Despite itīs shortcomings the Voigtländer Nokton caught my eyes. On my screen and with my eyes it brings detail in the reds that canīt be seen with the other lenses. As it clearly has issues in the reds, could it just be artifacts or sensor related?
As a relative newcomer to the Alt world, I have found it the easiest to pan gold in the Zeiss creek. Thanks to this forum I have all ready found a few nuggets (e.g. Sonnar 85) and perhaps avoided a few bad ones. The 70-200 f/4 IS seems to be one true gem of the Canon line where several Līs are not. Every line of lenses has itīs gems as well as gravel. Finding the really good ones is the essence of The Hunt.
Blind tests are the ultimate test of lenses. Thanks Jordan for your great effort.
Toothwalker wrote:
It has been ten years since I used the 2.8/85 on tubes. I still have have a sizable 2.8/85 mushroom series in my slide collection. After a few years I got an MP 2.8/100, and did not see a leap forward in performance. Of course I am talking about one or two tubes, and not a 1:1 scenario. I have no scanner at the moment, and I am not even sure whether the arcane '3D' property would even show on scans. However, Brainiac recently posted a capture with the Sonnar 2.8/135 on tubes. That will give you an idea.
Thanks for response, I have not shoot much close-ups with 2.8/85, 3.5/100 or 2.8/135, I have always had plenty of real makro lenses usable. But with my "brand new" (=new to me) M42 CZJ S 3.5/135 (2 zebra rings - 1m minimum focus distance) I have not shoot yet anything else than close-ups and every time I'm amazed when I see the photos on computer. I did see Brainiac's close-up portrait, in it the characteristics of Sonnar 2.8/135 were preserved very well even tubes used.
Well, spring will come eventually after all this damn snow has melted, I'll promise to try Sonnar 3.5/100, 2.8/135 and 3.5/135 with tubes on spring. I don't anymore have Sonnar 2.8/85 since last fall all my gear was stolen -I got everything else back except 2.8/85 and 45TSE.
Jman13 wrote:
I just thought it was funny how there were (in addition to the positive comments) a rash of seemingly apologetic responses concerning the setup and the lenses used after the results were released.
Actually, I don't think I discriminate. Half of my lenses are Canon, and I have none of the lenses you tested. I just pointed out that different lenses are optimized for different tasks, generally either infinity or MFD performance. Also, f/4 is a weird aperture to choose. I find myself either shooting wide-open/a little stopped down (1.2 to 2.8), or f/8 to f/11. Nevertheless, I think your test was immensely revealing and thoroughly insightful.
For a 2.8 lens, f4 is 'a little stopped down'. As it turns out, many of my lenses are 2.8 or slower, so for me f4 is a quite useful aperture (i.e. on stop off wide open) to see. I agree that many lenses seem to be optimized toward one end or the other ... makes for some degree of duplication / overlap in the bag.
Me too, and after seeing what it is I am very glad because I'll have it in about 3 weeks time. Now to the immortal question: Will it make my 135/2 obsolete?
On the 100L - while f/4 sharpens up the corners a bit, the center 80% of the frame is essentially identical at f/2.8. It's extremely sharp at all apertures.
Oh god! I've never seen ANYTHING like those crops come out of my 100L. From what I've seen, following the 100L threads on POTN and here, bad copies are pretty rare...very odd he got three. Wonder if something is wrong with his camera.
You can see in the lens review section here, that it's got a 9.4 right now, with I think 3 bad reviews dragging the average down (it would otherwise be around a 9.7)...I'm assuming those reviewers had bad copies. Overall, seems like a pretty small percentage.
I lost some confidence in Digiloyds. He is somehow very thorough on issues from one manufacturer and a bit less from an other. For the fact that he makes money with lens reviews he should try to have a higher standard than this IMO
Well the results are as expected: Canon dominates the tele range. Has always been the case.
The title suggests an alternative lens battle though, which was kind of deceptive. It is also a bit hard to compare lenses on different cameras with different crop factors. This way the voigt and rokkor are no 100 but 200 percent crops. Lens faults and sensor problems are thus exaggerated.
This way the test seems rather useless to me. Canon is better at 85mm, no shock there, esp. against these other lenses. No one would have guessed those lenses were Canon, which isn't very strange if people thought this was an alternative lens battle.
