Thanks guys. At the moment I tend to return the lens but I'm not 100% sure. It has some advantages and some disadvantages over the Summilux. At the same price I would prefer the 50AA, but I think it's not worth the price difference, at least not for me. Stopped down they are equal (in some situations I would prefer the Summilux and in some the 50AA). Wide open outside of the centre area the 50AA is clearly better. But how often do I need this?
CA behavior of the 50AA is significantly better, but the Summilux is not bad.
I have the feeling, that I could probably do better things with the 3000€ difference (like another trip to Tasmania or Patagonia).
In addition my 50AA (in combination with my M9) shows some front focus at certain distances and I know from the past how difficult it is to correct this. My Summilux was three times in Solms with the same problem.
edwardkaraa wrote:
Boris, have you seen the review of Ming Thein? There was also a comparison with the ZM planar, and the difference was controversially minimal.
This was an older review with one of the test lenses, right? I think I've seen it.
At the moment I tend to return the lens but I'm not 100% sure.
Thanks for the interesting comparison, Boris. For landscape at f/8, the difference is marginal. And for people photography, the extra stop of the Lux (provided the two lenses have the same light transmittance) may be a bonus.
The AA is impressive, but I think $3k can be used to make greater visual impact.
Wide open outside of the centre area the 50AA is clearly better.
I suspect the difference is mainly due to the field curvature of the Lux. If that's the case, the practical impact in typical shooting situations where one would use f/2 is not going to be that bad, especially on a future camera with LV.
Mirek Elsner wrote:
I suspect the difference is mainly due to the field curvature of the Lux. If that's the case, the practical impact in typical shooting situations where one would use f/2 is not going to be that bad, especially on a future camera with LV.
I had done some tests with Nex 5 and the Summilux 50 using lifeview in the past. Wide open or stopped down to f/2 the Summilux is clearly no very sharp in certain areas of the image (and not only at the extreme edges). Therefore it is not ony field curvature.
Bobu wrote:
I had done some tests with Nex 5 and the Summilux 50 using lifeview in the past. Wide open or stopped down to f/2 the Summilux is clearly no very sharp in certain areas of the image (and not only at the extreme edges). Therefore it is not ony field curvature.
Boris
even if you use those areas as the focus point? leica typically seems to design in some field curvature or astigmatism (more likely?) in the midzone of their fast lenses.
Thanks again Boris. At what aperture do you feel the Lux catches up to the AA in the mid zone areas of the infinity scene? My impression is of some similarity, though likely not as significant a difference, as what I saw in my recent 21mm lens comparison. The 21 Lux has a distinct resolution problem in mid zone areas at moderate apertures and only catches up to the 21/3.4 at f/8.
Seeing as you've only posted comparisons at f/2 and f/8, what did you see at the other settings? I think this could be significant in situations where depth of field is less of an issue, such as infinity, or near infinity scenes, where subject placement is intentionally off center at wider apertures, or where best resolution is desired, which usually seems to be in the f/4 range.
Regarding comparison against the ZM50/2: My frustration with this lens was infinity focus. Likely my copy is off, but it also appears to exhibit some field curvature. So again, it might be a matter of how far does one have to stop it down to catch up to the AA? In most 'normal' situations when shooting at f/5.6 or smaller, there is likely minimal difference. As I'm beginning to appreciate with the 21/3.4, in typical use, the only advantage to stopping down is deeper depth of field. It would appear the 50AA also lives up to this claim by Leica.
sebboh wrote:
even if you use those areas as the focus point? leica typically seems to design in some field curvature or astigmatism (more likely?) in the midzone of their fast lenses.
Yes even when I focus on theses areas. But the Summilux definately has some field curvature and it plays a role in certain test result. It' just not only field curvature.
rscheffler wrote:
Thanks again Boris. At what aperture do you feel the Lux catches up to the AA in the mid zone areas of the infinity scene? My impression is of some similarity, though likely not as significant a difference, as what I saw in my recent 21mm lens comparison. The 21 Lux has a distinct resolution problem in mid zone areas at moderate apertures and only catches up to the 21/3.4 at f/8.
