legacy lens test

[sebboh]

i did a recent test of a number of my normalish lenses on the NEX and thought some of you might be interested. here's 100% crops from the center of the frame and from the upper left hand corner, taken at a distance of a little over a meter (depending on focal length), on a tripod, with the timer, refocused at each change of aperture till f/5.6 (after that i just stopped down without refocusing). the corner and center crops are not from the same shots - i took each shot at each aperture twice, once focusing at the center the other time focusing on the corner. the lenses tested were the contax g 35mm f/2, the olympus pen f 38mm f/1.8, contax g 45mm f/2, minolta MD 45mm f/2, nikkor HC 5cm f/2 ltm, minolta MD 50mm f/1.7 (49mm filter thread version), minolta MC 50mm f/1.4, pentax SMC takumar 50mm f/1.4, olympus pen f 42mm f/1.2, and canon FL 55mm f/1.2. i set white balance to the same value for every shot rather than setting it to a white card for every shot so that i could see the color cast (and radioactive yellowing) of the various lenses. this makes comparing luminance and contrast between lenses a little difficult. the nikkor lens had to have fungus removed and has some small scratches on the front element so don't take it as representative of other samples of that lens. all the other lenses were in excellent shape (at least the glass was). there were a few surprises here. i don't have either of the kit zooms so i can't make any comparison to them.

whole frame:



center crops:



corner crops:



--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[M Irwin]

The Pen is mighty!

 

[maxjaguar]

Wonderful. As the owner of two Minolta lenses contemplating Nex, it was interesting and educational. Thanks for all the hard work!

 

[Mike Fewster]

Really interesting. Any chance of doing much the same shot with the Sony 16mm and 18-55 and putting them up as well? I'd also love to see compaison shots from the Contax G 90 mm and Pen 50-90mm zoom. Both are on my "Maybe"
list. Thanks for the hardwork.
--
Mike Fewster
Adelaide Australia

 

[john inglis]

Once the Contax G 45 gets going it looks pretty good
and the corners tops
to my eyes

 

[kahren]

where is 40mm pen?

 

[sebboh]

Once the Contax G 45 gets going it looks pretty good
and the corners tops
to my eyes

yup, the contax g 45mm and canon FL 55mm win top honors with a strong showing from the two pen f's and a surprisingly good corner performance from the rokkor MC 50/1.4.

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[sebboh]

where is 40mm pen?

i was tempted to get one of those, but it seemed a bit superflous.

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[sebboh]

Really interesting. Any chance of doing much the same shot with the Sony 16mm and 18-55 and putting them up as well? I'd also love to see compaison shots from the Contax G 90 mm and Pen 50-90mm zoom. Both are on my "Maybe"
list. Thanks for the hardwork.
--
Mike Fewster
Adelaide Australia

i don't have the kit zoom and it wouldn't be fair to the 16mm to compare it to a bunch of normal lenses - it is worse in the corners than any of these except maybe the nikkor and i don't have any other lenses below 24mm to compare it to. i don't have either the contax g 90mm or the pen f zoom but from everything i've heard the contax is near perfect and the pen 50-90mm is rather disappointing.

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[PhillipA]

where is 40mm pen?

... and it's closer to the 42 than to the 38. It's a little soft at f1.4, but it looks as if it's as sharp as the 42 with both at f2.

The Contax 90 is absolutely brilliant - being as sharp as my Canon 135L f2 with both at f2.8 and the Canon on a 5DII. Now if I could just get a decent adapter for it :-(

Thanks to the OP for some great work !

--

Judge: ' This image may be better in black and white - perhaps even just black! '

 

[camera2]

Once the Contax G 45 gets going it looks pretty good
and the corners tops
to my eyes

yup, the contax g 45mm and canon FL 55mm win top honors with a strong showing from the two pen f's and a surprisingly good corner performance from the rokkor MC 50/1.4.

Looks like the reports of the Contax G 35mm being not as sharp as the 45mm turned out to be quite true. The Pen F 38mm was also remarkably sharp in the center, but less so in the corners.

Nice job with the tests though.

 

[camera2]

It's interesting that the Contax lenses have a purple shading while the Mnoltas seem to be more neutral. Did you white balance with the Minolta lenses first?

It would be interesting to compare color rendition next if you plan to run most tests.

 

[Sverker Ahrent]

The distance to the subject was rather close I guess. I wonder if there would be a different result and conclusion if the shots were made at lager distance.
--
Sverker (GMT+1)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sverkerahrent/

 

[Beaverhelmet]

As a Contax G 45mm (and 90mm) user I am very happy to see the results! The reputation of this lens seems very well deserved indeed.

Thank you sebboh!

 

[theprophe1]

I seen some old data of the pen f lenses , and the 40mm was sharper then the 42mm

 

[kaktusss]

Thanks for this review, great work !

The Contax G 45mm is so impressive... I guess it would be a nice portrait lense ?
Is the manual focus easy to use ?

 

[Lastpanda]

Thanks for the detailed test. I particularly appreciate the scrutiny you went to such as refocusing on corners and locking the white balance. It confirms and answers a lot of questions I wondered about these lenses on the Nex.

By the way could you give any tips on how to conduct a test like yours? And how you went about putting all the pictures into a table? I'd like to do some tests like this in the future someday.

Cheers

 

[sebboh]

It's interesting that the Contax lenses have a purple shading while the Mnoltas seem to be more neutral. Did you white balance with the Minolta lenses first?

It would be interesting to compare color rendition next if you plan to run most tests.

i set white balance to the contax 35mm f/2 and then copied the same settings to all shots. this means the temperature & tint settings are identical in all shots (3600 and +5 if i remember correctly). the differences in color you are seeing are the color casts of the various lenses. zeiss lenses are known to be warmer than neutral as this shows and rokkor (and leica) lenses are considered to be cooler toned. it looks like the pen f 38mm is quite neutral and the takumar and pen f 42mm have radioactive yellowing (i was not previously aware the 42mm had a radioactive element).

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[sebboh]

The distance to the subject was rather close I guess. I wonder if there would be a different result and conclusion if the shots were made at lager distance.
--
Sverker (GMT+1)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sverkerahrent/

nearly all of these lenses perform better at a distance. none of them have floating elements, which means that they must be optimized for a given focal distance. you can be sure the rangefinder lenses are not optimized for closeup. i would have liked to do an infinity test as well but that is a much more difficult and time consuming test (plus it's really cold now in chicago and the test needs to be done outside).

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/

 

[sebboh]

Thanks for this review, great work !

The Contax G 45mm is so impressive... I guess it would be a nice portrait lense ?
Is the manual focus easy to use ?

manual focus is pretty good, but not near as good as the lenses with their own focus rings. the contax g 45mm has become my do everything lens, but i prefer the rokkor MC 50mm f/1.4 for portraits due to it's better bokeh (to my eye) and softer handling of skin tones. the rokkor is considerably bigger and heavier though, so i often take the contax instead when i want to keep the camera in my pocket or the pen f 42mm if the lighting will be very bad and i want a pocketable camera.

--
hobbes

http://xkcd.com/386/

photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28476552@N04/