Zeiss Touit - Review and Mini Shoot Out

So after a hectic weekend with still not enough time using the lenses, it is time to share my results and findings.

As a 'health warning' this should not be considered a full on review, more an extended hands on, in the real world, also it will be from a Fuji users perspective, as I am not a Sony user.

Touit, why?

Looking at it from the perspective of the Fuji and Sony, it was a good way of increasing the reach of the brand, offering more choice for the consumer.

Interestingly I was speaking to one camera dealer who was recounting to me how he gets a fair few prospective Leica M owners coming in to his shop. Firstly he breaks the news to them that supply is an issue and then there is the small matter of the price...So he offers them the Fuji X Pro1, quite a few have  opted to buy the Fuji, one can imagine that to the discerning customer, the option of a Fuji X Pro 1 sporting Zeiss glassware will be even more compelling.

From the the perspective of Zeiss, it is a huge untapped market, one which was ripe for it to enter.

The Zeiss 32mm in all its cutaway glory.

Construction and Appearance.

When comparing Zeiss 32mm to Fuji 35mm what strikes you straight away is the quality.

Perceived by the user, or otherwise, this is a factor.

The Zeiss is a little bigger, a little heavier which lends it a jewel like quality, the controls being better damped on the Zeiss with the movements on the aperture ring very crisp.

I have spoken about the importance of physical lens size previously and how the physically quite big Canon 'L' series 35mm F1.4 is a perfect fit as a result, lending great balance.

So it is with the Zeiss 32 F1.8 fitting a little more comfortably in my hand than the Fuji 35 F1.4.

The Touit range is a departure for Zeiss when compared to the ZE and ZF lenses, that they utilise rubber aperture and focusing rings.

Specification.

A first for Zeiss - Autofocus.

It works well too, in my hands it felt every bit as good as the Fuji X lens, but then so it should this lens range is made with the full support of the camera manufacturers.

As a result of the co-operation with the manufacturers you will see that they do not step on the camera manufacturers toes, 32mm v 35mm....F1.8 v F1.4

Manual focus is via electronically coupled focusing ring, in something which has worked with varying degrees of success and something I have been suspicious of.

I'm happy to report that the Touit manual focus works very well on the Fuji and though I have no scientific data on this I was able to manually focus more easily than with the Fuji lenses.

Performance.

Fuji make good lenses, I remain impressed by the performance of the Fuji lens on my X100, in-fact if you have been anywhere near a Hasselblad H series camera you will have used a Fuji lens, as they design and make the lenses.

So in the face of  good Fuji lenses why did Zeiss enter the fray?

I became more familiar with Zeiss lenses when I shot a short earlier this year and I was immediately impressed, to such an extent I have adopted Zeiss lenses for key assignments, this comes after decades of using Canon lenses. The Zeiss lens which I am using nearly everyday for panorama's is the Zeiss Distagon 15mm F2.8, lens so good that it displaces the Canon glass - Zeiss do make the best wide angle lenses, more of that in a future post. The important thing is my very positive experiences with Zeiss glass led me down the path of trying these lenses out.

Zeiss lenses have a look and feel about them which is just that little bit different, with lovely colours, contrast and sharpness, you have to try them to really 'get' what they are about, for there are subtleties which make a considerable difference.

Mini Shoot out.

All images shot on a Gitzo 5562LTS tripod with Manfrotto 405 head, using Fuji's own jpg straight from camera with no adjustments.

Firstly the Fuji 35mm wide open at F1.4.

At 100 percent

Now the Zeiss 32mm

Wide open at F1.8

At 100 percent

Not exactly comparing 'apples with apples' but I wanted to do a 'real world' test at each lenses widest aperture, something we all use when up against it in super low light. Advantage Zeiss - a massive difference just about everywhere you look.


 Fuji 35mm at F5.6

At 100 percent

Zeiss 32mm at F5.6

Now at 100 percent

Advantage Zeiss again but not by quite such a big margin, that said, you are seeing a degree of detail here that is not present with the Fuji.

Fuji 35mm at F16

Now at 100 percent

Now for the Zeiss 32mm at F16

Now at 100 percent

Close, very close. A comeback from the Fuji in the final 'round' really not that much in it.

Conclusions.

Best you draw your own as you will be the one who buys and uses these lenses, one is very good, the other is excellent, the Zeiss clearly ahead until they hit F16.

The winners and the losers in this? A win for Zeiss lenses but a win too for Fuji, for it will be a shooter who is a real Leica fan with a fat wallet who buys a M series over a Zeiss equipped Fuji X Pro1(the X Pro2, along with some of the cool new features from the X100S, cannot be all that far away either)

The X pro 1 has been considerably enhanced by this funny sounding but great performing glass, which has a quality look and feel which is rare these days.

No matter when I finally hand them back it will be with a heavy heart.

With a keen eye on the launch date of the Fuji X Pro 2.

Keep an eye out for more real world samples I'll be posting later this week.

Latest in the forest series....prelude post

No posts from me of late.

I have been busy, very busy.

I have shot another in my 'Forest' series, and I'm in post with it right now.

As ever with these shoots it is the logistics which are the killer.

The success or failure of the shoot came down to a calculation of how many journeys we would have to make up and back down the trail with Elinchrom Rangers, light stands and still be in the right ambient light 'window' to give a great picture.

