I often find that I grab the 100mm f3.5 because of its light weight, small size, and outstanding image quality. The lens is amazing wide open. I stopped down here because I still had enough light to do so and wanted to get all of the water from the fountain in focus. If you click on the image above you’ll notice the amount of detail this lens resolves. The image is downscaled for the web. I’m going to do some night street photography with the lens to show how f3.5 isn’t as bad as you would think in the dark if you’re able to manage your lighting appropriately, and use flash where necessary.
I’m always astounded by the resolving capabilities of this small lens. Sure it’s rather slow by modern prime standards but I’ll take f3.5 for its small size. It’s the kind of lens you can just keep in your camera bag for whenever you need it. If I was shooting serious portraits I may opt for a 1.4 lens but I wouldn’t keep a behemoth of a lens like the sigma 105mm f1.4 art in my bag all of the time, and I like the bokeh of these Contax lenses more anyway. There has been this push to always blow out the background of portraits instead of using proper lighting to isolate the subject. It’s kind of a lazy way of going about photography. I’d rather manage my backgrounds, manage my lighting, and shoot with these vintage lenses.