OK all you experts... my turn for some advice

rwbaron said:

Hi Jerry,

I do see what your referring to especially in the second image. There's more CA at the corners than I would've expected but I doubt that's specific to your sample. At 8mm/f5 there should be quite deep DoF but I don't know what the field curvature characteristic is of this lens. The corner delineation is less than I expected at f5 but I do see the softness on the lower left side. At a focus distance of 25' you should have everything in focus from 1.92' to infinity and at 15' it drops to 1.83' and my guess is you were somewhere between 15 to 25 feet from the tree but I'm guessing at the size of the tree.

Were these handheld? Do you still have your 10-24? It would be interesting to use a tripod, set the 10-24 to 10mmf4 and also take a shot at f8 and then frame the scene identically with the 8-16 at 10mmf2.8, f4 and f8 and compare. You know you're happy with the 10-24 so I'd compare the two at a similar FL where you'd most likely use them.

Bob

Edit,

I see the second image is at 16mm so I'd do the same test but at 10 and 16mm with both lenses.

Click to expand...

rwbaron said:

Hi Jerry,

I do see what your referring to especially in the second image. There's more CA at the corners than I would've expected but I doubt that's specific to your sample. At 8mm/f5 there should be quite deep DoF but I don't know what the field curvature characteristic is of this lens. The corner delineation is less than I expected at f5 but I do see the softness on the lower left side. At a focus distance of 25' you should have everything in focus from 1.92' to infinity and at 15' it drops to 1.83' and my guess is you were somewhere between 15 to 25 feet from the tree but I'm guessing at the size of the tree.

Were these handheld? Do you still have your 10-24? It would be interesting to use a tripod, set the 10-24 to 10mmf4 and also take a shot at f8 and then frame the scene identically with the 8-16 at 10mmf2.8, f4 and f8 and compare. You know you're happy with the 10-24 so I'd compare the two at a similar FL where you'd most likely use them.

Bob

Edit,

I see the second image is at 16mm so I'd do the same test but at 10 and 16mm with both lenses.

Click to expand...

BobsYourUncle said:

rwbaron said:

Hi Jerry,

I do see what your referring to especially in the second image. There's more CA at the corners than I would've expected but I doubt that's specific to your sample. At 8mm/f5 there should be quite deep DoF but I don't know what the field curvature characteristic is of this lens. The corner delineation is less than I expected at f5 but I do see the softness on the lower left side. At a focus distance of 25' you should have everything in focus from 1.92' to infinity and at 15' it drops to 1.83' and my guess is you were somewhere between 15 to 25 feet from the tree but I'm guessing at the size of the tree.

Were these handheld? Do you still have your 10-24? It would be interesting to use a tripod, set the 10-24 to 10mmf4 and also take a shot at f8 and then frame the scene identically with the 8-16 at 10mmf2.8, f4 and f8 and compare. You know you're happy with the 10-24 so I'd compare the two at a similar FL where you'd most likely use them.

Bob

Edit,

I see the second image is at 16mm so I'd do the same test but at 10 and 16mm with both lenses.

Click to expand...

All good points. Looks like another visit to the gardens. Consider closing the aperture to f/8 and even go to f/11 for the next tests.

Another Bob

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georgehudetz said:

Perhaps try focus bracketing to get a feel for how it behaves with regard to that variable? And try one set at F8 - and F2.8 as well - to see globally how the lens behaves?

Also, point it the other direction (at the city) to see how it behaves with longer focus distances?

Hope it works out for you Jerry. I'm still contemplating purchasing one.

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LucaPCP said:

The image is very strange, especially the second one. The tree branches look like they are an oil painting, there's a definite swirl to them. This looks very different from what I typically see in tree photos... I upload one for comparison, this taken with a Ricoh, but you can see how the rendering of the detail is different.

COmparison image

This is your image at 100%:

This is mine at 100%:

Yours has been painted as if with a spatula -- a beautiful effect to be sure, but why does it look that way? Processing? Or it IS an oil painting?

