Over the past several years, I've acquired 4 of the 5 Batis lenses. Only the 135 is missing. They all have the Zeiss "look," or "pop," which I really like. The 40 lives on the front of my camera as the default for grab-n-go shooting when I don't know the subject beforehand. The 25 is next favorite. These I use more than my Sony brand lenses, which are also fantastic. The difference is that with those, while optically excellent, they don't have special character. It's like having a gourmet meal made by Cook Sony who can very precisely follow a known-good recipe vs the same meal made by Chef Zeiss who knows how to improvise by feel.
Ah, the 135. I knew I was forgetting one. I absolutely agree about Sony lenses. I've been using the 40mm f/2.5 G lately and it's a good and fine do-all lens and I like the interface and size a lot, but when I get the images back, it's almost clinical in how it handles subjects. I can't find any faults in it so far, but it feels sort of like a person who is an absolute expert at something, but almost if not totally bored by the the doing of it. The Zeiss lenses I have always feel like an expert that still loves the thing they are doing, if that makes any sense.
Hi David First of all: thank you for your very good understandable and not too fast speaking. English is a foreign language for me and such kind of speech in a video does help a lot. 😊 Would you mind to answer my questions: 1. Do you also have experience and maybe reviews of other Batis lenses? 2. Would you share your „general adjustments to enhance “3D-Pop“ and microcontrast with Lightroom that could be used as preset, well knowing that a preset does not work for each and every RAW? I recently switched from Leica M11 to Sony A7RV and I find the GM Primes great but often flat and without soul. I think the Zeiss Batis lenses are what I’m looking for regarding image look. Thanks so much in advance! Dietmar
@@DietmarBachmann @DietmarBachmann thank you! I am also happy to answer your questions. 1- Not yet. I do want to review them all. Next up is the 18mm and it's penciled into the calendar for next year. I don't own it and have to rent it, which I've done and it's a superb lens, but all gear rentals are on pause for me for a bit. 2- Microcontrast pop is something I need to figure out a good way to describe. Basically, I think that some variables affect it -- subject distance, lens aperture, lighting, camera settings, and raw processing. I do think that in-lens and situational image aspects are the primary factors but I don't yet know how to test that or clearly demonstrate a method to consistently obtain it. That said, the one raw setting I can think of that should have a noticeable influence is sharpness. Image sharpness is often directly linked to contrast (it does not need to be and a century ago lenses were engineered to be sharp but with low contrast to facilitate printing and the, relative to today, much higher contrast film emulsions in use.) But digital is a different animal than vintage film tech and contrast and sharpness travel together like luggage and toiletries. As a starting point for contrast enhancement, adjust the slider by a percentage that matches your sensor megapixel count. For my A7 IV I use 35%. I also shoot a 50MP GFX 50S II and adjusting the sharpness slider to 50% makes the images look disgusting. So I use 35% at most with that one, too. The point is to start at the percentage that matches your MP count and then adjust to your liking. Remember to evaluate the entire image not just zooms because people will look at your whole image and not zooms. If there is a piece of editing overarching philosophy that I stick with it's to edit my images in the manner in which they will be viewed.
Great montage! I can't help but ask if the images are SOOC or edited. If they are the former, I could understand owning the lens for the 'Zeiss Look' alone. TYVM for the vid!
Good question. There is some editing. In general, I'll edit raw and here are the things I'll do: 1- Clone out sensor dust 2- Adjust the highlight, shadow, white, dark, and sharpness sliders some That's pretty much it. I rarely adjust saturation and vibrance, almost never touch the curves, and also rarely crop at all. When I do crop, it's usually not much. I try to shoot to use the entire image area and don't think that cropping a full-frame image to APS-C provides accurate information about what a lens can do. The same is true for any of my film review videos -- I try to do the framing correctly in the camera. So basically, I try my best to provide results which are easily achievable by any photographer in terms of editing, indicative of actual lens performance, and fair to the lens itself.
@@DavidHancockIs „clone-out sensor dust“ in Lightroom „Effects“ menu next to Clarity and Structure or how do you do that step no. 1? Thanks for this great video!! 🙏🙏🙏
@@DietmarBachmann I use Photoshop CS6. When I open the raw files in bulk, usually a few hundred at a time, I'll use the spot removal brush to remove the dust spots on one where they're apparent. The make whatever other adjustments I need, synchronize all the adjustments including the cloning across every image, and when I triage them individually of the bulk cloning caused a weird artifact in one (for instance if a person's face is in a spot where the sky had been in a previous image and now they have three eyes) I can remove just that clone and manually touch it up in raster editing instead.
