Jeff Kott wrote:
I expect the 50 Cron to perform better than the 50 Lux wide open for obvious reasons and I think it's unlikely we'll see 1.4 aperture native FE lenses anyway.
You were commenting on the best compromise between size and performance. My point is that, although performance of wider RF lenses may be questionable, rangefinder lenses 50 mm and over may be the best combination of size and performance especially the F2 and smaller aperture RF lenses. Note, I'm not saying the absolute performance will necessarily be better, but the RF lenses 50mm and over may be a better size/performance compromise (of course this assumes one doesn't want AF). And again, I think we'll be waiting a long time for the native FE lens that will outperform the 75 or 90 Crons on the A7r (pure speculation on my part).
Edit: I realize in rereading my post that most of us are looking at the results on these cameras and thinking of our own lens collections or lenses we are likely to buy. Personally, I have both a 50 planar and 50 Cron as well as a 90 Cron that I'm itching to get on an A7r and I do think that those lenses may provide the best combination of quality and compactness as compared to native FE lenses. ...Show more →
Oh, I'm sure the 50 Cron and 50 Planar will be great on A7/R. I certainly didn't find them lacking in resolution on my M9, for the most part. However, after moving from the 35 ASPH + M9 to the RX1, it's kind of hard for me not to want a lens that is very sharp across the frame from wide open.
Overall, though, you're probably right about size vs. performance on 50mm+.
edwardkaraa wrote:
I think we have seen enough so far to know most wides won't work, and those that work won't be as good as on a Leica M body.
If you still can't see that, I'm afraid you're up to a huge disappointment.
i think it's pretty funny that we're just now coming to terms with this, when back on like page 4 or something, i had already jumped to this conclusion.... i was nearly chased out of town for my pessimism.
ISO1600; I had a hunch early on that the RF wide angles would be left out in the cold. Nothing pessimistic about my hunch, early indications did show problems as well as potential problems and in the prevailing absence of evidence to the contrary I sort of "knew" it wouldn't be as good as I had wanted it to be. It was more of a "how bad is it" while for some I guess false hope is better than no hope.
Still, awesome camera, hope they get some Zeiss wides out soon.
ISO1600 wrote:
i think it's pretty funny that we're just now coming to terms with this, when back on like page 4 or something, i had already jumped to this conclusion.... i was nearly chased out of town for my pessimism.
Hahaha, I nearly got chased out of town and that is on page 83
I guess some people had so much high hopes that they just don't want to see the plain naked truth.
It's a pyrrhic victory though, friends, and comes at a bitter cost
What it might signify is that an orthodox sensor design simply can't match the dedicated development Leica has had to put in. As said elsewhere Sony have larger targets in mind.
I am pretty surprised so many Leica M users are so keen on wide angle lenses, I always saw them primarily as kind of HCB cameras - people and enviro-portraits, more general compositions.
Sad for some, but if people really like their M cameras, carry on regardless.
The talk of remark-worthy CA and cold colours in the D28/2.8 got me looking back at a few frames I shot a few years back on a Sony a900. This one is ISO 200 so it loses a lot in everything compared to the a99, including two stops of DR that would really help with this shot, as colours suffer a road block here with low and high tone peaks in the histo. This would show as finer grading of the hut wall and the sky, leading to better depth.
Sony just added huge advantages to low ISO in recent sensors, the a7r will be amazing for older lenses for these reasons (tone spread, colour, high ISO), it is as much improved from the a99 as that one was from the a900. Anyway, here is the full shot and a crop with default sharpening and no CA removal in ACR. I had to reduce WB 300-400 so I lol'ed a little at the colder colours..CA, well there are different standards, I have seen much much worse in Ron Schefflers RAW files from some fancy 35mm ZMs. This was the worst I could find in the D28/2.8, which weighs 280 grams and is small at 50mm x 62mm. It cost maybe $350.
full image, light tone work, light sharpening
100% crop far top right corner, default sharpening, no CA removal
philip_pj wrote:
It's a pyrrhic victory though, friends, and comes at a bitter cost
Mission accomplished, eh?
We hoped beyond hope and now face bitter disappointment....
What I see is somewhat pathetic race to dismiss a wide variety of lenses and designs before they have been credibly tested at all.
Please show me the unusable edges of a zm18 at f/8....
And I'd love to see your shots at all apertures with the sel 24...
I guess those who save their own asssement for actual shots are just foolishly naive.
Ah but last page we saw the cv 25 with very fuzzy edges! I already loose the edges on those tiny cvs with the 5n, so that hardly surprises me.
If I was so certain all RF glass wider than 35 was hopeless I would attend to other matters, instead of returning again and again for the "I told you so"s.
I claimed an FF e mount would come and be a huge success years ago and was laughed at, so spare me the pre-cognition.
I'd like to see my niche camera perform as it can with RF wides, and adjust my lens set as I feel works for me.
