The Zeiss looks great but the Plena amazing... while offering AF.
The camerlabs test confirm that the Pena has incredibly light corner darkening with around 1/3 stop i the far corners. Many lenses suffer from more than a stop. This means that the total amount of light reaching the sensor is much higher than with other f1.8 lenses.
Check the vignetting of many FF lenses at the APS-C distance or even a bit further and see the light loss, sharpness, and bokeh balls shapes. I did some experiments with this. It does wonders with high quality optics.
A technique to get similar results. In fact if I shot on my 60mpx sensor and cropped down to the Z8/9 49mpx resolution the improvements were amazing with no loss of resolution relatve to the Nikon system. Nikon has been very open that this enlarged image circle concept is a big pert of the Plena design. Give it a try. Interesting results.
I am not saying that this is the whole of the Plena design and rendering. Nikon discovered a lot of optical Engineering to maximize the concept. Simple cropping could not match it in all aspect. Though some of the GM lenses git close in many ways.
Oct 18, 2023 at 11:56 PM
Previous versions of 1bwana1's message #16369749 « Nikon Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena Image Thread »
