Are 35 & 50 too close together?

LarsRost wrote:

nonicks wrote:

If simplifying the lenses is the ultimate goal and you don't care about the weight of the setup and loss of fast aperture of the primes, then I would say Option one ( go zoom).

Picture quality ( micro-contrast, sharpness and color) of the 16-55 is equally good or better than the f/2 primes at f/2.8. I didn't really compare the focus speed but it feels a little faster than the f/2 primes. The only weakness to me of the 16-55 is that distortion on the extremes FL are quite noticeable. But that can be corrected more in PP. With that lens you basically got covered for 16, 23, 35, 50 with just one lens... The 35/1.4 still have a bigger advantage as it is f/1.4 and it's color rendering is more pleasing to my eyes.

To 50-140 or not, it's up to your need. Personally, I don't want to lug around the big heavy lens that I know I don't use much. I would choose the 90/2 to cover any mid tele purpose. I would also pair the 90/2 with 35/1.4 for the shadow FOV, low light and portrait needs.

With the 16-55/2.8 and 35/1.4 and 90/2, I don't think you will miss the 50/2 much.

Not sure that I agree about the 16-55/2.8. In terms of sharpness it's about equal to the primes up to 23mm. At 35mm I find the 35/F2 to be a little sharper and at 50-55mm the primes are noticeably better. The difference between my 56/1.2 and 16-55/2.8 @55mm is huge IMO and I guess it's the same for the 50/2.

.lars
https://www.flickr.com/photos/larsrost/

Hey Larsrost, Thanks for the inputs and sharing. I compared my 16-55 with 23/2 and 35/2. I found that it was at least equally sharp ( or a very little bit sharper) as the primes at f/2.8. But the micro-contrast of the zoom seemed better. And unlike the 23 and 35 f/2, the zoom doesn't quite suffer the close focus softness issue.

I don't have 50/2 to compare. But I found he 16-55 was noticeably sharper at around 50mm than 55mm. You can just try dial down the FL a little from the extreme and you should see the difference. At least that's what I found on my copy.

I agree that 55mm of the zoom is its weakest point, and the 56 prime at f/2.8 is definitely sharper than the 16-55 at 55mm f/2.8. Also the first generation large aperture XF fixed lenses render color, contrast and micro-contrast differently and produce more pleasing color than lenses designed later.

But I would say the sharpness and micro-contrast of the 16-55 at around 50mm at f/2.8 is close to or equal to its performance at 23mm and 35mm, where this zoom beats the corresponding primes ( 23 and 35) at that aperture ( but again I don't have the 50/2 to compare).

Great talk!