Most of the city photos are from Bilbao, Spain. Some are from Denver, Colorado. Most of the outdoor photos are from around Colorado with some, like the photos of the horses, from the Basque region of Spain.
quick question: Can you MF focus the lens to hyperfocal distance ( via the LCD display on the lens) switch the camera off and on and retain the same focal point (without having to refocus) ?
IIRC, that depends on your camera settings. On my A7 IV, the answer is no because when it powers back on it reverts to autofocus even if I specifically selected manual focus before turning it off.
Lots of possible reasons. I edit for my screen (which is my only choice, since I don't have other screens) and my screen settings are different than others. For instance, I was showing some colleagues some photos at work and my work monitor displayed them with WAY different colors and contrast than my home monitor, which was frustrating. Also, RUclips videos are 4K but these were all shot on 33 megapixels, so there's compression just to downsample to 4K. Then the 4K videos are compressed and optimized for streaming, which further compresses them. And it could also be that my editing style, which does involve a bumping up the shadow detail and dialing back the highlights a lot, looks a lot like HDR.
@@DavidHancockI also had the same thought when I saw your images, at least some of them. Maybe you could be more careful with pushing lowlights and reducing highlights at the same time, or at least use masks for that.
The Zeiss Batis Distagon 25mm 2.0 T* is good, as long you do not compare it to Sony 24mm 1.4 GM ! Zeiss really needs to make improved versions of the Batis and Loxia Lenses !!!
@@DavidHancock The Sony 24mm 1.4 GM is the best performing 24mm you can get, but I do wish for a more compact and more light weight 24mm, fx aperture 2.0 or 2.8, it should have at least the same optical performance as the Sony, I hope Voigtländer will make a 24mm Apo-Lanthar Lens.
I have both, i really can`t choose between them. The zeiss has that artistic imperfection what you call character. The sony 24 GM is just a precision instrument. I use the sony a night with wide open aperture. The zeiss in daytime for it`s classic zeiss look. Pure objective the sony beats the zeiss on all fronts exept one, artistic impression.
I know both, long time used the Sony 24 GM. Then tried the Zeiss 25 and that was an eye-opener in terms of 3D-Pop and realism. The Sony looks „super-correct“, but compared to the Zeiss it’s flat and boring. I now plan to switch to even more Batis lenses, including the 85mm.
@@DietmarBachmann I would not go for the 25mm Batis, it is not sharp enough for 60 megapixels sensor cameras ! I have the excellent Zeiss Loxia Distagon 21mm 2.8 T* which is the best performing wide angle Zeiss lens with a Sony E-mount, so I would got for the Zeiss Loxia Distagon 25mm 2.4 T* ! I have the Zeiss Batis Sonnar 85mm 1.8 T* which is an excellent Lens ! Now I also have the Sony 85mm 1.4 GM II which have outstanding good optical image quality. I do not agree with your opinion that Zeiss have more "pop" than Sony GM Lenses !
TBH these are not great pix, though they're probably not meant to be seen as that. However, I think your post production is pulling too much detail out of them and some of the early ones have got to the point where they look a little cartoony. Not a great look to me but then everyone's mileage is different.
So, ignoring the intentional, unprofessional rudeness in your comment, you're saying you have a different image aesthetic than I do. Cool. That's a good way to say that. As for processing, I do not do much to my raw files -- contrast balancing to eliminate raw file flatness and recover highlight and shadow detail. The photos I share in these are minimally processed -- no fancy color swoops or lighting flares added. These videos are designed to show what a lens can do and what images it can create on its own so that when people want to manipulate their photos they have an idea of the baseline image quality they're going to work with. 99% of the photos on my channel are not even cropped.
If you don't like being shot at don't stick your head over the parapet. This wasn't unprofessional or rude. It was a statement of my feelings. They're not great shots, and as I said, they were probably never shown as being that. And that's fine. And if they're pretty untouched as you appear to claim it would really put me off the lens. But I doubt they are....@@DavidHancock
Well you can't have been in a professional photographic or filming environment otherwise you'd understand it was neither of those things. I'd suggest you're too lily livered to survive in a professional environment. That is the end of what I have to say. Thanks...@@DavidHancock
Yeah… Runbber grip is a no no. I’ve bought one Signa macro used with that finish and it is disgusting. Such a poor choice of material for an object that will be used as a tool. I bet they picked it so it would look matte. Like matte car paint that can’t resist bird poop…🐦 Form did not follow function.
