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Lens review

Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 50 mm f/2 ZF/ZK/ZE

28 January 2013
Arkadiusz Olech

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

The ordinary Planar 1.4/50 had a lot of problems with the coma correction; the Macro-Planar, optically more complicated, also doesn’t manage to correct that aberration well. The coma can be noticed in the corner of the APS-C/DX sensor; in the full frame corner it is already very high and contributes seriously to the weak image quality. What’s important, stopping down by 1 EV doesn’t help almost at all so this aberration remains high, clearly visible in the corners of both types of sensors.

Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 50 mm f/2 ZF/ZK/ZE - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

We can say nicer things about the astigmatism, though. The value of that aberration, measured with help of the Canon 1Ds MkIII, reached 3% and on the Nikon D3x we got 4.5%. Both values are low, indicating that the tested lens corrects it very well.


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We have no reservations whatsoever about defocused images. Blur areas look nice and soft, defocused circles of light points are quite even and smooth, without any obvious rims or borders.

Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 50 mm f/2 ZF/ZK/ZE - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh