I am in the middle of testing three interesting lenses:
- my beloved Canon EF 1.8/85mm
- Leica Apo-Summicron 2/90mm
- Zuiko Makro 2/90mm
all on a 1dsII. I am not shooting newspaper, but a garden scene behind my house where I have in 30 m distance a lot of bushes, trees etc a, a challenge to get the focus poit right. Lots of details to be compared.
The results when shooting at 2.0:
All are sharp. Very sharp. Nevertheless there are small differences. Especially if you are not only looking for sharpness, but as well for contrast. The winner by a fair margin is:.......the ZUIKO ! It is sharper than the Leica (sorry guys) and has much, much more micro-contrast. I couldn't believe it, so I repeated the test and ensured that Leica and Zuiko are focussing both right. The Canon is slightly less sharper than the Leica and has as well slightly less contrast than the Leica at this aperture, but I would never pay 2000 Euro difference for this very slight advantage ( and I am really critcal). The 700 $ I payed for the Zuiko is a no-brainer. This is a marvoulous piece of glass. The Canon as well will stay for the nice AF and ease of use.
...I will continue to play with them this weekend with smaller aperture and let's see what happens then.
Canon's 85/1.8 has found its way into many a shooter's bag: it is therefore is a good benchmark for comparing similar lenses such as your Leica Apo-Summicron 2/90mm & Zuiko Makro 2/90mm.
I would ask that you take a look at these two Canon 85/1.8 reviews and compare your experience to those reported in the reviews... Benchmarking the benchmark
I don't see inconsistencies between what the other tests report to my personal experiences. The Canon 1.8/85 EF is a L lens without an L and the price tag. It is much, much better than the 24-70 L at 70 in terms of resolution and contrast. So it was my personal benchmark for a prime in this range so far. It is sharper and more contrasty (is there such a word ?) than the Zeiss PLanar 1.4/85mm wide open ( see http://www.pbase.com/multiblitz/lens_tests ). Nevertheless I still have the Zeiss and there is a reason why...(I like the look of softness in portraits).
I had doubts that the Leica or the Zuiko could be noticeable better. I am surprised thought that the Leica did not take the lead.
When I nailed the focus, the Zuiko 90 NEVER ceased to amaze me. Just a fantastic lens from f2 - f11. Insanely sharp wide open and built like an absolute tank. Great lens. Now if only someone would come out with a less expensive adapter. The camera quest one is a bit spendy.
-Tom
intero wrote:
When I nailed the focus, the Zuiko 90 NEVER ceased to amaze me. Just a fantastic lens from f2 - f11. Insanely sharp wide open and built like an absolute tank. Great lens. Now if only someone would come out with a less expensive adapter. The camera quest one is a bit spendy.
-Tom
But the good thing about the Zuiko adapter is that it is so easy to take off. There is no need of multiple adapters for multiple lenses.
Appreciate the post on this, Blitz. Your findings pretty much confirm those of at least one other FM member who had the chance to test the Zuiko 90mm Macro against the Leica.
They also support my impressions on comparisons I did against the Canon 85/1.2. I was actually a bit disappointed to find the Zuiko was sharper and more contrasty (overall) as I'd had fuzzy thoughts of selling it and going back to to an AF lens for this focal length. However, considering better image quality of the Zuiko...MF will be just fine.
Ok, I have uploaded some images as requested from yesterday's test. I took two samples which are very close in focussing (200% crops, same processing):
Mmmm...pretty impressive. Its possible others may want to nit pik your test shots, but these shots (well...for me, anyway) just confirm my impressions of this amazing lens.
I am not claiming the perfec test here, but tried to get the focus right, so I shot 10 frames with each one and changed the focus and picked similar focussed frames for comparison, so that we see not only the effect of out of focus.the postprocessing is absolute identical with some amount of sharpening...I will later upload more picture with smaller apertures.
..anyhow, has anyone as well the Zuiko 2/100 and compared it against the 2/90mm ?
I'm not sure how different these really are in pratice. Contrast is easy enough to adjust in post, and when you play with levels it seems to me the amount of detail is comparable and it's really a matter of which look you prefer.
Of course, given the price differential the results are significant. --c
Does anyone have any experience with the Leica R 90 f/2.8? If it's anything like the Leica M 90 f/2.8 it's incredible and much sharper than the f/2 90mm.
Guy, sure I can play with the raw converter to make the Zuiko look worse or the Leica better, but why should I ? I think we all know that we can improve pictures through post-processing. I want to understand what the differnce is hwich comes through the lens. So when the Zuiko and the Leica pictures are coming from the same camera, going through the same post-processing incl. contrast / sharpening, I think we understand better what each lens does.
The Leica 2.8/90mm is an interesting subject. I talked with one guy whi tested a lot of Leica glass and he said that there is a 4 or 5 lens version of this lens which he believes is the bets one. Pretty cheap on ebay as it is legacy.
Hi Blitz I looked at your 200% crops and they were very slightly soft and didn't look like they were on the plane of focus. Did you focus on something closer? If so the comparisons wouldn't be completely meaningful. At f2, even if your plane of focus is 10 meters away the DOF is only as little as 1.5 meters.
Nevertheless these are all great lenses. Olympus Zuikos have always been relatively underrated.
cpclee, these are 200% crops and at that level things start to become soft, especially when you shoot wide open. But you can check it yourself as I have uploaded the complete image of the zuiko and if you guys want I upload as well the complete image of the Leica. I campared many, many photos and the reult is: In the center the Leica and the Zuiko are equally sharp. In the corners, the zuiko seems to be better. Overall the contrast of the Zuiko is better. There has been a lot discussion about micro-contrast and the 3D-effect of Leica / Zeiss glass. I think we need to credit Zuiko for playing in the same league and in this case even being the benchmark.
My Olympus adapter works well with tele, but it seems to have problems with WA, so I am looking for a new one. Once I have it, I will present you the big shhot-out of the 28mm WA inkl. the latest Leica glass, Zeiss, Tamron the famous Nikon has been send home already, sorry. But maybe we will see another surprise...stay tuned.
Blitz wrote:
The Leica 2.8/90mm is an interesting subject. I talked with one guy whi tested a lot of Leica glass and he said that there is a 4 or 5 lens version of this lens which he believes is the bets one. Pretty cheap on ebay as it is legacy.
As I understand it, there are two versions. The newer one is serial number
3260100 and above. Said to be great, and yes, relatively inexpensive used.
Blitz wrote:
My Olympus adapter works well with tele, but it seems to have problems with WA, so I am looking for a new one. Once I have it,......stay tuned.
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