Got to have one

[@parratt-world]

Very informative review. Thank you. ;-)

[@DarrenMiles]

Thank you very much!!

[@EclipseSound]

7:55 what camera is this?

[@DarrenMiles]

5D Mark iii

[@powerlurker]

time travel here!

[@richardrobinson6154]

Zeiss is everybody's Disney in photography/cinematography but I only buy gear based on your reviews and the Sigma 35mm art is lucky it isn't human because it would be pregnant would whole lot of 50mm's. I've been saving for a Zeiss but I pause because I never seen a video of yours where it took you so long to pull focus. Everybody can land blast me for this comment and talk about optic precision but maybe just maybe Zeiss lost 1/3 of a step because I doubt that Darren has.

[@AnilKumar-oq7qi]

very much infomative

[@rodiaz6652]

"Zeiss matters"

[@yeexiang6566]

0:35 RIP headphone users

[@GeroLubovnik]

No autofocus... poor baby. Too bad you're too young to have had had the pleasure of shooting an event with a Hasseblad 500CM and Zeiss fixed focal length lenses, no auto focus and no metering... and... film (what's that? you ask) . You'd learn to be fast with none of the technology :) and learn to be patient and quick and precise without the camera on blast-o-matic. So the Zeiss Makro Planar looks to be an excellent lens. Wish you'd taken some close up examples. I used to use a Zeiss 120 makro planar T* for my Hassy and it was my go-to lens. I suspect Zeiss is still the leader of the pack.