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Biogon-C 21/4.5 on the CL?


lct

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Any experience with ZM Biogon-C 21/4.5 on digital CL? Does it produce red or cyan shifts at the corners on this camera? Thanks for your info in advance.

 

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I haven't tried it on the CL, but I did own one for a short while for use on my 'M' 240.  On that camera, it definitely had "Italian Flag" issues at the edges.  I used Adobe's flat field corrector in Lightroom to clean things up, and that worked fine, but was fairly time consuming.  If that was the only issue I had with the Biogon I probably would have been happy with it.  It certainly was inexpensive (compared to Leica's 21mm SEM) and it was tack sharp in the center of the frame.  

 

However, I was very unhappy with the lens due to field curvature.  The main use of the lens, for me, was landscape shots, and having corners perform poorly simply isn't OK in a landscape lens.  I did try using all the different ultra-wide angle profiles in the 'M' but to no avail.  Those address vignetting and distortion, but they can't do a thing about smeared details.  

 

While I haven't tried this lens on the CL, the problems on the 'M' were obvious fairly quickly as you moved off axis, so I suspect it will not be a good performer on the CL either.  That's a guess, not based on trying it, but I would recommend caution.  If you are going to buy one, at least make sure you can return it for full price if you aren't satisfied with its performance.  That, or wait for someone who has actually tried it on the CL to chime in with their experiences.  For me, it's literally the only Zeiss lens I have ever owned that I didn't like.  Too bad, because it is small, light, cost effective, and well made.  It's always possible I had a bad sample, but I doubt it since edge performance was poor on all four edges not just on one side or the other.

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The 21 Zeiss Biogon is one of my favorite lens on the M10. I use it almost exclusively for B&W. Yep, plenty of red shift on the sides but easily correctable using the Adobe Flat Field plugin in Lightroom. 

Here's a quick shot out the door (welcome to April in Minnesota) on the Leica T. I don't have a CL but I suspect the results would be similar.  Cheers! jc

 

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