The Samsung BIG lens TEST - performance at 45mm

If you can, give the 45 a bit of time, and see if you can make good use of its strengths in portraiture especially. The lens delivers a lot of pop, micro contrast, and sharpness which I can always easily spot in my images. At f2.5/2.8 one doesn't have to worry that much anymore about that super-shallow depth of field where very precise focussing is so essential and not always easy when contrast is lacking (which also goes very much for the 85 1.4), and there is still nice bokeh and plenty of pop. I also used the 45 as a landscape/architecture lens in Greece where it excels, too, delivering very sharp and impressively detailed images. But as it doesn't have OIS and is very light, it's a good idea to keep shutter speeds high when shooting without a tripod, see my thread with the sample pics. A few of my test images at smaller apertures and speeds of 1/200 (!) and below showed some softness that was due to a tiny amount of motion blur, whether it was my (usually steady) hand or shutter shock. When I retook these at higher speeds or with more care, they were sharp (I only posted these). The f1.8 images were all sharp, and there is not that much difference between these and the images taken at smaller apertures as you can see, other than depth of field. But remember that every lens gets sharper and controls high contrast areas better when stopped down.

Andrea