My samples, see 2b - every shot on similar circumstances cause the same, systematically - as it happens I'm almost always shooting in forest rendering the lens almost useless for me - for majority of urban bokeh subjects or any kind of landscapes it doesn't matter: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1255248/20#11983941
You never see it if you always reduce to websize (like shown in 2a). But I print images and if I show them from 2560x1600 monitor (hopefully soon there will be 4k monitors), and in those resolutions it ruins every image containing it.
p.139 #2 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
When majority of people claim the forte of camera is short flange and lens adaptability, expectations are set.
Me personally: I don't expect ANY sensor to work with symmetrical rangefinder wide angles before something really "pushing the boundaries" is invented (e.g. Fuji organic sensor).
I guess I'm not one of those people then, at least not without qualification. I have always looked at the Sony as an E mount lens camera. Adaptability is gravy - a bonus - that can't be relied upon but is nice when it works. That's why I bought an A7r... I simply do not care if M lenses work with the camera because for the most part I plan to run native lenses on it.
My expectations all along were that the camera would not well support such lenses because no one other than Leica would bother to tune the sensor package for such lenses. Somewhere buried in threads here I posted my opinion a year ago or more that if Ricoh wasn't going to bring out a full frame based in some way on their successful (technically) GXR/M camera, I believed no one would. Certainly I never expected Sony to provide anything more than support by coincidence of the short flange to sensor distance.
I was so convinced that we would not see a camera useful for such lenses from anyone other than Leica I sold every last one of my symmetrical wide angle and other problematic M lenses last winter and the rest in the spring.
A year ago that decision might have seemed like a rush to judgement but perhaps less so now and the question I asked myself last year remains unanswered: what is the viability of this great glass over the long run failing some big change in sensor tech? I'm just not willing to tie up that much capital while waiting and can always re-buy if I'm wrong.
I do not blame Sony at all for designing a camera and lens system such that they work together well. That it doesn't support every other lens under the sun should really be no surprise to anyone given the experience we've seen even with APS-C crop cameras and problematic lenses.
p.139 #3 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
michaelwatkins wrote:
My expectations all along were that the camera would not well support such lenses because no one other than Leica would bother to tune the sensor package for such lenses.
Leica was not able to get the sensor package working. Due to this they have the lens coding system and software correction for each lens.
michaelwatkins wrote:
I do not blame Sony at all for designing a camera and lens system such that they work together well. That it doesn't support every other lens under the sun should really be no surprise to anyone given the experience we've seen even with APS-C crop cameras and problematic lenses.
For me only real surprises have been that:
a) some 50mm (50mm lux?) have issues corner smearing. 35mm I would have understood but not 50mm.
b) A7 is better with some rangefinders than A7r (based on early info it was assumed other way around).
Sure I hoped wides would work - but didn't expect it to really happen. No clue about what happened on APS-C crop before A7, I haven't been following actively as there were fullframe solutions available.
p.139 #4 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Sony gave it a good shot, probably 'pushed the boundaries' as far with microlenses as they could without jeopardising the performance of regular lenses, i.e. the thousands of shallow beam angle SLR lenses plus bespoke native mount FEs.
Given the output from many symmetrical lenses even on NEX APS-C cameras, they did pretty well, and few would be unhappy with telephoto M lenses on the a7 series.
People might care to reflect on how well Leica M digital cameras work with f1.2 SLR lenses, or zoom lenses, or macro lenses.
The M240 has a focus box that *does not move* - at all. We are moaning about electronics giant, fake camera maker Sony not moving it fast enough. Really, it would make a cat laugh.
One interesting question is: when Zeiss have filled in some of the gaps - and you can imagine users peeling away with their complaints as time goes by, drift off to the latest other camera - how will people see the system then?
I kind of wonder if the shrillness of the professional oppositionists will quieten down or not. It's an emotive issue at heart, it seems, groupthink essentially - the telltale sign of which is the emptiness and pettiness of most complaints, as compared with what the establishmment is serving up. It is ideologically driven..with double standards everywhere and very little fairmindedness.
Fast forward to xmas 2014 - there are now 2-3 zooms and 3-4 primes and Zeiss first manual lens is about to be released; firmware has fixed the fast focus assist and other bits and pieces - they will have to pry it out my, and I suspect many other peoples', hands.