@@wendysburgers4326 so explain to me how that benefits anyone. My camera is probably different than yours, which means it has a different sensor, different software that controls that sensor, and likely has different settings in terms of image capture and camera setup. Even shooting raw versus jpeg makes a difference as do jpg settings. So already any results I have will be different from your results unless you have the same model camera with the same configuration and the same firmware. Showing SOOC samples would be about as useful to you and me reviewing my underwear and then handing them to you to try on. Plus showing SOOC images assumes that people actually shoot like that and no one does. Using edited photos in reviews is a practice that dates back to the 1800s -- literally. What I do is exit minimally and much less than the majority of reviewers. So what I'm providing in these reviews is something close to what most anyone should be able to expect themselves to achieve with these lenses because I'm not doing anything more than adjusting a few sliders to correct for raw image flatness and softness and removing dust spots. That's, in the world of camera and lens reviews, as close to SOOC as you're likely to find.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Over the past several years, I've acquired 4 of the 5 Batis lenses. Only the 135 is missing. They all have the Zeiss "look," or "pop," which I really like. The 40 lives on the front of my camera as the default for grab-n-go shooting when I don't know the subject beforehand. The 25 is next favorite. These I use more than my Sony brand lenses, which are also fantastic. The difference is that with those, while optically excellent, they don't have special character. It's like having a gourmet meal made by Cook Sony who can very precisely follow a known-good recipe vs the same meal made by Chef Zeiss who knows how to improvise by feel.
Ah, the 135. I knew I was forgetting one. I absolutely agree about Sony lenses. I've been using the 40mm f/2.5 G lately and it's a good and fine do-all lens and I like the interface and size a lot, but when I get the images back, it's almost clinical in how it handles subjects. I can't find any faults in it so far, but it feels sort of like a person who is an absolute expert at something, but almost if not totally bored by the the doing of it. The Zeiss lenses I have always feel like an expert that still loves the thing they are doing, if that makes any sense.
@@DavidHancock The Zeiss Batis Apo Sonnar 135mm 1.8 * are the best of the bunch.
@@cameraprepper7938the 135mm Zeiss Batis is F2.8
Phenomenal review. Ty.
Thank you!
Your photos always blow me away, put mine on my old Nex 6 and enjoyed it very much. Sony colors are always a challenge but the lens is amazing.
Thank you!
Danke!
Hi David
First of all: thank you for your very good understandable and not too fast speaking. English is a foreign language for me and such kind of speech in a video does help a lot. 😊
Would you mind to answer my questions:
1. Do you also have experience and maybe reviews of other Batis lenses?
2. Would you share your „general adjustments to enhance “3D-Pop“ and microcontrast with Lightroom that could be used as preset, well knowing that a preset does not work for each and every RAW?
I recently switched from Leica M11 to Sony A7RV and I find the GM Primes great but often flat and without soul. I think the Zeiss Batis lenses are what I’m looking for regarding image look.
Thanks so much in advance!
Dietmar
@@DietmarBachmann @DietmarBachmann thank you! I am also happy to answer your questions.
1- Not yet. I do want to review them all. Next up is the 18mm and it's penciled into the calendar for next year. I don't own it and have to rent it, which I've done and it's a superb lens, but all gear rentals are on pause for me for a bit.
2- Microcontrast pop is something I need to figure out a good way to describe. Basically, I think that some variables affect it -- subject distance, lens aperture, lighting, camera settings, and raw processing. I do think that in-lens and situational image aspects are the primary factors but I don't yet know how to test that or clearly demonstrate a method to consistently obtain it. That said, the one raw setting I can think of that should have a noticeable influence is sharpness. Image sharpness is often directly linked to contrast (it does not need to be and a century ago lenses were engineered to be sharp but with low contrast to facilitate printing and the, relative to today, much higher contrast film emulsions in use.) But digital is a different animal than vintage film tech and contrast and sharpness travel together like luggage and toiletries. As a starting point for contrast enhancement, adjust the slider by a percentage that matches your sensor megapixel count. For my A7 IV I use 35%. I also shoot a 50MP GFX 50S II and adjusting the sharpness slider to 50% makes the images look disgusting. So I use 35% at most with that one, too. The point is to start at the percentage that matches your MP count and then adjust to your liking. Remember to evaluate the entire image not just zooms because people will look at your whole image and not zooms. If there is a piece of editing overarching philosophy that I stick with it's to edit my images in the manner in which they will be viewed.
