Will Otus 85 retain its value?

welshwizard1971 wrote in post #17948500
I'd love the OTUS, but, I'm really struggling to see where the extra money is going to be spent and moreover justified over the Sigma ART series, this ones a 50mm version.......

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Ffn5​M7

Wonderful portrait!

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17950106
Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I think otus isn't a good idea

Tapeman wrote in post #17950411
It's pretty clear from your posts, it is not about the money now.
So when are you going to buy one?

??

buy the lens not for what it can retain, but for what you can obtain ...in achieving your photographic goals.
investment wise - consult your bank/financial advisor and start a small fund

one thing is almost certain - the zeiss will be useable in 10 - 20 years. not so sure about the sigma counterpart

I doubt you will see a noticeable improvement over the Siggy you already have. At least not worth the many thousands of dollars you will spend! But if you do want a better lens than the Siggy get the Canon ef 85mm f1.2L. IMHO, it is the best 85mm made.

ebiggs wrote in post #17950657
I doubt you will see a noticeable improvement over the Siggy you already have. At least not worth the many thousands of dollars you will spend! But if you do want a better lens than the Siggy get the Canon ef 85mm f1.2L. IMHO, it is the best 85mm made.

I dislike that lens. It's almost as blurry @ f/2.8 as my sigma is @ f/1.4.
And it has twice the CA

The value of camera gear, including the Otus lenses, is based solely on the market and who is buying the lens. If the number of buyers are limited, the price goes down....simple economics. Don't buy any camera gear based on much you will realize selling the gear at a later date.

My advice, FWIW, buy a 5DsR and forget about the Otus 85. All your glass will appear sharp. Like Darbo, I also have the Otus 55 and truly love the lens. I didn't buy it because of what I could get for the lens when I sell it. Also, buy the lens with disposable funds not money ear-marked for another expenditure later. You might have a leaky roof in your house or no car for a while if you need the money for life things.

Ta, my eldest, a never ending source of good photo's!

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17950660
I dislike that lens. It's almost as blurry @ f/2.8 as my sigma is @ f/1.4.
And it has twice the CA

85L "blurry" at f/2.8. If you think that, you had one that got dropped a few times or there was some calibration or user error issue. It's got a soft glow from f/1.2 - f/1.6, but by f/2.8 it's tack sharp right to the edges, to the limits of what the 5DSR can resolve, and certainly outresolving the 6D sensor. The CA is real at wide apertures, but that's the design price paid for its unique bokeh.

absplastic wrote in post #17951017
85L "blurry" at f/2.8. If you think that, you had one that got dropped a few times or there was some calibration or user error issue. It's got a soft glow from f/1.2 - f/1.6, but by f/2.8 it's tack sharp right to the edges, to the limits of what the 5DSR can resolve, and certainly outresolving the 6D sensor. The CA is real at wide apertures, but that's the design price paid for its unique bokeh.

If that's true, then DXOMARK is way off. They show its max sharpness as resolving about half the mp of 5Ds R.

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17951063
If that's true, then DXOMARK is way off. They show its max sharpness as resolving about half the mp of 5Ds R.

I wouldn't say it's way off, it's just really easy to misinterpret their "perceptual megapixel" metric. Lots of discussion here on that, so I won't repeat it, but they're averaging the results across the frame and from all apertures from f/1.2 to f/16.0. The 85L's lack of peripheral sharpness wide open is hurting that average considerably. The Otus is good right into the corners wide open. But, for portraits, this doesn't matter; you don't frame a portrait with the subject's eye in the far corner of the frame, typically you'll have background there that you actually want out of focus if you're shooting wide open. If you're buying a lens for portraiture, it makes little sense to get hung up on things that would only matter for copy stand work.

Likewise, test chart shots* aren't great for comparing portrait lenses either, because the perfect flatness of test charts makes them biased towards lenses with no field curvature. A lens with any field curvature will appear less sharp in the corners in a head-to-head test against one with a flat field. But again, irrelevant for portraits, unless your subject is a cardboard cutout.

*And "field maps" generated from test chart shots.

absplastic wrote in post #17951092
I wouldn't say it's way off, it's just really easy to misinterpret their "perceptual megapixel" metric. Lots of discussion here on that, so I won't repeat it, but they're averaging the results across the frame and from all apertures from f/1.2 to f/16.0. The 85L's lack of peripheral sharpness wide open is hurting that average considerably. The Otus is good right into the corners wide open. But, for portraits, this doesn't matter; you don't frame a portrait with the subject's eye in the far corner of the frame, typically you'll have background there that you actually want out of focus if you're shooting wide open. If you're buying a lens for portraiture, it makes little sense to get hung up on things that would only matter for copy stand work.

Likewise, test chart shots* aren't great for comparing portrait lenses either, because the perfect flatness of test charts makes them biased towards lenses with no field curvature. A lens with any field curvature will appear less sharp in the corners in a head-to-head test against one with a flat field. But again, irrelevant for portraits, unless your subject is a cardboard cutout.

