The FE 50mm f/2.5 G lens arrived this morning:

My set of small lenses is now complete; the Sigma 24mm f/3.5 DG DN, Sony FE 28-60mm f/4-5.6 collapsible kit zoom, and Sony FE 50mm f/2.5 G.

You may ask what’s the point. Well, I do already have bigger and optically stellar lenses, but the thing with those is that they are occasionally too big for me to just carry around when I’m out for a walk without any particular photographic aim in mind, but I still want to have a good camera in order to catch something that caught my eye unexpectedly.

FE 50mm f/1.8

The thing is, despite the fact that I love the effect they produce, I don’t always need the extreme optics. When I’m using the FE 50mm f/1.2 GM at f/8, and I do, there’s not much difference between that and a much lighter lens; they would both do excellently. Sometimes, I don’t need anything more extreme than my old Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 did for me, and that’s a Four Thirds sensor at f/3.5. It did many things brilliantly. It would be silly to get a whole different camera system just so that I could have a light walkaround setup, but it’s quite possible to have such a setup on 35mm Sony; you just have to sacrifice aperture. So, essentially, I have the smaller A7CR camera, three small lenses with brilliant but “slow” optics, and the whole system is not really pocketable, but the lenses are. The camera itself with one lens on it would probably fit in my winter jacket, but I haven’t tried it. 🙂

So, what can this new 50mm do in closeup photography? I did a quick test:

That’s wide open at minimum focusing distance. Bokeh is good in non-backlit conditions, and actually better than I feared it would be in harsh, backlit conditions. There is some spherochromatism but barely noticeable, and although the lens doesn’t render the background out of toffee the way GM lenses do, I am quite pleased with what it does, if I consider it from a Four Thirds perspective. Also, it can get quite close for a 50mm, which helps to blur out the background. The colours are modern, which means excellent and neutral. Contrast is great, sharpness is excellent, I haven’t had the opportunity to test it against flare yet, and CA seem to be minimal. We’ll see how it does when I actually take it for a spin. But so far, so good.

Edit: I did the first shoot.

The images are extremely detailed corner to corner. It outresolves the 61MP sensor and is probably designed for a 100MP sensor. The colours are excellent, as I expected. GM level of image quality.

Flare with sun in the frame. There isn’t any.

The ability to blur out the background for such shots is excellent. Also, notice spherochromatism on the blurred-out grass. It’s slight, but it’s there.

Extreme sharpness and nice separation of the planes wide open.

All in all, the image quality is stellar, from wide open to diffraction limit. I highly recommend the lens.

Every now and then I watch a review of some lens and then the reviewer says it has “that something”, “the look”, “soul” or some other stupid bullshit that people use when they can’t define what they are talking about but still want to be taken seriously.

At some point I started interpreting such statements as “the lens is shit”, and that usually turns out to be exactly right. When someone can’t define why something is good, it probably means it’s shit in a way that reminds them of their faded-out family photos taken with a similar camera, that was also shit.

Also, there are terms like “micro-contrast”. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

“Micro-contrast is the ability of a lens to capture subtle tonal variations and details within an image, enhancing the richness and vibrancy of colours and transitions between light and dark areas.”

Yeah, that’s also known as “resolution”, defined as the ability to distinguish between pairs of black and white lines. Subtle tonal variations and details… What is that supposed to mean? The colours aren’t muddy because the lens is sharp and apochromatic, meaning the photons of different wavelengths go where they’re supposed to. Lenses are physics, not bullshit. In physics, when something happens, there’s an actual phenomenon causing it.

