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The meadow was indeed glowing beautifully in the soft backlight from the low, evening sun coming from the left. That's precisely why I stopped and took 7-8 quick snapshots of the scene as I walked by. Whether the meadow actually glowed exactly like it does in the picture, I can't really say anymore.
All Batis lenses share this ability somehow – they can make beautiful contrasts really glow. There was a solid cloud cover in the sky. However, the cloud layer was so thin that you could see the sun the entire time. The lower the sun sank, the more spectacular the light looked.
In the unprocessed RAW file, the sky was so bright that no detail was visible anymore. Consequently, the meadow was too dark. In Lightroom, I increased the exposure globally so much that it looked right for the meadow. Then, I only reduced the exposure for the overly bright sky until detail became visible. The shadows and highlights remained unprocessed. So, this was just a standard edit for handling dynamic range.
The picture was taken on a small hill. I had only driven up there to take a long exposure of the local city during blue hour. After I finally found the right composition for the city, mounted the camera on a tripod, disabled stabilization, selected manual mode and ISO 100, I was just waiting for sunset and the subsequent blue hour. Behind me was the hilly meadow with the mountain bikers. The lower the sun sank, the more spectacular the scene behind me with the mountain bikers became. It even looked amazing after sunset, when the mountain bikers were just silhouettes against a spectacularly beautiful sky. That's why I kept taking the camera off the tripod, changing the settings accordingly, to photograph the mountain bikers. (The picture of the city during blue hour, by the way, didn't turn out well and was delete-worthy).
The Batis 135 is really something special. The contrast and micro-contrast are extraordinary – unlike anything I've ever seen with any other lens. The dark areas aren't just dark; they're often deep black. Sometimes you have large areas of the image that are simply deep black. The overall impression this creates is something I really like, and I generally leave the shadows completely unprocessed with the Batis 135.
If I try to brighten the dark areas, sometimes the areas do get brighter, but simultaneously, intense micro-contrasts appear, again featuring deep black. When I first bought the Batis 135, I tried increasing the shadows in Lightroom on a picture. I moved the shadows slider a little, then all the way to the maximum... and nothing happened. The image remained unchanged, and at first, I thought my Lightroom was broken!
Then there's the bokeh, which I usually find simply beautiful with the Batis 135. I owned the 85/1.4 GM (I) for over 5 years, which is considered a reference for bokeh. The Batis 135 absolutely doesn't have to hide behind it and, in my opinion, has much nicer colors and contrast straight out of camera (OOC).
 DSC00836 by stm geist, auf Flickr
 DSC01045 by stm geist, auf Flickr
rob_ww wrote:
This is a great photo for a whole bunch of reasons, and shows the Batis 135 to great effect. My only question is: those greens? Are they really that fluorescent? Maybe they are, but I have never seen it in real life!
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