The Samsung BIG lens TEST - performance at 45mm

Strange here is that colors of my 20-50 are very good. Indeed sharpness @ tele side is the worst of the bunch but if i stop down by 1 i get very good center result and unbeaten corner sharpenss (between kit lenses, offcourse).

My dream kit lens is an upgraded version of this one, with ois and a bit larger aperture (call it 20-50 OIS 2.8-4.0 ) at the price of a slight larger barrel and a reasonable fee (under 500€ i may be in for my definiteve lens!).

I am really surprised aswell. Need to get my hands on one to test it...

ChimPanzer wrote:

Thanks for participating in this mini quiz. I hope you enjoyed it and found the results useful.

There are many opportunities left for you to conduct some more direct Samsung comparison tests:

• 16mm (4 lenses exist) or
• 24mm tests (6 lenses exist) or
• 30mm (with 6 posiible lenses) or
• 50mm one (with 6 lenses)

Now it is your turn,

ChimPANZER

I have already done all those tests with most of the lenses. I can start a thread for 16mm if you like...

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

Hey,

no problem, I can send you some test charts. Could you please PM me your e-mail-address? I had the S lens only for a month for testing, so I can't make new images, but I have the RAW files from the tests...

You can find the 16mm test here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/56411392