The Distagon is a retrofocus design, whereas the Biogon is not. The Biogon is the better lens, optically.
... Unlike the oddball 16mm, the 21mm is a real, practical lens. Just like the rest of the lenses, you get autofocus and TTL metering for flash and ambient light, screw-in 55mm filters, and it's three stops faster than the 16mm.
... The only gotcha is that you have to compose through a separate finder slipped into the hot shoe. The finder is nicer than the finder of the Mamiya 7 43mm lens because its focus is fixed, but the Zeiss finder lacks a level.
The Zeiss 21mm has no visible distortion, although the separate finder sure does.(emphasis mine).
... The Zeiss 21mm is super sharp, even wide-open at f/2.8.
The Zeiss 21mm is so sharp that you have to pay attention to depth-of-field at f/2.8, even for distant subjects.
Unlike most 21mm SLR lenses that are soft at f/2.8, this Zeiss is ultra sharp. Because this Zeiss is so sharp, areas that are slightly out-of-focus at f/2.8 will be obviously out-of-focus compared to the in-focus areas.
Softer lenses seem to have deeper depths-of-field at f/2.8 because they lack a hard, sharp, in-focus core. With softer lenses, the out of focus area seems more acceptable because there is no significantly sharper in focus area to call it out. Cheaper lenses often are seen as having deeper depths-of-field because their overall softness misleads our eyes to perceive a sloppier, and thus deeper, area as "in-focus."
Because of this, I thought my first test shots of real subjects with the Zeiss 21mm were soft in some areas of the image at f/2.8, even though my tests on the mountain at infinity were sharp edge-to-edge at f/2.8. I first thought I might have a bad sample with some mechanical wobble. NO! What I was seeing was a lack of depth-of-field at f/2.8 because of the extreme sharpness of the narrow in-focus area. When focused at 20 feet (6m), objects that are a few feet (1m) closer or farther away are softer, due to limited depth of field at f/2.8.
I've never used a 21mm lens this sharp or this fast to be able to notice selective focus effects for distant subjects before!
Be sure to stop down if this is going to bother you. This Zeiss 21mm is good enough to show off sloppy focus technique.
The corners are still sharp wide open, but they do lose the slightest contrast compared to f/4. This lens is as good as Leica's 28mm f/2.8 ASPH; the two are identical in performance; I've shot tests between them.(emphasis mine)
Is using that external finder as much of a pain as I think it is? That's sort of a turn off to me.
No, actually, it's pretty easy to get used to. Let me dig up some images I made with the lens and you'll see why it is worth any hassle it might impose.
Although they're different, I now like Ektar 100 better than Reala. Reala used to be my go-to 35mm film. Between the arrival of Ektar and the demise of Reala, I'm actually glad I made the switch.
Are you judging from minilab prints or from something else?
The middle shot may or may not be your cup of tea - it is night photography and the color temperature of the various light sources may seem weird. The last one, Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, is absolutely spot-on natural, from my monitor's perspective. If you don't like it, though, you don't like it. I suspect you've been psychologically ruined by Fuji's over-the-top greens - they super-saturated the green dyes in their films for some reason.
Just to give some perspective on this ...
When Kodak was predominant in large portions of the world, their different international labs had slightly different targets for ideal colour balance, contrast and density. Those differences reflected the preferences of local markets.
They also produced motion picture film at more than one location, and the characteristics varied slightly depending on location.
My father had some experience assisting a film crew in Vancouver Canada who were attempting to complete a partially completed film, where the original footage was shot on Kodak Pathe materials - apparently that was an interesting challenge for Kodak Canada.
That being said, I expect that the differences observed by RattyMouse have way more to do with scanning than any other factor.
Ratty what sort of time of day are you shooting Ektar? I have been getting mine developed and scanned by a local lab and it comes out fine when shot in the day, can get a bit to magenta if shot in the evening though and the colour casts look much worse on my el cheapo PC monitor than my Macbook Retina, the later probably only half way good in this regard. Deep reds and yellows in the sun look fantastic on Ektar.
I am just about to sell an M7 body at a considerable loss after only a few months. Trying lots of different bodies is fun but feels like a mugs game looking at the bank balance, like you're decision I am sticking to buying more lenses or books or large print jobs.
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