p.7 #1 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
I did few tests, shooting my living room curtains and Siemens stars from ~4m/12feet distance. I did not test extensively, but to me corners are better with Kolari modified cameras vs. using with standard thick sensor cover glass camera.
I just got new set of ND-filters from Nisi in 77mm size. This lens looks funny by itself and when fitting 77mm ND-filter via 27->46 & 46->77mm step-ups it looks absolute ridiculous
p.7 #2 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
I did few tests, shooting my living room curtains and Siemens stars from ~4m/12feet distance. I did not test extensively, but to me corners are better with Kolari modified cameras vs. using with standard thick sensor cover glass camera.
I just got new set of ND-filters from Nisi in 77mm size. This lens looks funny by itself and when fitting 77mm ND-filter via 27->46 & 46->77mm step-ups it looks absolute ridiculous
p.7 #3 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
I did few tests, shooting my living room curtains and Siemens stars from ~4m/12feet distance. I did not test extensively, but to me corners are better with Kolari modified cameras vs. using with standard thick sensor cover glass camera.
I just got new set of ND-filters from Nisi in 77mm size. This lens looks funny by itself and when fitting 77mm ND-filter via 27->46 & 46->77mm step-ups it looks absolute ridiculous
p.7 #4 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Fred Miranda wrote:
How do you like the rendering?
Rendering of my living room curtains was very life like
Hard to make opinion about rendering yet, as it's ~2 more months before I take camera outdoors. Based on the very limited mid & close distance shooting, this lens tends to produce nice boke in all indoor scenarios I tried it. And boke behaves similarly enough over the whole sensor area already f/~4.5 (most f/1.4 lenses need 2 stops closing down to get corner boke equivalent of center boke). Also like all near symmetrical (vs. retrofocus) lenses DOF is ~0.5 stop thinner than what one would expect looking at the f-number setting in the lens. Based on what I have seen this far I specially like how textures render; DOF-boke transitions is beautifully smooth on textured surfaces (e.g. when subject has textured surface like wool shirt).
I purchased this lens mainly because I wanted specific "old simple lens" rendering style to use on some of my large DOF photos (~f/4-5.6 medium distance), which still clearly have boke, not any f/16 front to back ultra boring stuff. I was first considering Topcor Kogaku 5cm f/3.5 or Nikkor Nippon-Kogaku 5cm f/3.5, but they are all so damn old and those lens coatings did suck badly already 60 years ago and have not improved over the years. Many old non-SLR 4-5 element slow normal lenses tend to have pretty relaxed boke rendering and nice transition zones - 50mm Heliar to me seems to have these qualities, but with modern coatings and really good (technically measured) focus plane rendering.
I need to shoot this lens in forest to get good feeling how the focus plane contrast vs. boke contrast works. I have hard time figuring it out shooting luggage, puffy winter jackets, camerabags, other random objects and frustrated people ("stop playing with that camera..." ) in my livingroom...
For the landscape kind of stuff I'm >95% sure I will like the focus plane rendering based on how the wooden wall were rendered in Guy's sample photos. But again it's hard to say before I have possibility to use the lens outdoors in decent light. Landscape usability is nice bonus, specially in small&light lens, I doubt I ever bring e.g. Sigma f/1.4 lenses abroad if flying is required. I only needed this lens just for "old simple lens"-rendering, but naturally anything else it can do is added benefit.
p.7 #6 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Rendering of my living room curtains was very life like
Hard to make opinion about rendering yet, as it's ~2 more months before I take camera outdoors. Based on the very limited mid & close distance shooting, this lens tends to produce nice boke in all indoor scenarios I tried it. And boke behaves similarly enough over the whole sensor area already f/~4.5 (most f/1.4 lenses need 2 stops closing down to get corner boke equivalent of center boke). Also like all near symmetrical (vs. retrofocus) lenses DOF is ~0.5 stop thinner than what one would expect looking at the f-number setting in the lens. Based on what I have seen this far I specially like how textures render; DOF-boke transitions is beautifully smooth on textured surfaces (e.g. when subject has textured surface like wool shirt).
I purchased this lens mainly because I wanted specific "old simple lens" rendering style to use on some of my large DOF photos (~f/4-5.6 medium distance), which still clearly have boke, not any f/16 front to back ultra boring stuff. I was first considering Topcor Kogaku 5cm f/3.5 or Nikkor Nippon-Kogaku 5cm f/3.5, but they are all so damn old and those lens coatings did suck badly already 60 years ago and have not improved over the years. Many old non-SLR 4-5 element slow normal lenses tend to have pretty relaxed boke rendering and nice transition zones - 50mm Heliar to me seems to have these qualities, but with modern coatings and really good (technically measured) focus plane rendering.