I hear that shit regularly whenever something from Zeiss or Leica is reviewed. Oh, it has “that something”, it has the “3d pop”, it has “micro-contrast”. Then you put the image from a Zeiss lens next to some other lens and they look the same and then you think “what the hell are those guys smoking”. I don’t know, but it’s not doing them a great deal of good. “3d pop” is a combination of sharpness, contrast and depth of field. Contrast is usually a function of resolution and anti-glare coating. In case of Zeiss, I think the coating might actually suppress the dark tones, boosting contrast at the expense of tonal gradient, which is, interestingly, the only actual characteristic that I can attribute to Zeiss lenses that isn’t complete fiction. Other than that, yeah, they are sharp. So is almost everything else today. They are contrasty and have good coating. So does almost everything else. I actually prefer the coating on the Sony GM lenses because it doesn’t suppress tonality in deep shadows as much as T* coating seems to, and for some reason the images from the Zeiss lenses feel “cooler”, while the Sony lenses feel “warmer”, and it’s not a white balance thing or a colour cast. I’d say it has to be caused by the way T* coating deals with wavelengths; what is reflected, what is transmitted. It’s a very subtle thing, and that’s how you get the impression of micro-contrast; if you have a bush with light and dark parts of the leaves, and the dark parts are suppressed, you get the impression of increased contrast in the details, which can create the impression of three-dimensionality in the image. However, that might be the last thing you want if you’re shooting portraits, and it actually seems to boost extreme colours at the expense of gradient, which is also not something you might want in portraits.

Sony A7II, FE 16-35mm f/4 Zeiss Vario-Tessar

Sony A7RV, FE 24-105mm f/4 G

So, basically, “that something” the Zeiss lenses have is the Zeiss badge, which makes the reviewers go ape shit with hyperbole. The coating suppresses the shadows, giving you contrast and cooler tone at the expense of tonal gradient. That’s great if you want it and shit if you don’t, but it’s not some mystical, magical property.

The reason I love the GM lenses so much is partially because the coating seems to do the exact opposite from T*; it doesn’t suppress, the way a polarizing filter would. The tonal gradient across the spectrum is preserved, and when you combine that with extreme sharpness, apochromatic design and incredibly smooth rolloff into bokeh, you get a combination properties that “clicks” with me so much that I basically went out and bought all of them.

Sony A7CR, FE 35mm f/1.4 GM

But it’s not a GM feature. Sigma Art lenses are doing the same thing, for the most part. It’s a function of extreme sharpness, modern coating and excellent bokeh. Put those properties together and the result appears magical, but it’s just good optics; more than just good, in fact. You can say they have “that something”. Yeah. Something is somethingating into quite a bit of somethinglings that somethingiggulate.

It’s not that I hate normal lenses. OK, I do, but it wasn’t always the case. My first lens was a 35-70mm f/3.5 standard zoom with 1:4 macro capability. Then I went to a digital equivalent of 28-105mm on Four Thirds; a very similar but even more versatile standard zoom lens.

Minolta X-300, MD 35-70mm f/3.5, Kodak Gold 200 print film

When we count the years, I used exclusively standard zooms from 1984 to 2003, when I bought used Minolta 50mm f/1.4 and 135mm f/2.8 Rokkors, and a 28mm f/2.8 Vivitar.

Essentially, my entire photography thing was an intimate detail, and all I wanted from equipment was to photograph that well. Since I didn’t have the money for specialised lenses, I used the standard zoom, and for the most part it did fine; in effect, it did the job of a macro lens I didn’t have.

Olympus E1, ZD 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5

Then, when I moved to the Canon EF system, I decided I had two realistic options. Either continue the trend and buy a standard zoom lens, or force myself to learn other aspects of photography. So, I chose the latter and bought everything but the standard zoom. Sure, I eventually figured out that I actually need one, so I bought the cheapest one, the EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5, very much used, and made in 1987. I wanted to force myself not to use the standard zoom for everything.

That’s when I started learning landscape photography and other stuff that’s not closeup. It worked, and I developed my own style of creating atmospheric shots with everything in focus and everything in the frame, with a diagonal fisheye and a 17-40mm ultrawide.

Canon 5d, EF 17-40mm f/4L, CPL

So, now I had two aspects of my style: atmospheric with everything in the frame and sharp, and a closeup shot of a detail that conveys the feeling.

Canon 5d, EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5, macro extenders

Both aspects are extreme; essentially, either almost everything visible, or almost nothing visible but the detail I happened to notice somewhere in the grass. What’s missing? The normal, typical perspective. Or, to be honest, the kind of lenses and perspectives that were supposed to be normal for photographers were extremely uncommon for me. To me, it’s either light through the petals, or the whole scenery.

Or is it?