All this aside I appreciate the time you took for this test, but I am only missing the point
-edit: stupid me missed the "and my best canons" line, would not be the only one I fear
biotar wrote:
This way the voigt and rokkor are no 100 but 200 percent crops. Lens faults and sensor problems are thus exaggerated.
They are not 200% crops. They are enlarged more in magnification, and it does put more stress on the lens due to the higher pixel density, but the FOV is in the same range, and these are 100% pixel level crops from the E-P1 (it is a smaller area, of course, which may be what you mean).
The Voigtlander and Rokkor were really included so as to not immediately point out the 100mm focal length of the Canon, which, if you read my gear list in my profile, would stand out. I did not intend for them really to compete on equal footing.
Jman13 wrote:
Oh god! I've never seen ANYTHING like those crops come out of my 100L. From what I've seen, following the 100L threads on POTN and here, bad copies are pretty rare...very odd he got three. Wonder if something is wrong with his camera.
You can see in the lens review section here, that it's got a 9.4 right now, with I think 3 bad reviews dragging the average down (it would otherwise be around a 9.7)...I'm assuming those reviewers had bad copies. Overall, seems like a pretty small percentage.
Save from one, I've never seen ANYTHING like those crops come out of any of my lenses either, and I had tens (~20).
If I had to pick one lens, I like #4 the best - it is the only lens without any purple or green fringing in the wheels. Out of focus disks are are smooth and round - quite appealing to my eye. Detail on the rim is there, and while the Prancing Horse is not the sharpest (that honor goes to #2) the detail is there and the image would sharpen very nicely.
Three 100mm lenses, same object shoot at 1:4.5 magnification with f/6.3 or thereabouts. Images cropped so that the subject is on same location (=added images as layer to one image in Photoshop then manually aligned layers and finally cropped), magnification was fixed already during shooting by having micro focusing rail on tripod, camera had to be moved about 10cm to get same magnification with all lenses even having same nominal focal length.
Lightning with strobes, which was mistake since it took all my nerves to get even this consistent results on exposure (which still seriously suck, the fill light on left on 1st image is much weaker than in 2 & 3), maybe trying on some other day with 5000K hotlights.
Point of this excersise - none, just had boring night and some remote triggers and light tents to be tested anyhow... Only useful thing in this "test" is to see differences on DOF size and small differences in bokeh characteristics. If somebody is interested I can show also f/2.8 and f/13 shots of lenses 1 & 2.
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
Three 100mm lenses, same object shoot at 1:4.5 magnification with f/6.3 or thereabouts. Images cropped so that the subject is on same location (=added images as layer to one image in Photoshop then manually aligned layers and finally cropped), magnification was fixed already during shooting by having micro focusing rail on tripod, camera had to be moved about 10cm to get same magnification with all lenses even having same nominal focal length.
Lightning with strobes, which was mistake since it took all my nerves to get even this consistent results on exposure (which still seriously suck, the fill light on left on 1st image is much weaker than in 2 & 3), maybe trying on some other day with 5000K hotlights.
Point of this excersise - none, just had boring night and some remote triggers and light tents to be tested anyhow... Only useful thing in this "test" is to see differences on DOF size and small differences in bokeh characteristics. If somebody is interested I can show also f/2.8 and f/13 shots of lenses 1 & 2.
I slightly prefer #3 to #1, but that could be an exposure difference. They are so close... I THINK it is slightly sharper & has more 3D.
#2 is also a nice lens, but can't quite compete with the others in both sharpness (or contrast, or acutance or whatever...) and also 3D. - But this is being rather picky.
Notice I didn't use the term "plasticity" today? That was hard.....
trajan wrote:
I think #1 is in focus, #3 is slightly front-focused and #2 is even more front-focused.
Other than that, I can't see any difference.
--trajan
No they are not - they are all EXACTLY focused to the front of bigger blue "wheel" with live view (and I did shoot other set verifying that any of the lenses don't suffer from focus shift). However #2 has noticeably narrower depth of field and #3 is not as sharp as #1 and #2. #1 and #2 are both equally sharp but #2 doesn't have as much microcontrast to bring the detail visible same way. [sharp in this context = resolving power]