*And "field maps" generated from test chart shots.

I was mostly concerned about mid-frame, because that's where the subject is.

Field curvature... Am I correct to assume that the DoF basically curves, so that if the cardboard curved the same way, the sharpness would be significantly higher? But that doesn't account for the mid-far frame becoming as sharp as center when aperture is made smaller??

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17951112
Field curvature... Am I correct to assume that the DoF basically curves, so that if the cardboard curved the same way, the sharpness would be significantly higher?

Basically, yes. Normally macro and copy lenses are optimized to have flat fields, where the plane of focus is actually really close to being a flat plane parallel to the sensor of the camera. Lens design is all about compromises though, so a lens designed for great bokeh could easy have traded away flatness of field, such that the actual focal plane is more like a section of a very large sphere.

The other thing with fast lenses wide open, is that you only get the benefits of that $4000 worth of sharpness if you absolutely nail the focus. You mentioned in your earlier posts that you are often disappointed with the performance of your Sigma 85. But to be fair to Sigma, the example photos you posted suggest that technique is more an issue than their glass. The shot of the boy with the hoodie, for example, is a complete focus miss. Even at sub-1000-pixel web image size it's clear that the in-focus areas of the wall and grass are a few inches in front of the boy (possibly several). None of his face, or even his hoodie are in focus. A $4000 lens will not fix this, but shooting your existing lens manually focused in liveview (or with a precision matte focus screen), with a tripod should.

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And the bird shots that you say you like, I see motion blur in them, which will also remove any sharpness edge the Otus has. The Otus is going to excel in studio shots where your subject is seated, you have time to carefully focus, and strobes will make motion blur a non issue. Outdoors for handheld shots of kids and animals, you're just not going to reap the true benefits of the Otus IMHO. Shooting my kids and cats around the house, I got the best results with the 6D + 85mm f/1.8, because of the fast autofocus.

absplastic wrote in post #17951133
Basically, yes. Normally macro and copy lenses are optimized to have flat fields, where the plane of focus is actually really close to being a flat plane parallel to the sensor of the camera. Lens design is all about compromises though, so a lens designed for great bokeh could easy have traded away flatness of field, such that the actual focal plane is more like a section of a very large sphere.

The other thing with fast lenses wide open, is that you only get the benefits of that $4000 worth of sharpness if you absolutely nail the focus. You mentioned in your earlier posts that you are often disappointed with the performance of your Sigma 85. But to be fair to Sigma, the example photos you posted suggest that technique is more an issue than their glass. The shot of the boy with the hoodie, for example, is a complete focus miss. Even at sub-1000-pixel web image size it's clear that the in-focus areas of the wall and grass are a few inches in front of the boy (possibly several). None of his face, or even his hoodie are in focus. A $4000 lens will not fix this, but shooting your existing lens manually focused in liveview (or with a precision matte focus screen) should.

And the bird shots that you say you like, I see motion blur in them, which will also remove any sharpness edge the Otus has. The Otus is going to excel in studio shots where your subject is seated, you have time to carefully focus, and strobes will make motion blur a non issue. Outdoors for handheld shots of kids and animals, you're just not going to reap the true benefits of the Otus IMHO. Shooting my kids and cats around the house, I got the best results with the 6D + 85mm f/1.8, because of the fast autofocus.

It's funny, I thought the otus would be best outdoors. In a studio, you won't shoot f/1.4???
At @ f/2.8+, the sigma isn't too far behind the otus, even going by the field map.
I looked at that photo of the boy and thought it was OOF, but I thought I saw grass/brick behind him in focus - so I assumed it was the lens... my bad

Bird picture - never considered that. Thought I was safe with the shutter I used.
I love your insight.

Now I know that the subject should be turned if I want more sharpness (due to field curvature), though the amount I'm not sure about (I imagine it depends on distance, etc.)

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17951139
Now I know that the subject should be turned if I want more sharpness (due to field curvature), though the amount I'm not sure about (I imagine it depends on distance, etc.)

Field curvature is really subtle in good lenses, and usually more of an issue with zooms. It's not something you can take into account in real-world shooting, only something to keep in mind when comparing fast lenses at their widest apertures using tools like dpreview or the-digital-picture's test chart shots. Unless you're actually spec'ing a lens for a copy stand, don't worry about it.

There are people who do street photography with manual lenses, handheld. But that doesn't mean they are nailing the forward-eye focus on every subject. Photographers have different things they care about, and to some, composition and expression of the subject will trump perfect focus. For someone who demands pixel-peeping-perfect shots, handheld with MF lenses is certainly going to disappoint a lot of the time!

icor1031v2 wrote in post #17951139
It's funny, I thought the otus would be best outdoors. In a studio, you won't shoot f/1.4???

I don't think anyone shoots 1.4 in a studio unless they are trying to go for a unique composition. Light isn't an issue in studio. You want sharp images, and don't care about bg blur. Most studio images are captured between f5.6-f11 at low ISO values.