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

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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.