It won\'t leave very good to superior lenses in the dust in the center region, but if you look at various competent reviews (16:9 provides clear examples for instance), superior lenses are superior for a reason, only it is at the margin (both physically and abstractly). And of course, \"leave in the dust\" has a different meaning at this level. A gold medal slalom skier leaves the rest of the pack \"in the dust\" by beating them by over a second in time, but is that \"leaving them in the dust\"? Well yes, at that level it would be.
For one thing, the 100 Leica is very sharp wide open at f/2.8 (as well as at f/22 as was recently demonstrated, not an ease thing to do), and of course, this competition wouldn\'t even take that into account. I will agree that as you get closer to the f/5.6 to f/8 region, the differences become very, very small amongst the highly rated lenses, and there is no better example than the $300-350 Contax 28mm f/2.8. I know of few lenses that could top that lens at f/5.6 at 2-4X the price. The thing that separates the Leica apart is it is excellent across all uses, all f stops, all distances, etc., measured in resolution, bokeh, color, microcontrast, yada, yada. It\'s not easy to find a lens that hits the top mark so broadly speaking (the 70-200 does beat it out for versatility of focal length, though, not to mention IS).
If you want to stitch panos, you need sharpness across the whole image, with low distortion as well.
It won\'t leave very good to superior lenses in the dust in the center region, but if you look at various competent reviews (16:9 provides clear examples for instance), superior lenses are superior for a reason, only it is at the margin (both physically and abstractly). And of course, \"leave in the dust\" has a different meaning at this level. A gold medal slalom skier leaves the rest of the pack \"in the dust\" by beating them by over a second in time, but is that \"leaving them in the dust\"? Well yes, at that level it would be.
For one thing, the 100 Leica is very sharp wide open at f/2.8 (as well as at f/22 as was recently demonstrated, not an ease thing to do), and of course, this competition wouldn\'t even take that into account. I will agree that as you get closer to the f/5.6 to f/8 region, the differences become very, very small amongst the highly rated lenses, and there is no better example than the $300-350 Contax 28mm f/2.8. I know of few lenses that could top that lens at f/5.6 at twice the price. The thing that separates the Leica apart is it is excellent across all uses, all f stops, all distances, etc., measured in resolution, bokeh, color, microcontrast, yada, yada. It\'s not easy to find a lens that hits the top mark so broadly speaking (the 70-200 does beat it out for versatility of focal length, though, not to mention IS).
If you want to stitch panos, you need sharpness across the whole image, with low distortion as well.
It was a good test, though. Thanks.
Feb 28, 2010 at 05:18 PM
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