I need to shoot this lens in forest to get good feeling how the focus plane contrast vs. boke contrast works. I have hard time figuring it out shooting luggage, puffy winter jackets, camerabags, other random objects and frustrated people ("stop playing with that camera..." ) in my livingroom...
For the landscape kind of stuff I'm >95% sure I will like the focus plane rendering based on how the wooden wall were rendered in Guy's sample photos. But again it's hard to say before I have possibility to use the lens outdoors in decent light. Landscape usability is nice bonus, specially in small&light lens, I doubt I ever bring e.g. Sigma f/1.4 lenses abroad if flying is required. I only needed this lens just for "old simple lens"-rendering, but naturally anything else it can do is added benefit.Samuli...Show more →
I didn't know about the depth of field advantage for symmetrical designs but had a feeling you would appreciate how nice this little lens renders. I'm happy that my lens was just upgraded to almost 50/2.8!!
From my limited experience, I think that "bokeh contrast" is neutral while contrast is high on the plane of focus. It's a very pleasant look.
p.7 #7 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
As there was some sunshine on weekend and I could not resist take few quick test shots at my backyard. Unfortunately my backyard has absolute nothing interesting to shoot.
First I tested flare. I was quite surprised that this lens was flaring while sun was quite far away from frame, and sun did shine in angle to front lens element. Flare was not the typical Sony sensor caused reflection, but smooth and yellowish. It did not seem to matter did I shoot wide open or f/16, flare remained about the same, below comparison shots f/5.6. I assumed very good flare resistance as this lens a) really simple, with very few glass/air surfaces b) supposed to have modern coatings. Old designs typically are quite flare resistance as lens coatings used to be much worse than modern coatings. In practice this will never bother me as this lens is 100% tripod lens due to poor user interface, and I can always use hand or hat to shade the lens. Hood was used but it's so ineffective that it makes absolute no difference.
EDIT! NOTICE! See few posts below, I could not repeat the flare in further testing
Sun above the frame, shining to whole front lens element
Same framing and processing, this time using hand to shade the front of the lens from the sun
Unfortunately at my backyard there was nothing to shoot closer than 5m/15feet distance. So I shot this backlit scene with focus on single tree 5m/15feet away, and background trees 10-30m/30-90feet away. I shoot the same scene also with Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4. On focus plane both were identical in sharpness (=both exceeding no-AA-filter 24Mpix sensor resolution) and contrast was as good in both. I hoped for smaller contrast in boke, but to my disappointment boke contrast was identical between these two lenses. Voightländer boke was slightly smoother than Sigma's, mostly due to Voightländer boke highlights having softer edges than Sigma's boke highlights. In addition to calm and smooth boke I was happy to see that boke is not ruined by LoCA caused magenta/green contrast edges. Also good to see that with Kolari v2 camera there seems to be no field curvature issue causing edges/corners to focus more far away than center of image
Will be interesting to learn more about this lens when the spring comes. Specially interesting to see how this lens performs on more interesting 2-3m/6-9feet range, where performance still should be OK even this lens is unit focusing.
p.7 #8 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Did you have the hood attached? Looks like veiling flare and it's something I could not see in any of my tests. I thought flare performance was actually amazing with no ghosting anywhere.
Do you have a way to test the difference in contrast between plane of focus and bokeh? Or it's just visual inspection?
p.7 #9 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Fred Miranda wrote:
Did you have the hood attached? Looks like veiling flare and it's something I could not see in any of my tests. I thought flare performance was actually amazing with no ghosting anywhere.
Yes, quote "Hood was used but it's so ineffective that it makes absolute no difference." - the hood becomes effective only at very large angle (compared to modern deep tulip shaped hoods), it's not at all very effective. On indoor test shots I didn't notice any veiling flare, but I also really didn't test for it as I assumed this lens to have excellent flare performance due to historical design and modern coatings.
It takes few months before sun rises so high that the tiny hood blocks front lens element if sun is above the frame and camera is somewhat level, and still only at hours around noon. Now sun peaks 22 degrees above horizon - looking the hood it's about 45 degrees when hood shades whole front lens element, and maybe 30 degrees when whole front element is without shade. 50mm lens on 24mm*36mm sensor makes vertical FOV about 27 degrees => hood is not at all effective on situations like in example photo, where sun is about half frame height above the visible 24mm*36mm frame or ~15 degrees above the upper edge of image, whatever expression is preferred.
When it's time for real shooting, I shoot >99% time with polarizer so I anyways could not use hood in real life situation.
Fred Miranda wrote:
Do you have a way to test the difference in contrast between plane of focus and bokeh? Or it's just visual inspection?
I prefer to use "visual inspection" method. Typically I need few hundred shots with familiar subjects and I know lens inside out -> makes hard to learn lenses during winter. Due to modern cameras having decent EVFs I don't rarely anymore shoot extensive aperture series with new lenses, unless I want to study something requiring pixel peeping at computer (generally I don't want...).