The only skin I have in the game is the zm18, cv21---which I never expected to perform without a crop---, and the 28 cron, which if sharp accross the frame at 5.6, could well be fine for me. The centers on that lens wide open are unprecedented--- which may mean nothing to some, but forgive me if I like them
edwardkaraa wrote:
Hahaha, I nearly got chased out of town and that is on page 83
I guess some people had so much high hopes that they just don't want to see the plain naked truth.
Both in the "pro" and the "against" sides of the 'A7-RFwides compatibility' battle I detect a hint of the fearful 'Dpreview syndrome'.
Fact is Edward that your facts are simply assumptions at the moment, although I'd bet that you're probably 90% right with your pessimistic approach.
Instead, an optimist would say: Hmm... the extreme corners of my beloved ZM28 aren't much good at f/2.8 on the A7r. So what ?. Let's stop down a bit; crop the 24x36mm sensor to 24x30mm. and voilą. We'll have still 30 Mpixels and a jolly good picture with better resolution across 90% of the frame than a M9 with the same lens.
Agreed, maybe it's easy for me to be upbeat about the question, cause I sold all my RF wides some time ago..
a few pages back in this morass, the summicron 28 was reported as "sharp across the frame at f/5.6" which sounded pretty good to me---my best expectation in fact. "Fine by me" or something like that was my response.
That met with some scoffing, with the implication that if took the long to get sharp across the frame on the A7r it was basically a fail.
That sort of shocked me, since I never got the idea the 28 summicron was an OTUS at f/2, though the central image is great and it has a beautiful render.
Tonite I looked up Leica's description of the lens:
"At full aperture this lens exhibits a high contrast with crisp definition of ex- ceedingly fine detail over most of the image field, softening in the field from image height of 9mm. A faint trace of astigmatism and field curvature can be detected. Stopping down to 2.8 im- proves the center area (diameter 12mm) and also brings in a higher microcontrast in the outer zones. Corners however lag a bit and stay soft with a limited definition of coarse detail. Stopped down to 4, contrast becomes very high and the optimum is reached with a very even
performance over the whole image area, excepting the extreme corners. At 5.6 we se a small drop in microcontrast of the fine textures and from 8, the overall contrast drops a bit."
i.e. don't even think about general corners on the 28/2 FF until f/4 on film, and still the extreme corners are not there. Hence if true the 28/2 is sharp across the frame at 5.6....might as well light the fireworks.
So that brings up the question as to who really has the unreal expectations......
and for that matter, Brian Smith, who might be considered a serious photographer, if LIFE and Newsweek shots mean anything, or a pulitzer prize--- told me directly and on youtube that "edges are good" on the zm18, which I interpet as f/8 or so--maybe even f/16.
I don't expect the extreme corners to come in at all really.
If the zm18 can do that, it's no fail in my book. It's still an IF---yea I want to believe it, but there's a good chance it's true.
He also says the 24 elmarit can produce sharp images across the frame. But I guess some of you guys know better, eh?
I do not expect the edge performance of the A7r to equal either the M9 or M240 at wider apertures--and I never have---but I do expect the centers to be far sharper---since I've now seen the 28/2 at full aperture with a face in the middle of the frame. That sharpness is well beyond my initial expectations.
Ron Pfister wrote:
The downsides of Moore's law. If you demand a high-speed workflow, 16-20MP files are probably the best choice today (it is no accident that high-end pro DSLRs fit in this bracket - D4, 1Dx). For the fine art photographer, these concerns are largely irrelevant - and for everyone else demanding maximum quality. It's still a lot faster than darkroom work, at any rate...
Yes, and faster than doing a painting too
The fine art photographer will soon find himself that with 16-bit per channel his simple edit with just a few basic layers easily surpasses half a GB and beyond. Same file in 21MP easily grows to a couple of 100 MB which is large enough already. Not to mention time consumption applying semi-complex filters, or behold, using PS tools like "Smudge". TB-disks will transform into workspace, not storage.. ouch.
RustyBug wrote:
Maybe Sony could add a 24x24 crop mode. Square format that would cater to using RF glass ... kind of an RF meets MF @ FF. Classic RF glass on a classic (reduced, but still square) format.
Don't need in-camera crop either. Just guidelines for composition. Very few of my images are composed in the 3:2 aspect ratio. The selection of acceptable lenses increases drastically at 5:4 or square. Heck, the 35 1.8 OSS designed for APS-C NEX covers 24x24 square, still with bad corners, but I get image stabilisation and it will be very useful for low light stuff where corners are unimportant.
wfrank wrote:
Yes, and faster than doing a painting too
The fine art photographer will soon find himself that with 16-bit per channel his simple edit with just a few basic layers easily surpasses half a GB and beyond. Same file in 21MP easily grows to a couple of 100 MB which is large enough already. Not to mention time consumption applying semi-complex filters, or behold, using PS tools like "Smudge". TB-disks will transform into workspace, not storage.. ouch.
