Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 Planar T* 1.4/50

Name: Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 Planar T* 1.4/50
Brand: Carl Zeiss
Rating: 9.7 (9 reviews)

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Lens Review
Specifications

50mm	$681 average price

Lab Test Results

Sub-frame
Full-frame

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

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(From Carl Zeiss lens literature) The Planar T* 1.4/50 is an extremely fast standard lens for challenging 35 mm photography with SLR cameras. Professional photographers also consider it the best SLR standard lens in the world.

SLRgear Review
August 12, 2008
by Andrew Alexander

January 2006: Carl Zeiss announced they are producing a new line of lenses aimed at the 35mm SLR market. Its ''Z'' series starts with four lenses, one of which is the 50mm ƒ/1.4. Carl Zeiss now produces two 50mm lenses in its ZF series: the 50mm ƒ/2 Makro, and the 50mm ƒ/1.4, the subject of this review.

The 50mm ƒ/1.4 is available in the Nikon F-mount, the Pentax/Samsung K-mount and the M42 screw mount. The 50mm ƒ/1.4 is designed to cover a 35mm frame, built to ''old-school'' specifications that guarantee compatibility with older camera bodies. On a sub-frame digital sensor body, the lens will have an effective field of view of 75mm. The lens takes 58mm filters, comes with a bowl-style metal lens hood, and is available for around $500.

Sharpness
Looking at the blur graph for the 50mm ƒ/1.4, and it quickly becomes obvious that there's a lot going on ''under the hood'' of this lens. Carl Zeiss markets this lens as providing "high-performance wide open, which only improves as the lens is stopped down." I'm not sure how they define high performance, but we can agree the lens' performance certain improves as it is stopped down.

CZ 50mm @ ƒ/1.4, on Nikon D3

Sharpness at ƒ/1.4 is the only truly weak point of this lens. Our test images shot at ƒ/1.4 show between 3 and 5 blur units across the frame, and the overall profile is not smooth. However, stopping down to just ƒ/2 improves sharpness dramatically, and restores some order to the otherwise ''lumpy'' image profile. The profile looks more like a portrait lens, with a sharp central region (~1 blur unit) and gradually softening corners (5-6 blur units). Stop down again to ƒ/2.8, and the image becomes almost tack-sharp across the frame (just over 1 blur unit). According to our testing, optimal sharpness is achieved at ƒ/4, but it's a fine distinction between apertures in the range of ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/11. At ƒ/16 the lens shows a bit of diffraction limiting, but it's hardly noticeable at just 1.5 blur units across the frame.

On our full-frame D3, the 50mm ƒ/1.4 is really taken to task by the larger, higher-resolution sensor. Image sharpness results at ƒ/1.4 are even worse than on the D200: between 4 and 7 blur units, with the same ''lumpy'' image characteristics. There's definite improvement at ƒ/2, with the same portrait-lens style character, but the sharpness ''sweet spot'' is a very small region in the center of the frame: the overall size of the FX sensor has dwarfed it. At ƒ/2.8 the lens begins to give very sharp results, but it isn't until ƒ/5.6 that we note optimal results for sharpness (although again, the differences between ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/11, even ƒ/16, are very small).

Overall, image results for sharpness are very interesting. At ƒ/2 you get portrait-lens style shots (more on the D200 than the D3), and by ƒ/4 it's as sharp as sharp gets. However, sharpness performance at ƒ/1.4 is strictly mediocre.

Chromatic Aberration
The 50mm ƒ/1.4 shows a fair amount of chromatic aberration, fairly evenly between all apertures, but weighted more to larger apertures. Wide open at ƒ/1.4, images produced by the lens showed just over 7/100ths of a percent of frame height CA in the corners, and 4/100ths generally. This reduced slightly as the lens was stopped down.

On the D3, the body automatically removes chromatic aberration, to significant effect - CA is almost non-existent after the D3 has performed this function. We processed some RAW frames through Bibble to remove the CA reduction feature, and give an idea of how much CA results when using the lens on a full-frame body. In this case overall CA is slightly higher (around 5/100ths of a percent of frame height) but maximum CA is slightly lower (around 6/100ths of a percent of frame height).

