I never did get a good FE 28/2, after 5 bad copies I gave up! Four decentered, one wouldn't focus.
FE 24-105/4G, the first copy was bad, the 2nd I accepted, not perfect, but only off (left edge soft)at 24mm, F4-8, comes sharp closing down beyond F8.
FE 85/1.8 1st copy bad, 2nd good.
Others are alright re centering, but disappointed that the FE 90/2.8 shows aperture blades even wide open.
Batis 18 good 1st
Batis 25 good 1st
Batis 85 good 1st
- Sony A7III, four months old: no issues
- Sony 12-24G, four months old: no issues
- Sony 70-200F4, bought used, likely had at lease couple of years of service: maybe is a tad softer in one corner, otherwise for now working flawlessly
Things could dramatically change in terms of reporting since I've now decided to play the lens lottery with a FE 35 F1.4 ZA on eBay, so waiting delivery with fingers double crossed...
Nov 28, 2018 at 05:01 AM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
Loxia 21: good first try
Loxia 25: good first try
Loxia 50: good first try
Loxia 85: good first try
CV 40 f/1.2: good first try
CV 65 f/2 APO: good first try (purchased used from Guy, however, so I knew it was good from his Big Bronco test)
Batis 18: good first try
Batis 25: good first try
Batis 85: good first try
Sony/Zeiss 55 f/1.8: good first try
My definition of good may be different from others. I do check for centering but don't do much else besides just shoot with the lens and examine the output carefully.
Small variences not practical in real life shooting, I won't count.
Sony, including ZA, 11/11 good, 1 damaged in shipping won't count.
CV 4/5 good
Samyang 2/4 good
Nikon 4/5 good
Canon only 2 bad out of so many, I lost count.
If you're going to be hyper critical, you can probably find much more flaws. Not going to beat myself up for minor impurities, because it likely has no bearing on print or any sort of viewing.
My main issue with the faulty lenses I've had is that often the plane of focus is tilted. This makes getting the DOF you want more of a challenge and can even harm bokeh. So it's not just about "it has a softer corner".
What I never understand in these kind of threads is that so many use a 42MP camera and even ask for higher MP sensors, talk about MTF graphs when a lens is released, pixelpeep test images,... yet don't feel like testing a lens when they buy one and sometimes even mock the "overly critical people" that do want what they've paid for.
I've had pretty good results across brands of lenses. Most of my lenses are pre-owned, which in most cases means "pre-screened" when purchased from reliable sellers here and on eBay.
I've only rarely encountered a "bad" lens, and usually that is something like the Canon 24/1.4L II, bought recently and returned for obvious impact marks from having been dropped and was wonky IQ from side to side of the frame. Years ago, another was a Zeiss ZE 50/1.4 that had terrible focus shift.
I did pre-order the Sony 24-105G which had a problem -- sent it to Precision Camera (official Sony repair) and they fixed it an sent it back in less than a week. That lens is a gem.
I bought a Canon 16-35/2.8L II brand new and it was OOF on the lower right 1/3 of the frame. Sent to CPS, came back uncorrected. Returned to CPS, came back with the original problem fixed, but introduced more problems. Sent back, and it came back as with four even corners -- as good as that design was going to get. Used it for many years on "non-technical" images where the edges/corners didn't matter. Learned a lot about the complexity of modern UWA lens dynamics (fix one thing, only to find you now have a new problem!).
Most of my Sony native lenses have been as consistent as Canon, including 12-24G, Loxia 21, 35, 50, 28/2 -- all great.
By and large, I've been fine, with about 90+% of Canon and Sony being outstanding (I'm finding Sigma Art to be pretty great too), which is part of the reason I still buy Canon and adapt to Sony.
Like Joshua, I don't "test," but I thoroughly evaluate anything I buy in real world scenarios, including near and far distances. You can't take photos of large buildings or flat surfaces with a bad corner or side of the frame, or extreme field curvature that can't be overcome by f/8. The Canon TSE lenses are pretty obvious if needing repair or adjustment because of their subject matter, and mine have been great for what they are (mine have never needed adjustment). Beyond that, it's a simple question of "Is it sharp enough at the intended aperture?" which for me is usually between f/5.6-11.0 on the lenses listed above.
I've only recently begun re-exploring fast lenses, where things can be more critical to get right with the lens near wide open. But so far, so good!
Update, tested the 2nd Sigma Art FE 50mm 1.4 we just bought for the studio. The first one was perfect. This one is (very) slightly decentered. That means pixel peeping at apertures wider than we shoot at. We're keeping it.
