Looking for a cheap, sharp 35 for occassional landscape use on a Sony A900. Performance between 5.6- 11 is my primary consideration.
My old, pre-intel imac doesn't work with Google anymore, so at the moment I can't dig for information on my own.
I seem to recall reading that the 35/3.5 SMC Takumar is very sharp stopped down, with nice colors and saturation.
Does anyone have experience with this lens on a 20+ MP FF body?
Thanks.
Well, I bought one and tried it on my A900 (which I have recently sold) a while back and this lens is amazingly sharp in the center and it does have great color and contrast. It does fall off in sharpness towards the corners so if your looking for corner to corner sharpness, this is not it. Also, I noticed that stopping down past F8 resulted in some strange image problems so it's really only useable critically up to F8. I will see if I can find my tests.
Here is an example. The lens would be amazing on APS sensors and if you don't need corner sharpness, it's good for FF. Crops are 100% from A900. Shot at F8 I believe.
Gunzorro wrote:
I agree with Tariq -- if you are hoping to find a $50 Alt 35mm lens, it is going to have pretty poor IQ. Anything decent is a couple hundred dollars.
Doesn't Sony or Minolta make any decent 35mm AF lenses that are f/2.8? That would be the best bet for economical IQ on your body.
The closest you can get with a Sony/ Minolta prime is the discontinued Minolta AF 35 F2 which will run about $600 if you even find one AND will not give corner to corner sharpness as good as the lenses I listed.
mirkoc wrote:
If you need 35mm on a budget, perhaps you could try Yashica ML 35/2.8. Perhaps not the best against the sun, but quite sharp stopped down.
Here is a full picture at F11 followed by center and lower left corner crops.
I thought it looked like a 5D. Thanks. I will say some of the lenses which looked great on my 5D struggled when used on the higher MP Sony A900. The Flek did fine though.
