jamesedge wrote:ah... that's a carl zeiss jena lens. basically when germany split into east and west carl zeiss became two companies, and had lots of legal wrangles over the name. the jena lenses aren't as highly regarded as the carl zeiss ones, but they aren't bad and are decent value for money. I think the seller is behaving a bit badly tho, it looks like he only mentions in one place that its a jena.
Ah that explains it. It doesn't function like I would expect a Zeiss lens to. I'm going to return it tomorrow on the grounds that I can't get critical focus as he advertised. I tested it on a friend's 5D and it doesn't look right to me on there either, so perhaps there is something wrong with the lens or mount.
On the BMCC. I can hit focus at any distance under .5m, beyond that everything is unreasonably soft - I suspect due to the FFD not being quite correct with the adapter.
Cheers for your insights!