Oly 75mm and Zeiss 135mm f/2.8 on OM-D5...initial take

David Kieltyka wrote:

Here's a quick & dirty comparison of my Oly 75mm and Zeiss 135mm f/2.8 (1990s Yashica/Contax mount version) lenses on my OM-D5. Taken this morning--camera mounted on tripod, IBIS turned off, ISO 200, daylight color balance, timer delay--while I had some time to kill. Totally mundane subject matter...sorry. These are from JPEGs with just a touch of sharpening and a saturation nudge via Photogene on my iPad.

First the Oly, at f/4.0 (IMO the optimum aperture for maximizing DOF without degrading resolution):

Now here's a full-res crop (or as close to full-res as Photogene allows) showing the AF point. I used the manual focus rectangle at its smallest size (14x mag.), which also works in AF mode (thanks to the folks who figured this out!). You can almost read the word "WARNING!":

Now here's the Zeiss, at f/2.8 rather than my intended f/5.6...I'll explain this below. Manually focused:

Full-res crop. You can clearly make out the "WARNING!" but the text below it isn't legible. You can also read the numbers at top center on the metering device:

My take is that when doing out & about photography I'd happily leave the 135 in the bag and just crop the 75 to taste. But there's a bit more...

I shot with the Zeiss at f/5.6 too, to get roughly the same DOF as the Oly at f/4.0, but didn't use the photo due to what looks like shake-induced blurring. At first I thought it was focus shift, but my results with focusing at the taking aperture were no better. I know the tripod is stable...took some crisp 15-second shots indoors a few days ago with a Nikon 28mm shift lens. There was no wind to speak of and I was on solid ground. Now the Zeiss isn't that much heavier than the Oly 75, but it is quite front-weighted...I suspect the lens/camera combo is wiggling a tiny bit, either at the lens mount or (much more likely IMO) at the quick-release plate mount. I'm using the Novoflex adapter, which feels rock-solid at both the camera and lens mounts. The exposure time at f/5.6 must be just slow enough to reveal the wiggling. Of course it's possible the f/2.8 shot is slightly degraded too. I'll have to dig into this, including using IBIS with the camera on the tripod to see if it helps.

-Dave-

Nice comparison Dave.

I also have the 75mm and a m42 version of the CZJ 135mm but the f3.5 version.  I did a brief comparison a few weeks back between the following:

Helios 44M 58mm f2
Helios 81H 50mm f2
Olympus 45mm f1.8
Industar 61 LZ 50mm f2.8
CZJ 135mm f3.5
SMC Takumar 135mm f3.5
Olympus 60mm f2.8 Macro
Olympus 75mm f1.8
Pentacon 50mm f1.8

The CJZ is surprisingly sharp.

CZJ 135mm f3.5 M42 @ f3.5