Working for the first time with the Phase One IQ180, a new smoke machine too.

I had shot a total of nine shots in the series but of those nine only seven are good enough, so two shots are in the bin at not inconsiderable expense.

I'm pleased to report this one will make it number eight.

I will be sharing the details of this very ambitious project in the weeks ahead with all that went right, and all that went very wrong too, and how the Phase One IQ180 and the Gitzo tripod tipped the balance in my favour.........

Farewell Terry Spinks - An Olympic Golden Great

When I turned the radio on to listen to 'Today' I heard the sad news that Terry Spinks, who won an Olympic Gold for Flyweight Boxing at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic games has died.

Terry featured in our 'Olympic Golden Greats' exhibition, Sponsored by Manfrotto, at John Lewis in the Stratford Centre.

In fact he made it to the private view, along with his Cousin Rosemary and her husband Terry, who have cared for him for many years.

I cannot claim to have known the family well but they are Lovely kind people, who's kindness and generosity are sadly no longer the norm in society.

In fact their deeds hark to days gone by.

Terry is said to have given most of his money and possessions away - while he was out on a cold night he gave away his fancy coat to a homeless person.

Think of that for a moment if you will.

Rosemary led a long campaign for him to receive an honour from the Queen, an MBE is normally the order of the day, but it took a hard fought campaign before he finally received one in 2002.

Lucinda and I shot him at the atmospheric West Ham Amateur boxing club, which has changed little since Terry trained there for the 1956 Olympic Games.

We wanted to shoot on the Phase One DF with P65+ with a very shallow depth of field, F2.8.

To light him, and the club.

We used 3 Elinchrom Quadra's.

Key light on Terry from camera left, with a Chimera small soft box

Back light on Terry from Camera left, with a Chimera extra small soft box and a grid.

One light in the far distance on camera left to light the background.

We used my BIG Gitzo 5560SGT and its remarkable height  to be half on and half off another boxing ring to get the right angle. This tripod has made the difference on so many occasions because you can put your camera in extreme positions in a very stable way.

Here is Lucinda with Terry and his cousin Rosemary.

It was a special day.

Food Glorious food

Readers of this blog will now have gathered that I love cooking.

Even down to the Michaelmas Goose filmed on the Canon C300 by Lan Bui.

Here is a still of the recipe which I shot for the book 'Loose Birds and Game' by Andrew Pern of the the Star Inn, Harome, North Yorkshire (if you are ever anywhere even remotely close to the Star inn, do pay them a visit, a treat awaits)

I shot this at the chef's table with my Phase One P45+ and 120mm macro lens, supported by my Gitzo GT5660SGT and super precise variable ratio geared Manfrotto 405 head, using available light.

As I say often in my blog, the key to great photography is 'Shoot what you Love' and I cannot think of anything I Love to shoot more than this simply wonderful food.

In the run up to Christmas I was commissioned by the John Lewis partnership to shoot environmental portraits in the the kitchen where they develop new dishes.

It was an eye opener, not for food 'tricks' but for the sheer passion of the team who work so hard to come up with different and divine dishes which grace the shelves of Waitrose.

If you like me, were one of the many unlucky people who failed to get hold of one of Heston Blumental's Christmas puddings with an Orange inside you might take some sort of twisted solace in this shot I did of it.

I think this was one of the mini puddings for one with a tangerine, not an orange inside.

Again I shot this with available light (THE trick when shooting food)

But this time with my Canon 5d MkII and the silly-super-sharp Canon EF 'L' series 100mm Macro lens which feature a very clever hybrid optical image stabilisation system which really works very effectively. Just the job for on-the-fly macro work in rapidly evolving situations.

Coming back to the book 'Loose birds and Game' in which I shot all the main photography, it has collected a bevy of awards.

For a very limited period of time I will be offering the book at the special price of £15.99 plus postage.

The book has an RRP of £39.99

In the unlikely event that you want the book signing I'm very happy to do so.

Yet another bag! All be it a VERY good one.

I have many,many camera and equipment bags.

In fact so many I do need to have a good clean out of them.

So what did I do? I went out and bought another.

Sigh.

But here is my excuse, sorry sound reason for doing so.

To transport my lightstands and softboxes I use the brilliant and all but indestructible California Sunbounce roller bags. I'm still using one which is around 10 years old.

But there is nowhere to put my Elinchrom Quadra's in there.

So I have been looking for a solution which I could carry around a complete set of lights, stands and modifiers.

I popped into the Flash centre the other day and the Palm 1 bag by Kata caught my eye.

It does look slightly unusual.

It appearance maybe due to the fact it is based on a design for a rocket launcher case.

Think of swords into ploughshares...

It has become my standard 'medium' lighting job pack.

I can fit inside just about all the lighting gear I need.

It fits neatly inside the boot (trunk) of a small hatchback too

This is what is in it today.

4 x Manfrotto stacker stands.

3 x Elinchrom Quadra packs and heads.

1 x Small Chimera soft box (this is the only compromise as my medium sized soft box does not fit)

1 x Umbrella(solid not shoot through)

1 x Gitzo carbon tripod with Manfrotto 468rc2 ball head.

This little lot will do for most things.

The clincher in all this though was the bargain price.

The Kata Palm 1 Normally sells for £350 and the Flash centre have a very limited number at the bargain price of £150.