For the last few posts, we’ve been looking at reflections introduced by adding UV filters to a Zeiss Otus 55 mm f/1.4 lens on a  Sony a7RII.  We’ve seen that all the tested UV filters cause reflections, that the detailed nature of the reflections (but not their position) changes with the brand of filter,  and that the… [Read More]

Yesterday I posted results of a test for flare from near-axis light sources. I used a Zeiss Otus 55 mm f/1.4 lens on a Sony a7RII. I noticed at the time that the nature of the reflections varied as I focused the lens. Today, I mounted a Hoya Digital HMC UV(C) filter on the Otus, set it up… [Read More]

A few days ago, I posted a flare comparison of a Zeiss Otus 55 mm f/1.4 lens on a Sony a7RII with and without a 3-stop Hoya ND filter.  Questions arose about the filter I used.  Michael Demeyer said: I would also expect the quality of the filter to matter. For example, the Zeiss filters,… [Read More]

For about 20 years, from the mid-fifties to the late seventies, I routinely used what I called “finger filters”, either haze or UV. Coincidentally, about the time I got serious about making art and buying multi-kilobuck Zeiss and Schneider lenses, I stopped using the filters. There were a few exceptions. I bought a Nikon 300… [Read More]

The is the sixth in a series of posts about the Voigtlander 65 mm f/2 Apo-Lanthar macro lens. The series starts here. I screwed up the last landscape comparison that I tried to do between the Apo-Lanthar and the F-mount 55 mm f/1.4 Zeiss Otus, so I redid the test this morning. The scene with… [Read More]