My 1530 & 24/28/20 tests were done at a "semi-closeup" range and
the primes were noticeably better, especially in the corners. I
have a shot on my pbase site of the "swing" at the county fair
which was taken with the 1530 at f4.5 and the edges are really
soft. In addition I did a comparison of the 14 and 1530 of a
painted wall about 8 feet away and the 14 blew away the 1530 even
at f8. I will post these shots (need to reshoot them) when I get
my 14 back from Ikelite in a few weeks.
From experience, I believe that as distance increases, the
sharpness difference decreases. This seems to be confirmed by many
of my landscape shots. I just finished another trip to the
Southwest and despite my good intentions to shoot the primes, I
wound up shooting the 1530 more. As with my previous trip this
spring, my f-stops were almost always between 6.3 and 11. Was I
happy with the lens performance? Absolutely!! Most of my shots
with this lens were between 15mm and 24mm so I had good depth of
field. What I really liked about the performance was that this
lens seems to nail the focus all the time. I have had cases where
the primes (24/28) were a little soft and I couldn't figure out
why. In my lens tests, I shot at least one of the lenses on a
series of 3 shots of the same image, forcing the camera to refocus
each time, and each time, I had different levels of sharpness. I
have heard some focus inconsistency comments from others as well.
So the jury is out. Even if the 20/24/28 are sharper, the 1530
still performed admrably, helped by Foveon's superb sensor!! If you
can shoot the 1530 at mid-stops, it is a winner. If not, go for
the primes. I will most likely carry all the lenses and pull out
the primes when I need to shoot either stopped down for depth or
opened up for speed.
Hope you are enjoying China. Don't take any side trips to North
Korea!!
Rick
Do you recall the fstop and shutter speeds these pics were taken
at? Rick Decker has noted that the 30mm end of the 15-30 is
inferior to the 30 setting on the 24-70 but I found the whole range
of the 15-30 to be pretty nice at f11. So I am curious as to
whether the 15-30 was set optimally or not.
Are you continuing your experiments? At one point I think you
mentioned that you were able to effectively use the metering of the
SD9 with the zeiss lenses. Is that the case and if so how
effectively and on what lenses?
thanks,
Mike
as promised, i took Zeiss 35mm and my EX 15-30mm today
and shot the following pics. I use EX 30mm manually and set
the focus at infinity. Here are the results of A and B out of SPP
(no PS).
A:
B:
C: Full view (color enhanced with PS curves)
please match the photos with the lenses and make comments
Thanks for looking
--
It's a tough job, living in Hawaii, but someone has to do it!!!
.......Feel The Power.........Sigma.....SD9..........
http://www.lightreflection.com
http://www.silveroaksranch.com
http://www.pbase.com/rickdecker
http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/user_home
