#319. I want to ride my icicle (more Zeiss 35/1.4 ZM)

Feb 01

Tomorrow morning, my loaner Zeiss 35/1.4 ZM has to go back to its rightful owners. This is a little heartbraking as it has been a glorious companion for my little Sony. Small, discrete, beautiful. And oh so utterly brilliant at making pictures.

So, yesterday, seizing one of the last opportunities to complete my review of Zeiss’s lovely Distagon T* 1.4/35 ZM lens by comparing it with 2 other high-quality 35mm lenses, I got up before the crack of dawn to head into the hills.

Rising slow

It was a beautiful morning, and the stars should have warned me about the brass monkey temperatures, but I didn’t heed their twinkling warning and I froze my fingers off making these photographs.

My goal was to shoot a North-facing cliff-face, with forest at its foot and a monastery hanging on its side, as a test-chart substitute with loads of interesting detail to look out for (see here for more on this fantastic photo site in Provence). But some frozen puddles just off the car-park were just too good to leave unattended.

So here are a few of the resulting pictures to show you what that lens is capable of before the less artistic 3-way comparison post that will be published in a few days.

I do hope readers will spend as much time taking in the imaging qualities of the lens as peering at meaningless pixel-level aberrations. Tell me what you think 🙂