Thank you so much!
Great montage! I can't help but ask if the images are SOOC or edited. If they are the former, I could understand owning the lens for the 'Zeiss Look' alone. TYVM for the vid!
Good question. There is some editing. In general, I'll edit raw and here are the things I'll do:
1- Clone out sensor dust
2- Adjust the highlight, shadow, white, dark, and sharpness sliders some
That's pretty much it. I rarely adjust saturation and vibrance, almost never touch the curves, and also rarely crop at all. When I do crop, it's usually not much. I try to shoot to use the entire image area and don't think that cropping a full-frame image to APS-C provides accurate information about what a lens can do. The same is true for any of my film review videos -- I try to do the framing correctly in the camera.
So basically, I try my best to provide results which are easily achievable by any photographer in terms of editing, indicative of actual lens performance, and fair to the lens itself.
@@DavidHancockIs „clone-out sensor dust“ in Lightroom „Effects“ menu next to Clarity and Structure or how do you do that step no. 1? Thanks for this great video!! 🙏🙏🙏
@@DietmarBachmann I use Photoshop CS6. When I open the raw files in bulk, usually a few hundred at a time, I'll use the spot removal brush to remove the dust spots on one where they're apparent. The make whatever other adjustments I need, synchronize all the adjustments including the cloning across every image, and when I triage them individually of the bulk cloning caused a weird artifact in one (for instance if a person's face is in a spot where the sky had been in a previous image and now they have three eyes) I can remove just that clone and manually touch it up in raster editing instead.
If you be kind enough to tell me where did you take these pictures, and which city? from about 16:12 onward.
Most of the city photos are from Bilbao, Spain. Some are from Denver, Colorado. Most of the outdoor photos are from around Colorado with some, like the photos of the horses, from the Basque region of Spain.
quick question: Can you MF focus the lens to hyperfocal distance ( via the LCD display on the lens) switch the camera off and on and retain the same focal point (without having to refocus) ?
IIRC, that depends on your camera settings. On my A7 IV, the answer is no because when it powers back on it reverts to autofocus even if I specifically selected manual focus before turning it off.
how come most of the pictures look like HDR
Lots of possible reasons. I edit for my screen (which is my only choice, since I don't have other screens) and my screen settings are different than others. For instance, I was showing some colleagues some photos at work and my work monitor displayed them with WAY different colors and contrast than my home monitor, which was frustrating. Also, RUclips videos are 4K but these were all shot on 33 megapixels, so there's compression just to downsample to 4K. Then the 4K videos are compressed and optimized for streaming, which further compresses them. And it could also be that my editing style, which does involve a bumping up the shadow detail and dialing back the highlights a lot, looks a lot like HDR.
@@DavidHancockI also had the same thought when I saw your images, at least some of them. Maybe you could be more careful with pushing lowlights and reducing highlights at the same time, or at least use masks for that.
Oh thats a nice lens!!
Yeah. Zeiss hit a homerun with this one.
The Zeiss Batis Distagon 25mm 2.0 T* is good, as long you do not compare it to Sony 24mm 1.4 GM ! Zeiss really needs to make improved versions of the Batis and Loxia Lenses !!!
That Sony 24mm is on my want-to-try list for sure.
@@DavidHancock The Sony 24mm 1.4 GM is the best performing 24mm you can get, but I do wish for a more compact and more light weight 24mm, fx aperture 2.0 or 2.8, it should have at least the same optical performance as the Sony, I hope Voigtländer will make a 24mm Apo-Lanthar Lens.
I have both, i really can`t choose between them. The zeiss has that artistic imperfection what you call character.
The sony 24 GM is just a precision instrument.
I use the sony a night with wide open aperture. The zeiss in daytime for it`s classic zeiss look.
Pure objective the sony beats the zeiss on all fronts exept one, artistic impression.
I know both, long time used the Sony 24 GM. Then tried the Zeiss 25 and that was an eye-opener in terms of 3D-Pop and realism. The Sony looks „super-correct“, but compared to the Zeiss it’s flat and boring. I now plan to switch to even more Batis lenses, including the 85mm.
