First Roll with the Zeiss 50mm ZM Sonnar

I’ve got a whole bunch of photos back from the Sonnar – I’ve sent 6 rolls shot with it to AG over the last few weeks and the first of them came back today. This first set are a fairly Connie focused bunch as they were mostly shot over the first few days I had the lens whilst just knocking about with the family.

I must say, I really regret not biting the bullet and buying this lens sooner. I’ve debated buying one for probably about 18 months, but just never quite been sure how I’d cope with all the stuff that gets talked about focus shift. Earlier on this year I had a bit of an email conversation with one of the team from Zeiss who actually put my mind at rest. It then just came down to a matter of time before I could find one at a good price.

Eventually enough was enough, I couldn’t be doing with waiting for a good used one to pop up, any longer so ordered one new from the good folks at my local London Camera exchange. A week or so later, the lens arrived!

The first roll I shot with it was a roll of Portra 400 shot through the Leica M3 and developed and scanned by the good folk at AG photo lab

These first shots were just shot whilst knocking around the house on a very rainy day with Connie. Shot at f1.5, not because I needed to, but just for the sake of seeing some results from wide open shooting. To be honest, I’m sure if I looked closely I could see the effect of focus shift, but I’m not sure I could tell it apart from my own inability to focus such shallow depth of field. One way or another, I am by no means dissatisfied with the outcome – in fact I think there’s a character here that I can see being quite addictive for this sort of photography.

These next photos are from a little walk we went on with the dogs to do a bit of blackberry picking.

And finally, we have the obligatory first day of school photos. Oh so proud, I was!

I appreciate these are probably not the most artistically thrilling set of photos, but they have certainly proved useful for me. I can see straight away just how capable this lens is when shot stopped down, but also how wonderful it is wide open. It is already making me wonder if I even need the Summicron …

Some more interesting photos coming over the next few days, promise!

Cheers for reading

Hamish

You can find my eventual review of the Zeiss 50mm ZM Sonnar here

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