Zeiss Milvus 50/1.4 vs Zeiss Otus 55/1.4 vs Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 – Comparative Lens Review

Field Test – Bokeh

One of the important features of the lens is the way it renders blurred areas. Character of that blur, usually refereed as bokeh is source of endless discussions and opinions. There are some qualitative aspects that are possible to identify in the blurred areas, but there is no aesthetic rule that will say that this bokeh is nicer than that one. Standard triplet lenses, such as old MOG Trioplan 100/2.8 are creating bubble bokeh that is all but smooth, however many choose this lens just because of that specific look. To understand what is bokeh and how you can define its look, I encourage you to check this brilliant article from Jakub Travnik – http://jtra.cz/stuff/essays/bokeh/#what_is_bokeh

Very often however, people are confusing quality of bokeh with amount of blur. Both of this aspects serves one purpose – subject isolation (or integration) from the background, but amount of blur doesn’t have much to do with the lens optical formula, it is related to depth of field.

Subject isolation that we mentioned above, depends not only on the amount of blur and quality of it, but also on a difference between sharp area and blurred area. In other words, smooth bokeh is not enough to create pop-up subject isolation if high micro-contrast and satisfying resolution aren’t present in the focus plane.

The following scene might give you idea about difference between area in focus and blurred areas, as well as look of transition areas and blurred areas themselves. While we made few crops here, it’s maybe better idea to look at associated Flickr album page for original size files – Scene 03a

Scene 03 Bokeh and CA at f/1.4 – Zones

Scene 03 Bokeh and CA at f/6.3

Apart of bokeh at a distance, you might notice that this is one of the rare situations where we were able to push Otus 55/1.4 to show some CA in one of the pillar crops. In comparison to other two lenses however it is still stellar performance.

When it comes to bokeh in this scene, differences are rather subtle, but considering great sharpness of Otus in the focus area, image has slightly better 3D appearance in my opinion.

Another image shows just blurred areas at two different focus planes

Scene 06 Bokeh at f/1.4

Differences in OOF rendering above are not significant, but we agreed in the office that smoothest images comes from Otus, with Milvus being almost indistinguishable, while Planar has less smooth but probably most interesting rendering. You can check original size files in this Flickr Album

Following image might give you idea about rendering of OOF areas in front and behind subject in focus.

Scene 07 Bokeh at f/1.4

Without circular highlights, differences might not be so explicit, but once again, we felt that Otus rendering was smoothest from the three with Milvus being almost there. Planar in this scene has rather nervous bokeh in comparison to other two lenses. Less sharp focused flower with small halo around edges rendered by Planar 85/1.4 ZF doesn’t help subject isolation either in this particular scene. You can check originals by clicking here.

Another two scene are using larger subjects at close distance. We compared only Otus with Milvus bellow, because we often couldn’t differentiate between the two without looking to EXIF files or side notes. They are indeed very close in most situations, and if there is soft light with lower contrast which doesn’t reveal purple fringing, it is hard to say which one rendered what. I still liked Otus better in the scenes bellow, but my friends from office told me that I am either biased or Hawk eyed!

Scene 08 Bokeh at f/1.4

You can check originals here.

How about night scene with city lights? It’s not perfectly even test for all three lenses, but it should give indication of the most significant differences…

The first shot is with lenses fully de-focused on the distant city lights. For some reason, Planar shots looks like being from some other place, but they were not, unless guy who sold me bottle of water in a local supermarket, didn’t replace it with vodka. Anyway, originals are here: Otus 55/1.4, Milvus 50/1.4 and Planar 50/1.4

Scene 09 Bokeh at f/1.4 – full de-focus – zones

Scene 09 Bokeh at f/1.4 – partial de-focus – zones

Mechanical vignetting, causing “cat eye” effect on the highlights toward edges of the frame is comparable between all three.

What conclusion can we make regarding bokeh?

I know about standard focal length lenses with more silky smooth bokeh than those three lenses render. Otus and Milvus both have “onion ring” effect visible in the highlights, while Planar has most pronounced sphero-chromatic aberration, causing overall appearance of the highlight a bit more nervous. On the other hand, Milvus and especially Otus are showing entirely different level of sharpness and micro-contrast at wide aperture in comparison with above mentioned “smoother” bokeh maker (Canon EF 50/1.2 L e.g.) It’s a trade of that each photographer should consider, based on his own liking and shooting preference.

We should also mention that Milvus and Otus showing rather bellow average coma at f/1.4. I expected this for Milvus but less so for Otus. Planar has most pronounced coma of the three. While this might be slightly disappointing, especially for Otus, it is not easy to find many standard FL lenses with perfectly corrected coma aberration.

In the next part of our review, we will show you few portrait applications, where you might find more indication, which lens renders OOF areas to your best liking.
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