This is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. It's also a topic that suffers, as so many do, but lack of definition. Reality is that Lens copy x may seem absolutely fine to Joe and be absolutely unacceptable to Bill. At last count I've tested somewhere around 40,000 lenses and I'll share what I know.
Out of the box, our failure rate for lenses (pretty high standards) overall is just under 2%. With low variability lenses it's 1%. Lenses we think of as bad are, at most, 5%.
Let's do some quick math. If 2% of lenses fail, that suggests that you would need to, on average, buy 50 copies of a lens to find a truly bad one. So when someone says "I've owned 50 lenses and none of them were bad", I'm not surprised. Half of the people who own 50 lenses should never see a truly bad copy.
What about the guy who has 4 out of 5 bad copies? Very often on the interweb people claim that's BS. It's not. That guy isn't looking for an acceptable copy, he's looking for a near-perfect copy. There are 'as perfect as I can detect' lenses out there, but it's not 98%. On a good, reputable, high quality prime lens it maybe be 65% or 75%. There are most definitely lenses that, by my standards, less than 1 in 10 are perfect. When I see someone who tried 4 copies and all weren't perfect, I'm not surprised - for a lot of lenses I see the same thing in evaluating hundreds of copies. They're mostly acceptable, they're mostly not near-perfect.
So, back to the point, 'acceptable copy' is a very poorly defined term, so when we discuss it, we're often comparing our apples to their oranges and calling it all fruit.
Thank you Roger, well said!
To put things into perspective, I own only expensive (for me personally) primes. One of the reasons to switch away from zooms was the higher quality of primes. Here is the right und left corner (1:1) of the bad Loxia 85. Tested with Freds method. For me, that is definitely not acceptable. Maybe some will say I am too picky, but when i can see the difference this clear in an 1399$ (slow) prime it is not even an okish copy for me.
Guess I'm totally with you on that, and even myself I'm not overly fixated about absoluto corner to coner sharpness, but for such I would return such a lens, even considering its pedigree and price..
Every time I buy a lens I'm suspicious about the quality. The uncertainty comes from threads like this.
Gladly I have a professional scientific background and also teach empirical methods on a university level. Therefore I know how to set up a testing environment. Thus I can do something against that uncertainty.
My result: Not a single quality issue with any of my FE-lenses (Voigt Heliar 12/5.6, Voigt Nokton 40/1.2, Zeiss Loxia 21/2.8, Sony FE 28/2, Sony Zeiss FE 55/1.8, Sony FE 85/1.4 GM, Sony FE 90/2.8 Macro, Sony Zeiss FE 16-35/4, Sony FE 70-300/4.5-5.6 G, Sony FE 28-70/4.5-5.6, Tamron FE 28-75/2.8).
Why the heck others have so many issues?
Either I'm just lucky. Or are my expectations too low?
As I'm very picky I'm sure it's rather because others have simply unrealistic expectations and quality tests fail because of those unrealistic expectations:
- Every lens has soft spots. Do you know the flaws of the lens before you buy it?
Let's assume you know it...
- Every lens has an acceptable range of quality. Are you only happy if you have the best performing copy ever made?
If your lens does perform less good than a single sharpened corner-crop on the internet...
- Setting up a testing environment is complex. Are you sure you made no mistake?
Even a long-time well-known photographer does make mistakes or does not know every interplay in the complex process of digital photography. But if you do you will also know that...
- Every lens is decentered. The question is if it is visible when you look at the picture as a whole?
Decentering is an issue when you look at the whole picture at the viewing-distance and not about looking at 100% crops that are set next to each other. Just saying. And last but not least...
- It's all about the picture and not about the gear. Is your photography good enough that you need the higher quality?
Well and if you are good enough in photography there is no need for good gear to take an impressive picture. Isn't it?
DrShouter wrote:
Thank you Roger, well said!
To put things into perspective, I own only expensive (for me personally) primes. One of the reasons to switch away from zooms was the higher quality of primes. Here is the right und left corner (1:1) of the bad Loxia 85. Tested with Freds method. For me, that is definitely not acceptable. Maybe some will say I am too picky, but when i can see the difference this clear in an 1399$ (slow) prime it is not even an okish copy for me.
sebbe wrote:
I'm sure you can send it to Zeiss and get it repaired. There is still no need to buy another lens in this case.
I buy a new lens, after a quick test i discover that it is really off (decentered, tilted whatever) and not useable (I think my example clearly states that this copy is broken, even at landscape apertures it is clearly visible). Your solution for the bad quality control is to send the brand new 5 minute old lens in for a week or month long repair? Why should somebody do that? After such results the lens is going back to the dealer (the bad thing is, that de dealer will ship it to another unhappy customer).
