New Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 24mm f/1.8 E-mount lens

The new Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 24mm f/1.8 E-mount lens has just arrived on the shores of Malaysia and I managed to loan a unit from our favorite Sony Alpha Pro-shop, Studio Zaloon for a quick test run with it.  Price at SRP RM3799 this beast is definitely going burn a big hole in your pocket! Nearly twice the price of a NEX-C3 with 18-55mm E-mount lens.


Paring this with NEX-5N, the size and feel of this small beast is just quite right in the hands.  This len comes directly from Japan is solid metal built and matte metallic black finish.  It comes with a high quality plastic hood and lens pouch.  The front part of the lens has grove to hold the lens hood and the back element rather deep inside the lens.  The silent motor focusing on the lens is quick and good for movies recording.  Surprising the black beauty has no OSS or Optical Steady Shot, built into the lens. Why?  I also don’t have the answer.  As with most E-mount lens, this one uses 49mm filters also.


Some product shot taken with NEX-5N and SAL35F18 with ambient light.







Lets look at the pictures, all taken with NEX-5N on tripod, spot focus at ISO 100, 0 EV, AWB, JPEG Fine and Aperture priority and just resize in Lightroom.

f/1.8 | 1/500s | ISO 100 | 0 EV | AWB



Centre
(Full resolution picture link here)


Corner
(Full resolution picture link here)

f/2.8 | 1/200s | ISO 100 | 0 EV | AWB



Centre
(Full resolution picture link here)


Corner
(Full resolution picture link here)


f/5.6 | 1/50s | ISO 100 | 0 EV | AWB



Centre
(Full resolution picture link here)


Corner
(Full resolution picture link here)

At open wide f/1.8, the center sharpness look kind a bit soft with some smudges and purple fringing at the corner frame on high contrast area if view at pixel peep.  Stop down to f/2.8, the centre sharpness improved but there is slightly notable purple fringing but at f/5.6 this disappear completely.  Well at f/1.8 the lens is still holds a lot of details judging from this picture i.e. not all are lost (no pixel peeping ok!).






A quick measure the minimum focusing distance is around 6.5” inch.  At f/1.8 is DOF of shallow giving me nice smooth blur from the centre to the side. 


Bokeh at f/1.8 is smooth but sometimes exhibits ring around the highlights.






Has some kind of weird barrel distortion, which looks more like pincushion, but appear vertically.





Thanks to Uncle Chin from Studio Zaloon to allow me borrow the lens for a day for my limited opinion on it.  Although this new Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 24mm f1/8 is pricey with no OSS but it is small, light, pocket-able with great build quality.  It does produced superb image quality both resolution and contrast as expected from a Zeiss optics.  
    

Asian Para Games 2010 (pt1)

Last year was busy year.  I was lucky to be selected as a volunteer to the first ever Asian Para Games in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.  With the theme, We Cheer, We Share, We Win, it was gathering that show the mighty Chinese organisation skills, their commitment and their voluntarism spirits is unbelievable.  For me it was a wonderful experience and the best part we get paid a small allowances and everything is free plus first class treatment.


It was this games that ignite back my photography passion and also meet-up with one of the professional, Steven Leong. His passion for photography is 100 millions times more than me. His has my utmost admiration. 


To kick my first post on photography, below are some of the opening ceremony shots on Dec 12, 2010 held Aoti Main Stadium which has full capacity of 80,000 people and it was a full house.

King of Fruit Cake

Our group has this yearly event to feed the host which happen in last month. And last month was the King of Fruit season, so for my portion of feed the host, I prepared by durian ice-cream and roast pork lion. To make by durian, I went and bought some D24 and then separated the flesh from the nut. After making the ice-cream, there was still a lot of leftover durian plup. What should I do?

Then I remember my boss recommend me this cake shop in Petaling Street which sell tarts, cake, swiss roll made of durian flavour. With this in mind, try to make my own durian cake. I use a butter cake recipe and mix it with all my durian pulp.

Here I fold in my flour for the final phase of my durian cake.

Bake it in the oven till it turn light brown or something like below.

My verdict, well the texture is soft however the cake feel a bit dry. So what when wrong?? No idea but to just keep on trying it with some modification or reference others people recipe till prefect. I thing I must confess is that baking is not as simple as cooking, as each steps taken will produce different results.
So bake try number 0010 and.....