Quote Originally Posted by cian3307


Believe it or not, there are people out there who will buy purely for the Zeiss name, regardless of IQ. A kind of snobbish brand loyalty[img]/emoticons/emotion-5.gif[/img] I've never used Zeiss camera lenses but their binoculars, spotting scopes and riflescopes are superb but other cheaper manufacturers can be just as good or even better!
<div style="clear: both;"]</div>





You are certainly right. The brand name has to do with it. I bought a Planar 85/1.4 ZE last December even though I work for Zeiss since more than 20 years (not for the photography division, though), I am also not quite immune to the magic of this name.


To begin I was a little disappointed about the obvious high amount of spherical aberration which causes the f-number dependent focus shift as well as the softness of the image in best focus. I started focusing just through the eye piece, which works ok in low light conditions. After a while I calibrated the Microfocus adjustment on my 1D Mark III, whith this, the focus confirmation works very well, much better then visual. And of course Live view works always. I also realized, that despite my disappointment, I've been using this lens almost all the time. The nerd in me doesn't like the aberration, the artist in me still appreciates the nice feel the photos have with f=1.4. This is a true vintage lens.


A friend of mine has the 85/1.2L from Canon. I played with this lens and although it is certainly a very nice lens, I like my Zeiss lens better.


After all. I would buy it again.


The photos at the link below are all made with the Planar 1.4/85 ZE at f=1.4. I just love the bokeh and the in focus quality harmonizes well with the rest of the picture.


http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&amp;ss=2&amp;w=all&amp;q=planar8514ze%2C+f% 3D1.4&amp;m=tags