Steve Spencer
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
|
Fred Miranda wrote:
The Leica-M 90/2 APO is a 24-year-old design! However, before even testing it against the Voigtlander 90/2.8 APO, I knew it would do well in comparison because it outperforms the mighty SL 90/2 APO starting at f/4 and f/5.6 at the very corners. Of course, the SL performs way better wide open and the difference at small apertures is very small. (I would post some crops but it's not really relevant to this review)
The surprise was the Sigma's performance tested here. Even with distortion corrected, in terms of resolution/contrast, it outperforms the Voigtlander 90/2.8 APO anywhere in the image field. It's still better when both are stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6.
Perhaps aside from the slower f/2.8 aperture, Cosina decided to name it APO-Skopar instead of APO-Lanthar, because they knew is was not a reference 85-90mm lens like the other APO-Lanthars. I have tried 3 loan copies of the CV 90/2.8 APO and that's how it performs. There is also an issue when using the rangefinder as 2 out of 3 copies were front-focusing with my rangefinder bodies.
The good news is the identical performance on the M10-R, A7R II (Kolari UT) and A7R IIIA....Show more →
I agree with everything you said here, but as a Leica M shooter I can't really use the Sigma. I think the performance of the CVM 90 f/2.8 APO has to be kept in context. Cosina in my view didn't mess up the performance of this lens. It does many things very well. First, it is small and doesn't obstruct the 90mm frame lines at all and weighs a super light 241g. Second, it is a more than decent portraits lens with just a bit of uncorrected SA that seems to be a good mix. Sure a faster lens might be preferred but on a Leica M at 90mm, for me at least, with a faster lens I would need the EVF most of the time and couldn't use the rangefinder. With an f/2.8 lens at 90mm I can still use the rangefinder. Third, this lens has really good control of axial CA and the lateral CA that remains clears up very easily in post processing meaning it is a lens with very low worry for color aberration. Fourth, it seems to do very well close up as Rich's samples suggest, and when I get mine I will test it with even closer focus with the macro adapter. I expect because it is a unit focussing lens a bit more SA at wide apertures but still very low axial CA. If I stop it down a bit I expect really good fairly close performance (i.e., 1 to 3 or so). We'll see if that holds up. Fifth, stopped down to f/5.6 is it quite decent at landscape shooting. Certainly it can be beat for landscapes by a number of lenses as the tests here have shown, but it still does a quite decent job. Taken together that is a lot of really good performance across a lot of types of shooting and at a very reasonable price.
That is why for me it will be my travel lens and street shooting lens, if I like it when I get it. It would be part of my 4 lens kit with the Leica 21 SEM, the CVM 28 f/2 II, and the Lecia 50 lux Asph. None of these lenses are perfect but they are all great all rounders and suit my needs for many things. This lens is cheap enough that I can supplement it. For landscapes I can easily add the ZM 85 f/4, which as the test above show is a great lens and is almost as small. I might supplement it for portraits with the Zhong Yi 90 f/1.5, which looks really good in the testing that Bastian did at philipreeve.net. All three of these lenses can also be had for a very reasonable cost. If you are primarily a landscape shooter this lens probably isn't for you, but for lots of other uses it can be a very solid choice.
|
