Jannie wrote in post #9936911
It's quite possible to fall in love with a camera/lens combination and then stick with them far beyond the time when you would normally replace with newer tools. This is a good thing as it takes away thinking about the gear when I'm shooting and just really knowing what to expect and it's actually very freeing. That's why I stick with Canon even though many of my friends and relatives shoot Nikon, I like and am confident with my Canon gear so for me it's the best but I know Nikon is exceptional gear as well.
One of the problems and bad things about the Canon lenses is that they kind of all have the same look and as one person has said, boring - but only because you might be used to it/or maybe not, maybe it really is boring to your eye. I have not had a boring lens from canon to date and I think I've had 10 of the "L" series lenses in the last three years. So we often look for a new look/style etc. to excite our vision or to open us up to developing a new look with our photographs that sometimes new tools can encourage. This also is changed by changing how you approach shooting and your lighting or how you use available light and how you process your images. These are all things that make photography the most exciting passion for me. I've been involved with so many interests in my long life but nothing has compared to the ever evolving life experience/vision that photography can create.
I used Zeiss for decades on motion cameras, as well as Panavison, Arriflex, Canon, Nikon, Schneider, Kilfit and Angenieux and they each had their purpose. Over time, certain Angenieux zooms and Zeiss primes along with Nikon telephotos were my choice unless shooting with the Panavision cameras which had their own excellent lenses - usually. But when shooting food which I did a lot of, for years I used a very old design Cook 25mm prime that my camera assistant could remove the stop screw on and I could focus it extra close when doing flyover shots with the camera suspended on a minny crane.
The camera rental houses knew we were doing this and modified the lenses to make it easier to remove that screw (you could actually unscrew the front element all the way off if you got carried away). It made the edges go bad but for commericals and the way we were using it not in a way that anyone ever noticed. All across the country this was a favorite lens of a lot of very high end Director's of Photography shooting food commercials. It was all about finding the ideal combination of camera lens for a certain job. I never used that lens for anything else but really close, wide, moving shots of food, liquid pours etc..
Then Arriflex in conjunction with I think Zeiss developed big beautiful primes that would focus really close just for this kind of work and no one ever heard of the Cook lenses anymore, they were few and hard to find in the rental houses, impossible to buy and I think the rental rate was ten times what the cook had been but no one cared, they were wonderful.
I'm looking at the Zeiss 35mm, 50mm macro and 100mm macro very closly with this kind of thinking in mind and with no intention of giving up my Canon lenses but to use the Zeiss for specific needs, I'd probably not buy all three but start with one an see how it goes, expensive to try and I'm not yet convinced from all of what I've seen that it's what I want, but everyone's post processing is different. They show a lot of saturation, maybe or maybe their images encourage you to process that way and they may or may not be a little more contrasty which can be adjusted in post as well.
But and this is the ultimate, BUT, they seem to have a special look which I like very much, I wouldn't call it sharper as much as clearer or something I cannot put a definition to explain, but I'd expect to have to learn to shoot/light and process a little differently and might not be able to use those lenses and Canon lenses sometimes on the same job, I'm not sure but there often is a need for visual continuity even with stills, expecially when it comes to product websites. A camera/lens combination can at times make a scene shine without doing anything in a shot under even flat lighting that you might normally pass by but with a certain setup and knowing how to use it well, you can start to see into things that you passed over before because even though they looked interesting, experience taught you that they weren't as good in post as you remembered them. It's like you actually light to that particular lens/camera in a way it excells. There are tons of sharp lenses out there and that is not the criteria although one that has to be met. I had a very sharp 24-105 on my 5D classic but I didn't get excited at all about using it in certain situations where one of my other lenses near the same focal length shined; I got to where I mostly only shot that lens at full 105mm which is where I did like what it did.
And then there are the esthtics of a Zeiss lens, they just feel sexy to hold and use, they somehow look like perfection in the old way and I love that too. But that's not enough reason to buy one, just icing on the cake.
