I am really enthusiastic about the Carl Zeiss T* Sonnar 100/3.5 (equivalent to a 80mm short telephoto lens) because due to it's fantastic performance, and its compactness - makes it a perfect companion to other small-ish lenses for the Fujifilm GFX camera system. Especially outdoors, walk-around, etc.

I mean, any other 80mm equivalent "portrait" lens (with really good optical performance) is for sure larger in size.

Yeah, I am unusual taken by this fantastic performance

It is almost too good to be true, you know. In the realm of digital mediumformat camera systems - there is nothing that is cheap or affordable. Usually you pay a premium price for lenses which perform this good. Which - let's face it - are mainly native made Fujinon GF lenses for the GFX system. Or Hasselblad branded lenses for Hasselblad X1D and X2D cameras, having even even higher price tags.

So Fujinon GF lenses are of course perfectly optimized for Fujifilm GFX cameras - being the best, optimal combinations. Perhaps at times a bit boring being so nearly optically perfect... but, that's another subject.

Using other lenses of any kind...

on digital cameras, is usually a gamble. Generally larger lenses made for the 645 film format are commonly the better performers, due to that they exhibit larger image circles. Therefore they don't show any dark corners / extra vignetting (fullformat, aka. lenses made for 24x36mm film format, almost always create artificial vignetting, because most of them don't cover a larger sensor; you get dark corners. Sometimes soft. Sometimes hard).

However mediumformat lenses ain't perfect on digital sensors (for several reasons). Usually, you will have some sort of chromatic aberrations (Red/Green) visible. They get less pronounced or even disappear as you stop down the aperture.

'Perfection'' was and is; In the eye of the beholder

Most mediumformat (vintage/film) lenses performed their best (in the film era) as you stopped them down by 2-3 stops. They could of course be used at their wide open aperture - but some of them would show a rather "mediocre" or "so-so" performance.

Which was subjective given that we had large film negatives at our disposal with 6x4.5, 6x6 and 6x7 cm. Therefore it wasn't really a super issue (dependent on what your photographic goal was to achieve). Wide open aperture photography with mediumformat lenses gave character and that wonderful, classic background blur.

Perfection was and is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Technically spoken however, you would stop those lenses down by 2-3 stops, in order to get really sharp film negatives. Using tripod was mandatory in order to ensure that now shaking diminished the results.

When I went out with my Mamiya RZ67 camera with a tripod, i would often use aperture ƒ 8 or ƒ11 when taking landscapes, cityscapes etc. You then got rewarded with exceptionally sharp negatives that stood out from the smaller 24x36 negative format. The Mamiya RZ67 camera system never failed in that regard.

Especially when making prints in the darkroom - it was a delight to see !

Today of course, everything gets mixed and combined in terms of style, processing and interpretation - as well what you can and cannot do; We do it anyway, because we can, and we are curious how things turn out in the end.

No offence.

I mean, why not.

It's just the way it is and I am largely OK with that.

100 mm short telephoto focal length

Also; what the TTArtisan 100/2.8 2x Macro can't do well when taking images at infinity, which results into really mediocre performance... Well, the Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 100/3.5 certainly makes up for by 200% !!

The TTArtisan 100/2.8 Macro is a specialized lens in my opinion. I treat it mainly as a GFX close-up & Macro lens, and nothing else. I may (or may not) test it as portrait lens in the studio, in order to see how it performs as such... But that will take a while.

I haven't been active in the photo studio at all lately. Sal is going to Sicily, and i am at home partially sick with ear infection. Something that has been bothering me for many, many weeks (which goes in waves between good and bad), but I don't really want to write about it.