Build Quality
The Milvus 50 feels very solid, nearly everything is made from metal, markings are engraved and filled with paint. The hood is heavy and made from metal as well, only the locking mechanism of the hood is made from plastics.
Focus and aperture ring show zero play.
Size, Weight and Handling
Wow, this is a massive lens! My a7 looks quite tiny on it:
Here is a reasonably sized lens for comparison:
It isn't well balanced on my a7, my L-bracket helps a bit but I am constantly aware of the size and weight. It's not that ergonomics are actually bad, the lens works fine on my a7 but the camera draws my attention much more than when I have a smaller and lighter lens like the Loxia 2/50 mounted.
The focusing ring is grippy enough but the resistance is higher than I like it, the Loxia 2/50 is about perfect in this regard and very smooth.
With the aperture ring it's the other way round, the Loxia offers more resistance than the Milvus but I think the aperture of the Milvus is a bit too easy to change, the Loxia's resistance feels just right to me. The Loxia stops down in 1/3 steps to f/22, the Milvus in half steps to f/16.
mcj0000 wrote:
This is great, thanks for posting this. I'm interested in the Loxia but I have to say that the bokeh looks much, much better on the Milvus.
I'm not that impressed by the background OOF rendering in the images above. Sharp subject, ugly background screaming for attention. I guess I've better stay away from the Loxia. But wth... I also prefer the 50Lux bokeh to the 55mm Otus bokeh.
OTOH, I like the fact that we all are different and that there are several lens options available.
I am not familiar with Otus look, so Milvus looks plenty good. Bokeh does not bother me. ( subjective ) I noticed Milvus has a little bit warmer rendition compare to Loxia. Loxia feels like Sony family. ( no idea who makes it )
I am not familiar with Otus look, so Milvus looks plenty good. Bokeh does not bother me. ( subjective ) I noticed Milvus has a little bit warmer rendition compare to Loxia. Loxia feels like Sony family. ( no idea who makes it )
I don't want to be that guy, but the results don't look that sharp to me. I downloaded and looked at the original JPEG of the flower with the water beads off Flickr so there shouldn't be any weird processing going on. Were these straight conversions, or did you apply any sharpening to them?
edit: OK, the f/2 photos are significantly sharper than the f/1.4s, and the flower was in a corner, so many mitigating factors.
WB was the same. I will have ab closer look at color differences. I was a bit surprised as well about how noteable the difference is in these images. I think I will have to do a similar test with another light source to rule out that the lamps my cheap softboxes are the reson for the difference.
Andre Y wrote:
I don't want to be that guy, but the results don't look that sharp to me. I downloaded and looked at the original JPEG of the flower with the water beads off Flickr so there shouldn't be any weird processing going on. Were these straight conversions, or did you apply any sharpening to them?
edit: OK, the f/2 photos are significantly sharper than the f/1.4s, and the flower was in a corner, so many mitigating factors.
that looks very sharp to me for a corner at f/1.4, dof is also very small of course. most 50/1.4 lenses would look much worse with the subject that far in the corner at f/1.4. obviously you would expect an f/5.6 corner crop to be much sharper and have the whole flower in focus.
Andre Y wrote:
I don't want to be that guy, but the results don't look that sharp to me. I downloaded and looked at the original JPEG of the flower with the water beads off Flickr so there shouldn't be any weird processing going on. Were these straight conversions, or did you apply any sharpening to them?
That image was sharpened a bit. For a 1.4/50 thats really good in my experience. Sure thats not as sharp as it gets but compared with other lenses it's quite remarkable.
I also ran a Canon nFD 1.4/50 (my sharpest fast 50mm) and C/Y 1.4/50 in that test with the Minolta cameras and even in the center the difference was huge.