I agree, these are the realities we face. I suppose we all know that choosing the highest-resolution sensor places great demands on the processing workflow, hence we need high-end workstations and high-capacity storage. I personally am happy processing my D800E files on a nearly 3.5 year old Mac Pro, and my 25TB iSCSI storage of similar vintage isn't nearly full yet. With high-quality 4TB HDDs currently priced around USD 200, we can hardly complain that storage is too expensive, IMO...
Nov 14, 2013 at 07:20 AM
Steve Spencer Online • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
uhoh7 wrote:
a few pages back in this morass, the summicron 28 was reported as "sharp across the frame at f/5.6" which sounded pretty good to me---my best expectation in fact. "Fine by me" or something like that was my response.
That met with some scoffing, with the implication that if took the long to get sharp across the frame on the A7r it was basically a fail.
That sort of shocked me, since I never got the idea the 28 summicron was an OTUS at f/2, though the central image is great and it has a beautiful render.
Tonite I looked up Leica's description of the lens:
"At full aperture this lens exhibits a high contrast with crisp definition of ex- ceedingly fine detail over most of the image field, softening in the field from image height of 9mm. A faint trace of astigmatism and field curvature can be detected. Stopping down to 2.8 im- proves the center area (diameter 12mm) and also brings in a higher microcontrast in the outer zones. Corners however lag a bit and stay soft with a limited definition of coarse detail. Stopped down to 4, contrast becomes very high and the optimum is reached with a very even
performance over the whole image area, excepting the extreme corners. At 5.6 we se a small drop in microcontrast of the fine textures and from 8, the overall contrast drops a bit."
i.e. don't even think about general corners on the 28/2 FF until f/4 on film, and still the extreme corners are not there. Hence if true the 28/2 is sharp across the frame at 5.6....might as well light the fireworks.
So that brings up the question as to who really has the unreal expectations......
and for that matter, Brian Smith, who might be considered a serious photographer, if LIFE and Newsweek shots mean anything, or a pulitzer prize--- told me directly and on youtube that "edges are good" on the zm18, which I interpet as f/8 or so--maybe even f/16.
I don't expect the extreme corners to come in at all really.
If the zm18 can do that, it's no fail in my book. It's still an IF---yea I want to believe it, but there's a good chance it's true.
He also says the 24 elmarit can produce sharp images across the frame. But I guess some of you guys know better, eh?
I do not expect the edge performance of the A7r to equal either the M9 or M240 at wider apertures--and I never have---but I do expect the centers to be far sharper---since I've now seen the 28/2 at full aperture with a face in the middle of the frame. That sharpness is well beyond my initial expectations.
I was the one who was perhaps, "dreaming here," but I do have pretty high expectations for this lens. The quotes from Puts are useful (and I do enjoy his descriptions), but in this case he is mostly putting the MTF chart into words. For me one of the key issues here is that the 28 cron has peak performance at f/4 and if the corners don't sharpen up across the frame until f/5.6 then you are missing out on some of that peak performance. In my view you are basically losing a stop and for a very expensive lens that is a big deal to me, YMMV. At that point I wonder about how the lens compares to the Leica R 28 elmarit v2. This lens is still expensive but less so than the M cron. It is a bigger, but as a DSLR lens it should be sharp across the frame at f/4 and it has a floating element and therefore probably has better close up performance. So I can see why many if not most people would be happy with the 28 cron if it is sharp across the field at f/5.6 (it will be quite small and a good performer), but for me it just wouldn't be a good value proposition when you would lose out on some of its best performance.
Steve Spencer wrote:
I was the one who was perhaps, "dreaming here," but I do have pretty high expectations for this lens. The quotes from Puts are useful (and I do enjoy his descriptions), but in this case he is mostly putting the MTF chart into words. For me one of the key issues here is that the 28 cron has peak performance at f/4 and if the corners don't sharpen up across the frame until f/5.6 then you are missing out on some of that peak performance. In my view you are basically losing a stop and for a very expensive lens that is a big deal to me, YMMV. At that point I wonder about how the lens compares to the Leica R 28 elmarit v2. This lens is still expensive but less so than the M cron. It is a bigger, but as a DSLR lens it should be sharp across the frame at f/4 and it has a floating element and therefore probably has better close up performance. So I can see why many if not most people would be happy with the 28 cron if it is sharp across the field at f/5.6 (it will be quite small and a good performer), but for me it just wouldn't be a good value proposition when you would lose out on some of its best performance....Show more →
Steve,
Hopefully someone will be able to compare the performance of the M 28mm f2 Summicron Asph with the R 28mm f2.8 Elmarit on the A7r. I am most definitely waiting for that comparison to help me make my decision.
