edwardkaraa wrote:
With my humble understanding of MTF, I can already see that Zeiss achieved a great feat with this lens. Already from WO, the extreme corners are as sharp as the center, with very little to no veiling haze, and a slight drop in contrast in the corners. Of course some center sharpness was sacrificed to achieve that but the result is even sharpness across the frame. This a trend in the most recent Zeiss glass (especially the ZA line), probably caused by our obsession of examining extreme corners at 100% magnification :P
Usually f/1.4 lenses have high center sharpness but a dramatic drop as you move away from the center.
This also shows in the comparison with the f/2. The MTF being so close (with a 1 stop advantage) is extraordinary. One would expect an f/2 lens to outperform an f/1.4 at similar apertures but clearly this is not the case.
I do expect this lens to be an equally super performer at its entire aperture range, which will make it as good for low light shooting as for landscapes.
yes, the new zeiss certainly does extend the flat portions of the mtfs closer to the edges, as most would demand. what interests me is the choices made involving astigmatism correction (this is the part i was referring to with regard to similarity between the two Z* lenses versus the contax) and how that will effect the blur signature. it seems that in order to maintain the flat mtf the new zf shows greater divergence between saggital and tangential curves particularly near the edges. the contax appears to have been designed to have the two curves meet in the center and edge while the new design has been designed to have them meet in the center and at the rule of thirds points (should be better for narrow dof of center compositions) while diverging in the edges. i suspect this will lead to a different renderings of objects only slightly oof on the periphery of the frame. but, as this is only an mtf at infinity i may be reading too much into it.
Jan 18, 2011 at 11:09 AM
Previous versions of sebboh's message #9228867 « ZE 35/1.4 MTF on Diglloyd »
