I love Ginkgo trees; I think these are one of the best ginkgo forests near me. And I often photograph these trees whenever I stopped near this forest park.
After edited my images from this walking series, I realized that I shot most of my images at or near 20mm, rarely 40mm or 65mm. I think if I knew this my shooting habit, I would definitely carry my Voigtlander 21mm f1.4 or Zeiss 25mm f2.4 Loxia instead of the Sony FE20mm f1.8G.
Sure, the FE20mm f1.8G is extremely sharp across the frame, I might even say it is often even sharper than many best Zeiss or GM primes in 18-35mm range, but it lacks something and that makes some type of images like this one a bit dull.
Maybe it is the so-called micro contrast? I do not know but the Loxia or Voigtlander images have a bit more pop to them, the Zeiss Loxia images have some sort of pop that most Sony lenses do not have, and I think the Zeiss lenses produce a bit more neutral color palette than Sony produced lenses.
Maybe some people think I have been seeing some sort of illusional or delusional (not existing) color effects or maybe my brain is just making me see what I want to see in my lens tests, whichever case is possible, but I think there are many subjective but important lens quality differences between great AF primes vs great manual focus primes (like the Voigtlander 50mm f2 APO or Loxia 85mm f2.4).
Honestly, there are many super sharp lenses Sony produced, but none of these lenses have the pop of the Zeiss lenses.
I hated the term "the 3D effect of Zeiss lenses" whenever some crazy Zeiss fanboys at Fred Miranda and DPR talk about that, but I think there is something very special about their lenses. It cannot be measured like resolution or color accuracy, but it is becoming a bit more important these days, at least in my humble opinion.
Most modern mirrorless lenses are very sharp, especially compared to the Canon or Nikon D-SLR mount lenses of similar kind, but most of mirroless lenses have no characters or no pop. Now I think this was what Fred was saying bad rendering, or boring rendering.
Also, Sony lenses flare very badly, none of their popular lenses have a great anti-flare coating.
This FE20mm f1.8G, for example, is very sharp, actually extremely sharp across the Full frame circle, but the rendering is quite boring. And that lens flares very easily. I hated the term, "rendering", but now I am kind of understanding why many people at FM do care about it so much.
If just resolution or sharpness is important, then we no longer need a prime. Modern zooms are already very sharp, some expensive ones are super sharp throughout their focal range, many times even beat expensive fast primes (especially after stopped down to f4 or so).
Honestly, I like some zooms a lot and use them often (as using a couple or a several zooms is so practical and makes my life easier), but it's because I cannot carry many lenses these days whenever I leave out of my house or office. I almost never travel alone now, and only when I can photograph freely is after some sort of academic conferences or when I am walking with my cat or dog.
I think if I can be freer whenever I go photograph something, I will always use a set of nice Zeiss or Voigtlander manual lenses. But the sad reality is I cannot be freer and must use one zoom or a set of one or two small prime/s like this FE20mm f1.8G or Batis 40mm f2CF (one of the most versatile lenses in my bag).
That said, I think I will try to use my Voigtlander APO and Loxia primes more often in next year as the long lasted (at least in my area) COVID paranoid lockdown policy here is finally coming to cease. In many cities here, we still have to wear masks or even forced to wear it. I really hate wearing any sort of face masks as that usually triggers some sort of odd autoimmune disease or shingles or herps on my face. Wearing a mask gives me a tremendous amount of stress and that triggers shingles. When my immune system is working right, shingles or herpes HSV1 virus normally goes inactive or slumber.
I really love manual focus lenses and the ultimate focus accuracy is very important to me. The major lens and camera companies have been obsessed with AF speed of their camera lens systems, but for me it is not a necessary feature, in fact, I do not even want any kind of AF system in my camera. I hope some camera manufactures will make MF only mirrorless cameras like the Leica M but without the rangefinder. It may be the ultimate system camera for my personal needs.
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