The systematical test would have to be quite complex, as it would have to take into account boke blurriness and therefore adjust measurement to focus distance and aperture. Human "eye brain"-system is just not about numbers, but instead combination of difference between brightness levels (=contrast) and perceived contrast, which is effected by transfers from brightness to another (rate of change, linearity of change etc.). I'm sure I could code some kind of software analyzer for this, but to make it produce meaningful and systematically comparable numbers it would be very time consuming => I have very little interest to do so large project just for fun. If making simplification, this maybe could be measured somehow with multiple MTF-test, by combining different focus distance shots of test chart and crunch some numbers->graphs from them - this would naturally require that test chart would have non-standard low frequency detail in addition to typical high frequency detail used in typical MTF-tests.
p.7 #11 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
I'm the still-enthusiastic new owner of Guy's lens, and I'd like to buy it a housewarming present of a light-red B+W MC filter, for use on a monochrome-converted, full-spectrum A7RM2 with a visible-light band-pass filter behind the lens (Astronomik-sourced). I have several much larger light-red filters for use with modern lenses, but, unsurprisingly, I can't get that B+W filter in 27mm.
B&H usually has the filter in 37mm, but are restocking in several weeks. The step-up ring is easy to find. An eBay vendor in China has a 37mm metal lens hood with 46mm threads on the front of the hood. A 46mm snap-cap is easy to find. All a bit of a kludge, but do-able.
Does anyone have a simpler suggestion? Does anyone have have a coated red or orange 27mm filter they'd like to part with? Sometimes I long for the old days with Nikon when so many lenses had 52mm front threads. . .
p.7 #12 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Fred Miranda wrote:
Did you have the hood attached? Looks like veiling flare and it's something I could not see in any of my tests. I thought flare performance was actually amazing with no ghosting anywhere.
Do you have a way to test the difference in contrast between plane of focus and bokeh? Or it's just visual inspection?
I got ring flare when testing my copy for its sunstar. I was surprised by that result, but I'm not too worried about it given that I don't generally shoot into the sun.
p.7 #13 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Fred Miranda wrote:
Looks like veiling flare and it's something I could not see in any of my tests.
Fred, I left work earlier today to do few further tests and could not get lens to produce similar veiling flare no matter what I did. Only flare was the typical sharp flaring when sun is just at edge of image, or veiling flare when sun is in the frame (just near the sun not widely in frame).
On weekend test there must have been some some fogging on the lens due to indoor / outdoor temperature difference. Usually in winter I only have issues if I keep lenscap (or hoodcap like in this lens) at my pocket, and it gets warmer than the lens -> front lens fogs when warm lenscap (or hoodcap) is put to it's place. However as the test shots were shot in my backyard it, I never took the hoodcap outdoors. Remains a mystely why the flare happened. In any case, not repeteable, excellent flare resistance.
Fred Miranda wrote:
I thought flare performance was actually amazing with no ghosting anywhere.
I agree, even sun is in the frame contrast on another side of frame is pretty good.
p.7 #14 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
You may have had internal fog going from inside to the outside cold. That happened to me in Brazil years ago in the heat but much worse lasted about a hour before I could even see through a lens. Or it was very diffused fog through the trees
On my tests with this lens I did not run into any flare. Hated selling it too. Liked this lens a bunch. It’s the one regret I have to get the Sony 135. I may buy one back when I get some money
p.7 #15 · Infinity test: CV 50/3.5 vs CV 40/1.2 vs FE 50/1.4 ZA
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Fred, I left work earlier today to do few further tests and could not get lens to produce similar veiling flare no matter what I did. Only flare was the typical sharp flaring when sun is just at edge of image, or veiling flare when sun is in the frame (just near the sun not widely in frame).
On weekend test there must have been some some fogging on the lens due to indoor / outdoor temperature difference. Usually in winter I only have issues if I keep lenscap (or hoodcap like in this lens) at my pocket, and it gets warmer than the lens -> front lens fogs when warm lenscap (or hoodcap) is put to it's place. However as the test shots were shot in my backyard it, I never took the hoodcap outdoors. Remains a mystely why the flare happened. In any case, not repeteable, excellent flare resistance.
I agree, even sun is in the frame contrast on another side of frame is pretty good.
Samuli...Show more →
Hi Samuli,
Yes, that was my experience as well. Much better flare performance than other 50mm lenses I've tried. I'd say it's one of its strength.
Thanks for reporting back!
and Siemens stars from ~4m/12feet distance. I did not test extensively, but to me corners are better with Kolari modified cameras vs. using with standard thick sensor cover glass camera.
) in my livingroom... 