Shading (''Vignetting'')
Corner shading isn't a significant problem with the 50mm ƒ/1.4 mounted on the sub-frame D200; when used at ƒ/1.4, the corners show up as 1/3 EV darker than the center. At all other apertures, it's less than a quarter-stop.

On the full-frame D3, corner shading is more significant. At ƒ/1.4, the corners are a full stop darker than the center; at ƒ/2, corner darkness is less significant, at 2/3 EV. At ƒ/2.8 we see a quarter-stop difference between corner and center, and at other apertures it's less than that.

Distortion
The Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 shows some slight barrel distortion. On the D200 the effect is less significant: 0.25% distortion in the corners. On the D3 it's double that, at 0.5% corner distortion. Fortunately, it isn't a complex distortion and is easily correctable with post-processing software.

Autofocus Operation
The Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 is a manual focus lens.

Macro
The 50mm ƒ/1.4 isn't rated as a macro lens; it doesn't need to be, as CZ produces a 50mm ƒ/2 macro. With a minimum close-focus distance of 45cm and a magnification rating of just 0.15x, the other 50mm is the way to go for macro work.

Build Quality and Handling
Carl Zeiss has taken a retro approach with its line of ZF lenses, in that instead of adopting a new design approach they are solidly capitalizing on a proven concept of an old design. The sample we tested is built with the old Nikon ''rabbit-ears'' AI indexer, to ensure compatibility with some of the oldest Nikon bodies produced.

The lens design consists of 7 elements in 6 groups, with a nine-bladed diaphragm making up the aperture. The production quality of the lens is superb; the entire construction is metal, from lens mount to filter rings. Accordingly, this makes it comparatively heavy at 255g (over half a pound). Unless your newer camera body supports AI- or AIS-style lenses, you can forget about ''advanced'' modes such as aperture priority; it will be manual mode all the way. And you can forget about metering, as well. With its $500 price tag though, my sense is that the average purchaser of this lens will not have such problems.

Those issues aside, the lens is wonderfully presented, with a distance and magnification scale etched into the focus ring. A depth-of-field scale (complete with infrared index) is adjacent to the aperture ring. The aperture ring itself clicks between ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/16 in half-stop intervals. A short, 3/4 inch-deep metal bowl-shaped metal lens hood completes the ensemble. The lens hood can be reversed for storage on the lens.

The focus ring is the main operating feature of the lens. It's 1/2-inch wide, with a ribbed metal texture. There is plenty of travel on the smoothly-cammed ring - turning about 300 degrees brings you from closest focus to infinity.

Alternatives

Nikon 50mm ƒ/1.4D AF Nikkor ~$300
I think many people will have scrolled down directly to this point. According to our tests, the Nikon 50mm ƒ/1.4 beats the Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 hands-down; it's sharper at all apertures (though it becomes hard to tell the difference between ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/16), CA performs much better, and it distorts less. The Zeiss shows slightly less corner darkening. However factor in that with a lower price tag, the Nikon has autofocus capability, and I think the decision to go with the one or the other comes down to liking the ''look'' produced by the Zeiss over the Nikon.

Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 EX DG HSM ~$500
We haven't yet reviewed this lens, but early reviews are quite good. It's the only 50mm lens available for Nikon or Pentax that offers silent-wave motor style focusing (though Pentax bodies must support SDM focusing).

Pentax 50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC P-FA ~$200
If you're a Pentax user, this is your brand-loyal competition. We haven't reviewed it, but it's a similar story to the Nikon solution: lower price point, with the added advantage of autofocus.

Conclusion
On its own merits, the Carl Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 is a good lens: sharpness is excellent at ƒ/2.8 and greater, even at ƒ/2 in a portrait application on a sub-frame sensor digital SLR. Chromatic aberration and distortion performance are tolerable, and corner shading isn't problematic. The problem in recommending this lens is that there wasn't anything wrong with existing solutions for Pentax and Nikon, which means the Zeiss would have to be something really special to justify the higher price point and lack of autofocus. I'm not convinced the Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 quite reaches ''that'' level of lens; certain aspects of it are very nice, such as its smooth manual focus control and performance after ƒ/2.8. But to my mind a lens marketed as a fast ƒ/1.4 lens has to perform well at that aperture, rather than showing its best performance at smaller apertures. And at its widest aperture, the 50mm ƒ/1.4 just doesn't perform.

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the ''VFA'' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.