Recently, I understood that for someone who almost never used a “normal” lens, or at least doesn’t use it in a normal way, I have a pretty good collection of all-time favourites made with 50mm, and with normal perspective.

Soligor SR-300MD, MC 50mm f/1.4 Rokkor-PG, Kodak EB2 slide

This made me rethink the 50mm and the “normal” perspective. It’s not that I hate it. I hate that it is neither macro nor ultrawide, but when it works, it really works. So, I’m revisiting it lately, but of course in moderation. I have the safeguard of still mostly using the 50mm as a stand-in for macro, in its closeup capacity, but I’m trying to find other subjects for it as well.

Sony A7RV, FE 50mm f/1.2 GM

I’m pretty stubborn in a sense that I’d rather keep doing things my way, than copy someone else’s style and methods if they don’t click with me. If everybody uses a 50mm because they were told that’s the way, I’ll use a 90mm macro because I like what it does more. However, it’s not that I don’t like what I’m getting with a 50mm. As I said, some of my favourites are made with a 50mm. I just have to find a way of doing my own thing with a normal perspective; that is, neither really wide, nor focused on a tiny detail torn from the surroundings. It’s difficult, because the usual reason why I go for the detail is that everything else looks like a mess, and when it doesn’t, I usually go for a wideangle.

But when a 50mm works, it works not because it’s a dramatic perspective of either great or small; it’s because it captures peace and serenity of the normal.

I know it must be confusing to people when I talk about lenses; for instance, I want to have the subject sharp and background blurred, and I use all kinds of lenses to achieve that. Can’t it be done with just one lens?

Well, no. Let me illustrate.

FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM

This was taken with a 100-400mm telephoto zoom. The subject is sharp and defined, while the background falls off rapidly and is completely blurred. I use it for shooting at longer distances, where the subject is a bird or a butterfly that would be spooked and fly off if I came any closer. You can’t make this shot with a shorter lens, unless the butterfly is half dead and doesn’t really respond, which actually does happen.

FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM

This, however, is an example of something that is definitely not dead, asleep or comatose – it’s a hummingbird moth in flight, and it’s all over the place. You need a long lens, and you need it to be reasonably fast in order to be able to freeze motion, while keeping the ISO values reasonable. Wide apertures also help to blur the background, but here the focal length and the fact that I’m as close as possible do most of the work.

FE 135mm f/1.8 GM

This is different subject matter entirely; dew drops on the cobweb suspended on a pine branch in the dawn fog. In order to cut the depth of field at that distance, you need both longer focal length and aperture. A fast 135mm lens does the trick very nicely.

FE 135mm f/1.8 GM

Similarly, in order to freeze two butterflies in flight, at the same time, you need both longer focal length and aperture; you’re working at telephoto distances, but you need almost-macro outcomes. This requires both aperture and focal length.

However, sometimes you need to get much closer, and magnify a (mostly) static subject. That’s what a macro lens is for.

FE 90mm f/2.8 G macro

But let’s say you want to put your camera into a bush and get the 3d impression of the whole thing, while still cutting the depth of field. That’s where a fast 35mm lens becomes useful.

FE 35mm f/1.4 GM

You are getting a slice of the environment, where you see enough, but intimacy of the narrow depth of field is still preserved.

And then, of course, you have lenses whose purpose is to get everything sharp, like the 24mm or even wider, but they are not what we are interested in right now.

One can now ask whether, for instance, something could be shot with a slower but longer zoom, instead of a fast but shorter prime. Yes it could, because there are overlapping scenarios where multiple optics would work equally well. On the other hand, when things get outside the scenario where a certain lens still works, for instance it gets dark, the other lens is still within its optimal functioning parameters.

FE 135mm f/1.8 GM

You see, fast lenses not only reduce the depth of field; they also see in the dark.

There are also intermediary scenarios – the space between 135mm and 35mm that were used as examples is pretty large, and can be filled with either 85mm or 50mm primes, or a mid-range zoom. A zoom would have a more versatile focal length, but a prime would have more versatile aperture, being able to work in light conditions where you can see the stars in the sky when shooting hand-held.

In essence, you can improvise a lot, using lenses for scenarios they weren’t designed for, but where they still work just fine, but you do want to have as many tools in your toolbox as the finances allow. 🙂