But for many folks, reality lessons are definitely in order.
p.139 #5 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
michaelwatkins wrote:
My expectations all along were that the camera would not well support such lenses because no one other than Leica would bother to tune the sensor package for such lenses.
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Leica was not able to get the sensor package working. Due to this they have the lens coding system and software correction for each lens.
Well, they got it working better than anyone else has, by a long shot. The lens coding cannot cope with smearing, only vignetting and colour cast due to IR hot mirror colour changes due to differing angles of impingement, and even then, only imperfectly.
Sony really has not done anything for these lenses, whether by design or by neglect. The lenses which work best will continue to be SLR/DSLR or native lenses, and the occasional lucky rangefinder lens.
p.139 #6 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Leica was not able to get the sensor package working. Due to this they have the lens coding system and software correction for each lens.
As Carsten has said, the lens coding and correction built in to the M digital cameras does absolutely nothing to resolve smearing. Such measures can only deal with colour cast and vignetting. In order to get better (not sterling necessarily) performance with older designs Leica had to work at their sensor package implementation but of course they are properly motivated to do so by their install base. Sony has no such install base for FE class cameras.
Incidentally even the Ricoh GXR/M had in-camera correction which coupld be optionally tied to user-entered lens profiles. I never found a use for this capability because the GXR/M sensor package was not problematic with any of my M lenses. Ricoh made the sensor implementation work, albeit they had an easier time given it is an APS-C camera.
Sure I hoped wides would work - but didn't expect it to really happen. No clue about what happened on APS-C crop before A7, I haven't been following actively as there were fullframe solutions available.
Along with everyone else I'd have rejoiced if M wides would universally be great on these cameras.
Those of us who were running M lenses on cameras like the NEX-5N looked to the introduction of the new higher pixel density (24MP APS-C) NEX-7 with great anticipation only to learn with disappointment that some lenses were going to suffer from a) increased colour cast, b) increased vignetting, and c) most importantly since it can't be fixed unlike a+b, smearing at levels beyond what were seen on the NEX-5N and in some cases markedly worse smearing.
It'll feel like deja vu to anyone that witnessed Ron Scheffler's A7 lens test series, but Rob Skeoch, an Ontario photographer and ironically a reseller of Zeiss ZM lenses, put out an early test series showing middle-long distance shots with obvious smearing showing up with a number of the ZM optics. His test images were criticized but in the end, the early bird indeed got the work and the heads up he provided was confirmed in later testing.
The inability of the NEX-7 to work well (as well as prior cameras) with symmetric wide angle lenses was discussed broadly here and elsewhere and the experience was a useful hint about the full frame future as sensor pixel density remains high (but not as high as the NEX-7) and sensor sizes increase dramatically. More importantly the NEX-7 should have served as a reminder that while Sony seems to appreciate and lever the alt-glass community for marketing purposes, they are not as engineers designing cameras specifically around the needs of any lens user group other than native lens buyers. This is sensible and I'm ok with that despite wishing otherwise.
Fortunately DSLR/SLR lenses are working quite well with only a few individual exceptions, so early adopters of the A7/r cameras have options beyond merely waiting for Sony to finish fleshing out the native lens line up.
A final thought on this - perhaps the coincidental better support for DSLR/SLR lens is not quite so accidental, given the biggest potential market for these types of cameras lies not within the ranks of Leica lens owners but those carrying Canon and Nikon optics around in their bags, especially the former.
p.139 #7 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Just picked up the 55mm f/1.8 lens and took a few shots of the plaza.
Too early to really get to know this lens and with all the positive hype out there what I'm looking at does feel good
The first image was taken a few hours ago with the 55mm lens and the second one over a week ago with the Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8
If anyone is interested I'll add 100% crops.
Cheers
Michael
p.139 #8 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Does there exist a list of RF lenses that play well with the a7 and a7r with notes about smearing, problematic focal lengths and such? It seems like that information is all dispersed throughout many posts in the many a7(r) threads here and would benefit numerous owners from a consolidated list.
I don't own any RF lenses (at the moment) so I am unable to provide input. I was looking at the 50 cron or lux, but which one performs with the least amount of issues on the a7? Or which wide angle RF lenses work well with which body? Are all FL's greater than 50mm "guaranteed" to work flawlessly? Inquiring minds! Haha
I'm also considering looking at R crons and lux's as well since those seem to "play" well and maintain that Leica look and feel...unless there is something magical about the M's which the R's can't/won't replicate. I don't know, I've never owned a Lieca anything and my a7 is tempting me towards a lens or two.
p.139 #9 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
The A7s debunk some crucial roadblocks to an affordable M body.
