Well, have done some quick test snaps. (should i make these crops bigger?)
The first lens Canon ef 50 1.4 has slight backfocus, but i want to see how each lens would render the foreground and background.
I will do more test scenes later and there will be pentax 50 1.2 and ef 50 1.2L as well.

Camera Canon EOS 5D ("shaved" mirror by 4.95mm!!! and modified mirror box in order to use Konica AR 57 1.2)




~ 8 mb.




I have restored the original shootout here
http://album.foto.ru/photos/26407/



samples from the 50mm group




So here is 55-58 group

double click to enlarge


The same flower scene using Mamiya 645 afd + canon fd 85 1.2L
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/771979

of the 8, I prefer the second to the left, upper row one the best. Thanks for doing this! I hope it is fun having so many different renderings available at hand.

Edit--I guess I like the FD 50mm 1.2. Funny-I don't remember seeing the lens ID's the first time I looked.

Thank you for the work Great test!

Dimtry,
Thanks for the great work in doing this test.

Noct Nikkor is easily the sharpest and best bokeh for me.
Although the FD50 1.2 looks a bit sharper than the Rokkor 58,
I still prefer the Rokkor 58 overall because of the better bokeh.

One thing I noticed that is strange is that the Noct Nikkor shot looks like it is focused more
in front than the other shots if you compare to the other shots and look at the pine cones in front of the back wheel of the bike and the bigger pine cone in front of it.

I remember Erwin Puts found the FD 1.2 to be the greatest super fast 5omm at a time, so no real surpise there

Thanks to all for kind words.
Concerning focus point - yes there is a shift in focusing point, but as i have mentioned before i will wait for pentax 50 1.2 and ef 50 1.2L and will do more precise replication in each test shot.

Dimitry, this great, I cant wait for more!
I just had a thought, do you think it would be possible to post your original 50 and 85 shootout?
It was such a great resource and it would be a shame to lose.
What with Cogi's forum being gone and all it looks like maybe we should stick to keeping the good things on FM since its not going anywhere

cheers

Oh and by the way i like the renderings from the FD and Noct best, the only problem in the FD is you can see what appears to be tons of coma towards the edges - the thing which the Noct corrects so well.

Konica also looks quite good. It seems to achieve a really nice balance in its properties that i, for one, enjoy.

How about a scene similiar to this: XSi with EOS/FD 50/1.4 wide open.

That's a lot of work, Thanks.

For in focus sharpness, the Zuiko 50/1.2 looks great to me, but in this test its (and the Canon FDn 50/1.2) focus point was nearer so the nicely in focus areas are in different places. Besides the Noct Nikkor, I've found the Zuiko 50/1.2 to also be the best corrected fast 50 I have tried. The color, contrast, and sharpness on the Konica you tested looks a lot like the Zuiko 50/1.2 to me, but even that lens shows more color fringing around the bright metal parts. I've tried the Canon EF 50/1.4, Pentax 50/1.2, Rokkor 58/1.2, and Zuiko 50/1.2. I think you can tell which one I kept

OM 50/1.2 is my favourite, followed by the FDn and Rocker 58, in that order.

Look at the grass. The EF 50/1.4 is the sharpest? Someone tell me I'm wrong, please.

In terms of glowing of bright objekts the Rokkor 58 ist the best.
OM 50 is a tack sharper with a bit more contrast as far i've seen in my own tests. But the OM50 glows very much.

First of all, thanks for the effort. I have been searching for tests like this because I cannot decide which fast 50mm lens to buy.

I will agree with some of the other members here that the focusing is quite different in some of the shots, so no solid conclusions can be made.

After spending quite some time looking very closely at all the shots, it seems to me that the Rokkor 58mm offers the highest resolution, although the Konica is nearly identical. Some of the others "look" sharper upon first glance because they offer more contrast but as I see it, most of them do not resolve as much fine detail as the Rokkor. The Noct is probably its equal in this department, but the focus is so far off the rest that it is impossible to draw any conclusions. The front-focusing of the Noct also gives it a bokeh advantage, in my opinion. The Canons (again, in my opinion) have both sacrificed real resolution in an effort to maximize (macro) contrast. Although the EF is surprisingly good, as someone else mentioned (but it's bokeh is not so nice).

Dmitry,

Thanks for the efforts. This is a great thread. I can certainly see how a 5DII, with the live view would come in handy, with the difficulty of same focus point for each lens. But a 5D with a -5mm mirror shave! Maybe focus bracket to get more consistent.

Testing telescopes, we look at inter and extra focus points to see if the light energy is more toward the outside of the circle or in the center. Although subjective, good bokeh could be seen as having the light more in the center of the circle, or at least even over the circle of specular highlights, in the inter-focus point. Rememeber, if you are looking at OOF highlights, the focus point will be before the subject. Maybe a scene to demonstrate this would be good.

Just me $.02. Great work on that 50s collection!

Before any of you get too scientific or nit-picky I thought I'd mention that based on Dim.Ka's other shootout and comparisons im quite certain that this was only a quick test, the real test is yet to come. And when he does publish it, it will be thorough.


We're lucky to have members here with the resources (aka lenses and mechanical skills) to be able to provide this sort of info!

Thanks for the efforts! Looks like all of these are good choices, and the differences more subtle than one might think.

-Ed

I only wish there was a decent copy of the FL 55 in the mix. i really can't believe how well mine performs. Unfortunately its t-stop is probably closer to 1.6 than 1.2 but other than that...

Bokeh is better on Rokkor 58 1.2. It also has shallower DOF than most tested here.
It might look soft outside of center but not sure if this is due to DOF differences.

So here are some new samples...

Excellent!

That Pentax is impressive. Which version is it?

Pentax smc 50 1.2