Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 ZF.2 for Nikon

The focal length of the Planar T* 1,4/50 is equal to the perspective of the human eye. Its fast aperture and exceptional compactness are its outstanding features. This lens produces pleasing portrait style quality at the widest aperture and sharpens considerably beyond f/4 for any general purpose application.

The famous symmetric lens design invented by Dr. Paul Rudolph at Carl Zeiss in 1896. The Planar lens is the most successful camera lens design – and, by the way, the most plagiarized – ever created. It provides the lens designer with numerous means to correct aberrations extraordinarily well. And its performance is very constant over a wide range of imaging ratios, enabling such a versatile lens variety as the
Makro-Planar lens.

Ideal aperture with nine blades

Photographers want to guide the observer through the image. Minimal depth of focus is often used as a design element. This keeps the background intentionally blurred to keep the attention of the observer on the main subject. These different representations of the blurred areas, as well as the quality of the transition, are referred to as the Bokeh of a lens. The finely tuned features of the optical design on Carl Zeiss SLR lenses ensure a particularly harmonious effect of the blurred areas of the image. The nine diaphragm blades and the resulting, virtually circular aperture on Carl Zeiss SLR lenses are crucial to favorable rendition of highlights in the fore and background.

Elaborate stray light reduction

Rich, vibrant colors are vital to creating a lasting impression. Stray light in the lens, however, would lead to a brightening of the image, which is particularly visible in shadow areas. Image contrast is lowered; the image appears dull and bleached. We combine various, elaborate techniques to reduce unwanted stray light. For example, all lens elements are coated with the famous Carl Zeiss T* anti-reflective coating. Additionally, a jet black special paint is applied by hand to all lens element edges to ensure that reflections are prevented from the start.

---