Reader Comment: Zeiss Milvus 15mm f/2.8 Distagon
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John H writes:
I wanted to pass along another thank you note regarding your work with the 15mm Zeiss. I’ve owned this lens (pre-Milvus) for about a year now, and I spent quite a bit of time puzzling over the issues of sharpness that you’ve aptly mapped to field curvature. One of the first days I owned this lens I put it on my D810 and went for a walk through central Tokyo, just shooting handheld, getting a feel for the lens and its perspective, etc..
The attached cityscape image was shot at f/8 and ISO100, I’ve done some tweaking in Adobe Raw to bring up shadows and bring down highlights. Of course I instantly fell in love with the look and perspective that this lens can deliver. On the D810 it is a wonderful tool.
But I couldn’t help pixel peeping and seeing what the lens was doing. Like some others, I thought…f/8 + 15mm means huge depth of field and everything sharp. But as you say, it never turns out that way, more effort is required to get the best results.
In this photo I can see the field curvature that you’ve presented, the crosswalk offers a nice guide, but you can actually see focus creeping closer going away from the center, and then moving back again toward the edges. This is another confirmation of everything you’ve written on the lens…it is spot on. Of course, it works very nicely for this particular scene, but I wasn’t always that lucky.
Keep up the nice work, it is very helpful and valuable to get the most out of this gear…which is very much worth doing.
DIGLLOYD: the Nikon D810 still takes some of the best images available.
The Milvus 15/2.8 is interesting in always making its owners happy.