Click to expand...

Jerry-astro said:

I think I've said many times here that shooting test charts is a nice start for evaluating gear, but definitely not where the process should end. So, after doing that with my newly acquired 8-16, I decided to go to one of my favorite spots here in Portland, which is the Japanese Garden. This isn't exactly the optimal time of the year to visit, but it does offer a broad range of opportunities for picture taking during various seasons and it's also a great place to shake out new gear and see how well it's operating.

So, in that spirit, I took my X-H1 out along with my new 8-16 and the 16-55. I started with the iconic Japanese Maple that you'll see in virtually any picture of the gardens. Obviously, it's not exactly at its best right now, but since my primary purpose was to give my lens a real world test, it seemed to be a good choice. Some of the results I got were concerning, and I'd sure like to get some feedback from folks to see what you all think. Both images below were fairly lightly processed in LR.

Here's a full res image of that maple taken at 8mm FL.

Here's a different view of the tree taken at 16mm FL.

In both cases, the lower left hand corner of the image seems very soft to me, and I'm seeing that in virtually all of my images. Admittedly, I tend to avoid a lot of pixel peeping and may well be seeing something that isn't really an issue, however, the other corners seem a fair amount sharper, at least to me.

So, how about some feedback from you experts out there? Do I have a duff lens, or do you need some better examples to help me judge that? At $2K a pop, this lens needs to walk on water, and I'm not really sure it's afloat right now. Thoughts?

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darinb said:

Whoa. I downloaded both files and viewed in Affinity at 100%--what the heck is all of *that*? Some sort of weird blocky effect.

Something is very wrong with the raw processing. No way to start looking at decentering issues until that is solved.

Why not try the free Capture One for Fuji to see how it looks or post the raw files?

Click to expand...

Truman Prevatt said:

Jerry-astro said:

I think I've said many times here that shooting test charts is a nice start for evaluating gear, but definitely not where the process should end. So, after doing that with my newly acquired 8-16, I decided to go to one of my favorite spots here in Portland, which is the Japanese Garden. This isn't exactly the optimal time of the year to visit, but it does offer a broad range of opportunities for picture taking during various seasons and it's also a great place to shake out new gear and see how well it's operating.

So, in that spirit, I took my X-H1 out along with my new 8-16 and the 16-55. I started with the iconic Japanese Maple that you'll see in virtually any picture of the gardens. Obviously, it's not exactly at its best right now, but since my primary purpose was to give my lens a real world test, it seemed to be a good choice. Some of the results I got were concerning, and I'd sure like to get some feedback from folks to see what you all think. Both images below were fairly lightly processed in LR.

Here's a full res image of that maple taken at 8mm FL.

Here's a different view of the tree taken at 16mm FL.

In both cases, the lower left hand corner of the image seems very soft to me, and I'm seeing that in virtually all of my images. Admittedly, I tend to avoid a lot of pixel peeping and may well be seeing something that isn't really an issue, however, the other corners seem a fair amount sharper, at least to me.

So, how about some feedback from you experts out there? Do I have a duff lens, or do you need some better examples to help me judge that? At $2K a pop, this lens needs to walk on water, and I'm not really sure it's afloat right now. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Jerry,

In the 8 mm shot, the base of the tree is pretty well focused but the rock is not. The rock should be given it looks to be in the same plane and the DOF whole have it in focus anyway. Same for the 16 mm shot. The rock seems a little better at 16 but it is still out of focus.

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Erik Baumgartner said:

Did you shoot a 16mm comparison shot with the 16-55?

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Jerry-astro said:

Erik Baumgartner said:

Did you shoot a 16mm comparison shot with the 16-55?

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Would have been a good idea, but alas I didn’t. However, I have shot that tree for years now, and never experienced issues like this.

I’m pretty sure at this point that I will simply return the lens and stick with my 10-24 and Zeiss 12. At that price, it’s just not worth the grief, IMHO, and both of those lenses are optically excellent.

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