@@DietmarBachmann I would not go for the 25mm Batis, it is not sharp enough for 60 megapixels sensor cameras ! I have the excellent Zeiss Loxia Distagon 21mm 2.8 T* which is the best performing wide angle Zeiss lens with a Sony E-mount, so I would got for the Zeiss Loxia Distagon 25mm 2.4 T* ! I have the Zeiss Batis Sonnar 85mm 1.8 T* which is an excellent Lens ! Now I also have the Sony 85mm 1.4 GM II which have outstanding good optical image quality. I do not agree with your opinion that Zeiss have more "pop" than Sony GM Lenses !
Is this lens worth $340?
Easily. New they're around three times that.
this lens has a personnality
It's incredible. Makes me want to buy the rest of the Batis lenses to try them. :D
Indeed, it`s just nice to look at.
Still i don`t use em in the dark, they`re just not good enough.
TBH these are not great pix, though they're probably not meant to be seen as that. However, I think your post production is pulling too much detail out of them and some of the early ones have got to the point where they look a little cartoony. Not a great look to me but then everyone's mileage is different.
So, ignoring the intentional, unprofessional rudeness in your comment, you're saying you have a different image aesthetic than I do. Cool. That's a good way to say that.
As for processing, I do not do much to my raw files -- contrast balancing to eliminate raw file flatness and recover highlight and shadow detail. The photos I share in these are minimally processed -- no fancy color swoops or lighting flares added. These videos are designed to show what a lens can do and what images it can create on its own so that when people want to manipulate their photos they have an idea of the baseline image quality they're going to work with. 99% of the photos on my channel are not even cropped.
If you don't like being shot at don't stick your head over the parapet. This wasn't unprofessional or rude. It was a statement of my feelings. They're not great shots, and as I said, they were probably never shown as being that. And that's fine. And if they're pretty untouched as you appear to claim it would really put me off the lens. But I doubt they are....@@DavidHancock
Your wording was both unprofessional and rude. The fact that you're not even willing to stand up and take credit for it is a disservice to us both.
Well you can't have been in a professional photographic or filming environment otherwise you'd understand it was neither of those things. I'd suggest you're too lily livered to survive in a professional environment. That is the end of what I have to say. Thanks...@@DavidHancock
@@MikeKleinsteuber Thank you for your feedback.
Yeah… Runbber grip is a no no. I’ve bought one Signa macro used with that finish and it is disgusting. Such a poor choice of material for an object that will be used as a tool. I bet they picked it so it would look matte. Like matte car paint that can’t resist bird poop…🐦 Form did not follow function.
Concur. I don't like how little bits of dust stick to it, too. I'd much rather have had a plastic grip with a milled texture instead.
SHOWING EDITED photos 🤦♂️
Instead of Straight out of the Camera look of the lens, this a review.
@@wendysburgers4326 All photographers edit their photos and always have. I just do a lot less editing than most.
Proper Review is a Must. This just unrealistic Review.
@@DavidHancock
Show first the Straight out the Camera look of the Lens, then show the Edited.
@@wendysburgers4326 so explain to me how that benefits anyone. My camera is probably different than yours, which means it has a different sensor, different software that controls that sensor, and likely has different settings in terms of image capture and camera setup. Even shooting raw versus jpeg makes a difference as do jpg settings. So already any results I have will be different from your results unless you have the same model camera with the same configuration and the same firmware. Showing SOOC samples would be about as useful to you and me reviewing my underwear and then handing them to you to try on. Plus showing SOOC images assumes that people actually shoot like that and no one does. Using edited photos in reviews is a practice that dates back to the 1800s -- literally. What I do is exit minimally and much less than the majority of reviewers. So what I'm providing in these reviews is something close to what most anyone should be able to expect themselves to achieve with these lenses because I'm not doing anything more than adjusting a few sliders to correct for raw image flatness and softness and removing dust spots. That's, in the world of camera and lens reviews, as close to SOOC as you're likely to find.
@@DavidHancock PROPER REVIEW IS A MUST
Straight out the Camera (UNEDITED JPEGs) look of the Lens. Regardless of Camera Body.
@@DavidHancock Then choose Neutral Picture Profile in the Camera Body 🤦♂️
Makes everything 0, not + or -