Breal wrote:
Do all Leica wides require the lens shaving or mirror modification
Thanks for posting, this test is pretty darn impressive.
Thanks,
Bernard.
I know for sure the 19mm Elmarit requires some modifications but not the 28mm, since I have both of them. Kurt (kidigital) told me that his 35mm Summicron requires some modification as well. I am talking about these lenses on Series 1 Canon cameras; I am not sure about them on 20D or 10D.
I would love to be shooting with my leica on digital now but things need to wait since i lost so much recently. However, the so called ultimate zoom on the market now is the 28-90 apo leica r. I would love to meet with some of you guys and echange views and so on. I almost bought a 20d today just to shoot it on digital but I had to pass. I am starting work on getting these leicas on to a nikon body. I have been doing som reading and have seen some good ideas. Now to materialize them. I say this because the d2x has had some good reviews and its 3k less than the idsii. If only I could get my hands on the guy that stiffed me down in san diego !
None the less, here is one with the 28-90 on film ...
Thanks Joshua. I did mean on a series 1 Canon body.
Is good to know these things
I wonder if there are any other Leica wides that do not require such modifications.
braindeadmac wrote:
Yeap, all manually focused on the "Canon". It took a few tries on the zooms, but it just pops into focus with the Leica.
For some reason, the guys that usually jump all over testing methodology issues are staying silent on this one...probably because we all already know Leica usually outperforms Canon to some degree. But these Canon shots are so clearly unacceptable in terms of focus and or camera shake there is little point to the comparison. If the crop was outside of the DOF, it might be understandable, but the crop is said to be the point of focus. What's up?
pthompson wrote:
For some reason, the guys that usually jump all over testing methodology issues are staying silent on this one...probably because we all already know Leica usually outperforms Canon to some degree. But these Canon shots are so clearly unacceptable in terms of focus and or camera shake there is little point to the comparison. If the crop was outside of the DOF, it might be understandable, but the crop is said to be the point of focus. What's up?
Why would the Canon shots be so magically unacceptable in terms of focus or camera shake and the Leitz shots not? Camera position did not change, Canon 1ds2, mirror lockup, Really Right Stuff bracket, Gitzo 1348 tripod, Arca Swiss B1 locked down--all stayed the same for each shot. Even the shutter speed is within 1/3 stop for each shot. There is no camera shake in these shots, big guy, period.
It is harder to focus the Canon lenses in the (crappy) viewfinder, partly because of the play in USM focus ring and because the edge performance of these zoom lenses wide open is not as good as the Leica. It only took me one try to get the Leica right, 3 tries to get the 16-35, and 2-3 tries to get the 24-70 focused.
If my focusing technique is so bad, how was I able to focus the Leica? Dumb luck? Dumb luck for the past 30 years? It could probably be argued that it's much harder to manually focus Canon lenses than Leica lenses, I suppose.
What you are seeing is the poor performance of these zoom lenses wide open at close range. The 24-70 improves dramatically just a few feet out to infinity. The 16-35 merely improves a few feet out--just not dramatically.
I have to agree. The two 16-35 shots and the first 24-70 all look like they could be camera shake to me. How many shots were taken with each lens and are these the best ones?
As much as I love my Leica lenses, this test doesn't look right. The Canon shots don't appear to be in focus. Are you sure that you are within the minimum focus capability of the zooms? Canon lenses can be just as sharp as Leica. Usually the difference is in color rendition and micro detail. There is no way that two L lenses can perform so badly.
10DFT wrote:
The Canon shots look out-of-focus. Why not use AF?
Because I don't use autofocus much, it's not terribly useful for the composition work I do. I appreciate that they look out of focus, particularly compared to the Leica . They are not, at least in the viewfinder. Towards the center, the focus gets much better wide open.