1) no market for a small FF with EVF.
2) 1950s RF lenses are too old to work that great.
Obviously the old glass has no problem whatever with 36mp in the center frame: it's fantastic.
3) nobody cares about the RF glass. In fact never in history have so many cared about it.
The M9 proves edges can be made to work. Now we just have to hope not everyone is asleep. Sony has left the door wide open and all the tech is ready. The market is ready. The sony sensor itself would likely be fine with less on top: and they love to sell to third parties.
And the real ace in hole is footprint: the A7s are barely smaller than the Ms.
Many RF lenses are loved partly because they are tiny. Why do I want an M sized body with a 24 super elmar?
We need to shout it to the rooftops: give us a digital CLE!!! Anyone!!
p.139 #10 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Alpha_Geist wrote:
Does there exist a list of RF lenses that play well with the a7 and a7r with notes about smearing, problematic focal lengths and such?
For now it is probably more safe to assume that no rangefinder lenses work perfectly as different people have different tolerances of what is acceptable in terms of smear.
p.139 #11 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Here's a crazy thought: is it possible that the offset microlenses actually makes things WORSE with non-native lenses? That would explain why the A7r is worse than the A7 in this regard, as well as why Roger Cicala's test show corner smearing even with the ZE 50 MP relative to a DSLR.
p.139 #12 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Jabberwockt wrote:
For now it is probably more safe to assume that no rangefinder lenses work perfectly as different people have different tolerances of what is acceptable in terms of smear.
Please excuse me for being a noob here:
Besides the obvious mount and size (and possible weight) difference between the M and R mount Leica lenses. Are there any significant differences between either M or R lenses that might warrant or sway a purchase towards one over the other?
I have a local person on craigslist who is selling the latest 50mm cron R for ~$750 in nearly pristine condition. Price seems low....compared to a 50 cron M. Should I jump on it post haste? Like I mentioned, I don't know squat about Leica glass and I'm learning bit by bit as I read more about the a7s (lol). If price and availability are the only difference between the M and the R glass, then maybe I should be looking at the R's instead.
p.139 #13 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
dpap1978 wrote:
Here's a crazy thought: is it possible that the offset microlenses actually makes things WORSE with non-native lenses? That would explain why the A7r is worse than the A7 in this regard, as well as why Roger Cicala's test show corner smearing even with the ZE 50 MP relative to a DSLR.
Are the offset microlenses only found on the a7 sensor or is there some offset (to a lesser extent) on the a7 sensor too?
p.139 #14 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Alpha_Geist wrote: Please excuse me for being a noob here:
Besides the obvious mount and size (and possible weight) difference between the M and R mount Leica lenses. Are there any significant differences between either M or R lenses that might warrant or sway a purchase towards one over the other?
According to Leica there are differences. Keep in mind that not all Leica M & R lenses are great; you gotta weed out to find few real jewels.
p.139 #15 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
Erwin Puts (Leica expert) is of the opinion that the latest version of the 50mm Summicron-R is as follows:
'The current Summicron-R is almost identical in optical construction
with its counterpart in the M-system. It is one of the
two or three best standard lenses in the world.'
p.139 #18 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
$750 is not cheap by any means. But if it is mint and German edition, grab it, price is up, will up further. Only reason $750 is not cheap because it can be had within $500, undervalued.
from MTF, m should be stronger performer, but have found 50cron r is one of best lens shine both WO and stop down. And I feel R lens have better/relax rendering usually in comparable to similar M, but worse optic raw performance.
p.139 #19 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
uhoh7 wrote:
We need to shout it to the rooftops: give us a digital CLE!!! Anyone!!
My bet should be obvious from my last post up-thread: no-one will answer this call, save for Leica, but they are hardly likely to produce a cut-rate digital M if they don't feel threatened by makers like Sony. The M240 or what follows it awaits...
p.139 #20 · Official: Sony A7 and A7R Fullframe Mirrorless
michaelwatkins wrote:
My bet should be obvious from my last post up-thread: no-one will answer this call, save for Leica, but they are hardly likely to produce a cut-rate digital M if they don't feel threatened by makers like Sony. The M240 or what follows it awaits...
well how many believed Sony would do a FF nex?
who ever makes the camera will have a hit, period.