What about the guy who has 4 out of 5 bad copies? Very often on the interweb people claim that's BS. It's not. That guy isn't looking for an acceptable copy, he's looking for a near-perfect copy. There are 'as perfect as I can detect' lenses out there, but it's not 98%. On a good, reputable, high quality prime lens it maybe be 65% or 75%. There are most definitely lenses that, by my standards, less than 1 in 10 are perfect. When I see someone who tried 4 copies and all weren't perfect, I'm not surprised - for a lot of lenses I see the same thing in evaluating hundreds of copies. They're mostly acceptable, they're mostly not near-perfect.
this is me. Roger certainly knows my issues with the Sony 35 1.4 . I’m a lens whore and I’m in need of therapy.
Really the big problem in all this is really the tilt of the elements that happens is it gets softer not just the corners but into the frame and you have to stop down further than you would like. To me that’s the bigger issue. I usually have people in this zones not sky.
Seriously most people are not this damn nit picky but I can certainly name two of them that test very hard and expect near perfect. Fred and Myself
I should add here even though this is in a Sony forum and I’m very active in the Sony forums I’ve been around over 4 decades as a Pro and owned about every system you can buy. Every OEM has the same issues on this subject , there is no one that escapes this. Just a example there is a old saying that goes back years and it goes like this Buy 3 test for one and return two. This is NOT something new
Have to admit I’ve been damn lucky lately and that’s quite a few lenses. I have the Photo Gods shining on me for a bit now.
Lately one and done
CV 15
CV 21
CV 35 Ultron
CV 40 1.2
CV 50 1.2
Loxia 25/35/85
Sony 24/55/85
Batis 25/85/135
This is all pretty recent. I’m missing some here
Do not forward this list to my wife , all my helmets are out on loan. Capice
I personally find it irresponsible buying for example 5 copies of the same lens and sending 4 (or maybe even all of them ) back. The seller loses money each time this happens - some sellers might simply send the return as a new lens to another buyer, but most will be forced to sell the returned copy as used / nearly mint item for a loss. In the end all consumers will have to pay for this kind of behavior with increased prices on lenses.
I agree with posts above that from my experience it must be very rare that a lens is "bad" as new copy. I bought many lenses in the course of many years now, and I never had a bad copy.
I can't imagine buying & returning a lens 4 or 5 times...who has the time for that? Surely thats "problem" territory.
retrofocus wrote:
I personally find it irresponsible buying for example 5 copies of the same lens and sending 4 (or maybe even all of them ) back. The seller loses money each time this happens - some sellers might simply send the return as a new lens to another buyer, but most will be forced to sell the returned copy as used / nearly mint item for a loss. In the end all consumers will have to pay for this kind of behavior with increased prices on lenses.
I agree with posts above that from my experience it must be very rare that a lens is "bad" as new copy. I bought many lenses in the course of many years now, and I never had a bad copy. ...Show more →
Really the big problem in all this is really the tilt of the elements that happens is it gets softer not just the corners but into the frame and you have to stop down further than you would like. ...
Lately, I've been trying to track another variable, one that nobody seems to have questioned - the camera. The lens testing I have followed seems to assume that the sensor, cover glass and mount registration and alignment are not variables, that any tolerance variation is all the lens. I suspect (without any empirical evidence) that tolerance variation, in combination, between all these parts (including the lens) might be a factor, especially with Sony mounts. Push the tolerance to one extreme or another, combined with an extreme tolerance in the same direction with the lens, etc... Then there is understanding the design intent use of a particular lens.
I'm still reading & looking. I use mostly M and LTM glass on my a7ii (no native mount) so I should be running into a whole lot of problems that I haven't encountered, but then I don't push a particular lens to do something it doesn't do... Worst thing I've encountered is pronounced field curvature (which can occur with native mounts too apparently) but this is something that can be managed by learning the appropriate techniques to use, for the intended results.
The main impediment for me, in getting consistently good results, is me ; - )
*edit - the point: if someone has tried five copies to get a good one, the problem may be the body, and then needing to find a lens whose tolerance cancels out the edge-of-tolerance state of the body... (It's just a thought)
DrShouter wrote:
Thank you Roger, well said!
To put things into perspective, I own only expensive (for me personally) primes. One of the reasons to switch away from zooms was the higher quality of primes. Here is the right und left corner (1:1) of the bad Loxia 85. Tested with Freds method. For me, that is definitely not acceptable. Maybe some will say I am too picky, but when i can see the difference this clear in an 1399$ (slow) prime it is not even an okish copy for me.
this is me. Roger certainly knows my issues with the Sony 35 1.4 . I’m a lens whore and I’m in need of therapy.