Seeing as you've only posted comparisons at f/2 and f/8, what did you see at the other settings? I think this could be significant in situations where depth of field is less of an issue, such as infinity, or near infinity scenes, where subject placement is intentionally off center at wider apertures, or where best resolution is desired, which usually seems to be in the f/4 range. ...Show more →
It depends on how you define "mid zone". The centre area of a Summilux image is sharp even at f/1.4. If you extend it to about 50% of the image you need to stopp down to about f/4. The extreme corners (the last few pixels) are even at f/8 not as good as with the 50AA. For typical landscape stuff I stopp down the Summilux to either f/5.6 or f/8, for people or portraits I mostly use it wide open.
Wide open outside of the centre area the 50AA is clearly better.
Mirek Elsner wrote:
I suspect the difference is mainly due to the field curvature of the Lux. If that's the case, the practical impact in typical shooting situations where one would use f/2 is not going to be that bad, especially on a future camera with LV.
Bobu wrote:
I had done some tests with Nex 5 and the Summilux 50 using lifeview in the past. Wide open or stopped down to f/2 the Summilux is clearly no very sharp in certain areas of the image (and not only at the extreme edges). Therefore it is not ony field curvature.
Boris
sebboh wrote:
even if you use those areas as the focus point? leica typically seems to design in some field curvature or astigmatism (more likely?) in the midzone of their fast lenses.
I need to get more up to speed on interpreting MTF curves, but there are two things you see in many Lux curves: 1) it's quite wavy at 40 lp/mm until stopped down a fair amount; 2) significant separation of the sagittal and tangiental curves when stopped down a couple stops.
My *guess* is this is a consequence of trying to force a fairly flat plane of focus for decent across the frame wide open performance and that another consequence is astigmatism-like rendering in the mid zone region when stopped down a couple stops. It seems past around f/8 this issue is no longer a significant factor.
If I may, here are a few crops to illustrate the point from my 21mm review:
The CV21/1.8 has pretty normal field curvature, where the zone of focus moves away from the camera towards the edges of the frame. The edges of the frame at f/4 are not as sharp as the 21 Lux wide open or at f/4, but the CV is clearly better in the mid zone region at f/4. As I mentioned in my previous post, it isn't until around f/8 that the 21 Lux is to the point in the mid zone region that it's difficult to differentiate from the other 21mm lenses.
The relevance to this post about 50mm lenses is that with both the 21 and 50 Lux, I have had difficulty getting good subject focus at wider apertures of off-center subject content and agree with Boris that it doesn't seem to be just a field curvature issue.
The 50AA seems to address this (as does the 21/3.4), but the big question is whether it's worth the nearly 2x higher price than the Lux...?
rscheffler wrote:
Regarding comparison against the ZM50/2: My frustration with this lens was infinity focus. Likely my copy is off, but it also appears to exhibit some field curvature. So again, it might be a matter of how far does one have to stop it down to catch up to the AA? In most 'normal' situations when shooting at f/5.6 or smaller, there is likely minimal difference. As I'm beginning to appreciate with the 21/3.4, in typical use, the only advantage to stopping down is deeper depth of field. It would appear the 50AA also lives up to this claim by Leica.
The field curvature of the planar is a classic U shape, unlike the wavy W shaped curvature of the lux. I usually don't like the wavy curvature because it often means resolution drop in important zone B parts of a photograph, while recovering in the not so important zone C, while the classic U shape sees a smooth gradual drop as you go further away from the center.
Edward, I agree with you, the u-shaped field curvature results in natural feeling focus falloff towards the edges. I find it more predictable and the lens is generally more usable off-center when stopped down moderately. Where the flatter focus plane of the Lux lenses has an advantage (of course dependent on whether or not this is a personal priority), is the greater degree of background defocus into the outer image zones compared to most other RF lenses with field curvature, which typically recedes into the distance rather than towards the camera. It might be obvious to state, but I really do feel the Lux lenses are optimized for wide open use and are perhaps not the best choice (in terms of $$ and absolute technical performance) for 'generalist' applications when the speed is not needed.
magiclight: I am also curious about this. I'm hoping Roger at Lensrentals will do a shootout. Once the M240 ships, it will finally be possible to compare M and SLR lenses on a full frame sensor. One advantage the 50AA definitely has, and which might be pretty important to many reading this, is its much smaller size/weight.
zhangyue wrote:
I never feel 50lux special once stop down for landscape. It is good, but what else not?
WO though, I can't expect better.
the zm 50/1.5 is not. but yeah, most lenses are sharp enough at f/8 till the very corners. the lux is still better than most at f/8, just not my near as much as it is at f/1.4.