G-W-N wrote:
As much as I love my Leica lenses, this test doesn't look right. The Canon shots don't appear to be in focus. Are you sure that you are within the minimum focus capability of the zooms? Canon lenses can be just as sharp as Leica. Usually the difference is in color rendition and micro detail. There is no way that two L lenses can perform so badly.
I also find that it is true that the color rendition and the Micro-Contrast that I shown in my original thread is very consistent to G-W-N statement when I compared my Zeiss and Leitz versus the Japanese lens from super wide to wide to telephoto lens. https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/232595/0#1914881
Some of the Canon L lens is very sharp but lack of micro-contrast and dull in color with some of the lens. All of these lens has their own signature and if you study them long enough you recognize them apart.
Thank you Jeff for taking the time to show us the test. It is very interesting data that you have shown us here. I believe that this is an n of 1 and we need more tests to demonstrate the consistency of one lens signature different from another one. If we get the technical stuff down correctly when doing the tests and we continue to see the same patterns test after test then what we are observing is very true. Sometimes folks will tell you how subjective our point of views on these lens are in this FM forum. However, there have been alot of important information that we shared with each other here and from the information the folks in this forum benefit with leading information than other folks. I truly believe in my statement. Furthermore, you can do as much reading as you want with out the tests that you are going to use the lens for the application you do not know if it fit your need. The lens application is very important as I mentioned before. It is in the application that defines the important of the lens and it is where some lens win and some fail but that does not mean it is a bad lens it just mean we did not use it with the right application. And yes some lens are jus that much better than the other no matter what test you performed.
-Son
Edited by PhotoCinematic on Jun 11, 2005 at 10:55 PM GMT
Pondria wrote:
Let me understand correctly. The "Canon" logo on the T&S lens was the focus point ?
Yeap. Below are repeats with autofocus; I also repeated the tests (for the fourth time) to prove the point using manual focus. In this group I was a bit further away (4 feet maybe), so I wasn't able to focus on the Canon logo persay (plus it's dark now and I have poor light in here).
OK, it's dark and I was a little further away (48 inches or so). The 24 TSE is not so off center now because I wanted to use autofocus to disprove the pundits; autofocus and MF point was the lower right corner af point, right over the 24 TSE.
Sorry it's so low in contrast, it's dark here. But I think the series at f2.8 makes the point. f5.6 looks a little better for this series because we aren't near the edge for the focus point. The 24-70 looks down right good at f5.6 here near the center. The magnification of the 24TSE is a little different because I bumped it as I changed lenses--moved it back making it even harder to focus on .
Edited by braindeadmac on Jun 11, 2005 at 10:02 PM GMT
Thanks much for this information. It's very useful in helping me determine how inadequate the Canon zooms would be for me. While I appreciate the usefulness of controlled test photos of newsprint on a wall (especially coming from a science background in college), that's not an application I usually find to generate income, or even interesting photos. But your comments about the ease of focusing (or lack thereof), especially combined with your opinion of the crappy Canon viewfinder (the Nikon mirror box is just so much contrastier) really convinces me that I'll need to start shopping for non-OEM lenses and appropriate adapters. I don't know if I can swing the finances for Leica, but I hope such tests will keep coming so that I can make a more informed decision regarding my "perfect" price/performance compromise.
I never would have guessed last week that I'd find myself caring about, much less starved for, comparisons between Leica, Contax, and Olympus lenses, but that's exactly where I find myself.
I do believe that Leica 28mm Elmarit-R is optically better than the two zooms at the same focal length. In addition to that, Being a MF lens, it is mechanically designed for easy manual focusing - firm but smooth ring, finer and even helicals etc.
That said, my surprise is not about the Leica. it is surprising that the zooms are this poor. I have neither of them, so I really can't speak for them. But I think they should be better than this.
Comparing to Zeiss 28/2.8, probably Leica is better considering their prices. However, the difference is not big enough to be shown by this type of test, especially at the center crop.
, just being my creative self in Photoshop.
. They are not, at least in the viewfinder. Towards the center, the focus gets much better wide open.