You're welcome, and I'll try to muddy the waters a little bit more.
There are a few other issues to consider when buying a fifty for mirrorless.
The first choice is between a rangefinder lens (i.e. Voigt, Zeiss Ikon) or an SLR lens (Zeiss K mount, Canon FD, etc., etc.).
Until 50mm, rengefinder designs are usually easily superior to their SLR counterparts, they are either much lighter, or much better, or some of both. That's because SLR lenses must be retrofocus, to leave room for the mirror movement, and that requires lenses from wide to normal to have an asymmetrical design, which is pretty hard to correct for aberrations.
On the other hand, rangefinder lenses can keep symmetrical designs, which allows them to produce better results with simpler designs (hence part of the Leica lenses fame).
There is however, a downside to rangefinder lenses on mirrorless cameras. Since the exit pupils of these lenses are pretty close to the sensor (very non telecentric designs), sometimes you get weird artefacts, especially in the image corners, and I think the CV f 1.5 is one of the lenses which does this, IIRC ( I haven't really had the time to pixelpeep in my picture corners, they are all the time OOF, I use the lens only at f 1.5 for portraits).
So this complicates a bit the choice between a rangefinder and an SLR design.
There is also the issue if the lens contains or not aspherical elements (asphericals might affect bokeh, but also normally improve wide open contrast and resolution). Neither the Voigt and the Zeiss that you were considering have any.
But since choosing an SLR design doesn't seem to bother you, and since a big size doesn't seem to bother you either, may I also suggest the Canon FD 55mm f 1.2 SSC Asph (careful, all the qualifiers in the name are important, there are non asph versions who are pretty average)? This is a great old Canon lens, you will find it for around 600 euro in mint condition. If you mean to use your fifty mostly wide open, this lens should give you all: bokeh, contrast and resolution. Everything I heard on it is superlative. Unfortunately it will be even harder to find thorough reviews on this one.
The Zeiss is a great lens stopped down, very very sharp, but wide open the contrast is only average. You can do some pixel peeping on this site, here a comparison with the Sigma 50mm:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?CameraComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0&Lens=709&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=0&LensComp=473
The aspherical element in the Sigma really shows for wide open performance, IMO, that's why the Zeiss was never an option for me. But if you plan on using it more from f 2 on, the Zeiss is a great lens, and you can buy it brand new for a decent price.
Thanks for posting those links, Bogdan. They did show when I googled the lenses but since I had never ventured on that site, I did not read the reviews earlier. Very thorough reviews both, objective and subjective.
The reviews validate what others had told me that VC 50mm f1.1 is a special lens and if I don't need that aperture then it is best to stay with a regular f1.4 lens. I think the VC 50mm f1.1 review does a great job of explaining that while the lens is great in it's own right but does not compare directly with some of the best f1.4 lenses.
Coming to Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 vs VC 50mm f/1.5, I have read very positive reviews of both. However, one review site, photozone.de, that I do trust dinged the VC badly in it's rating. I have to admit though that photozone guys seem to be a tough crowd to please.
Personally, I think I like Zeiss's bokeh better but one, bokeh isn't scientific comparison and two, even subjectively comparing bokeh of two lenses is hard unless same picture is taken with both.
http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/562-voigtlander50f15nex?start=1
So I am going to search around a bit more. Another candidate in the race is the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 for CY mount that is pretty similar to the current Zeiss except for some additional coating and blades (that change bokeh, I guess).
My gut feeling is whichever lens I buy, I am pretty sure I will always wonder what the other would have been like
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Kind regards,
Bogdan
The guy's a well known troll for photography reviews. He reviews equipment he has never seen or touched
