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25+ "normal lenses" test, comparison
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 10:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
hifisapi wrote:
What is the concensus on the Pentax S-M-C takumar 50mm F1.4? I had one that was fantastic and I always loved
the results with that lens....


in the test it is a top performer and I always loved the results too!

Mos6502 wrote:
Actually I think some lenses were markedly softer than others, even in the resized images.

The Pentax 1.7/50 which was one of the top performers in my opinion: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/8354127311/in/set-72157632460038525

Vs. the Takumar 2/58: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/8356692583/in/set-72157632460038525
or the Helios 2/58: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/8364534292/in/set-72157632460038525

But these are both older designs, so it's no real wonder. It seems obvious that by the time lens design moved into the 1960s, most had figured things out pretty well and there's not a whole lot of noticeable difference. Even with these older designs, by the time the lens is stopped down to 5.6 or thereabouts it's pretty much impossible to see a difference in sharpness even in the corners unless you blow the image way up.


I had presented this test at another site ( Sony NEX talk at dpreview ) and someone there asked me which lenses I'd keep if I only could choose 2. A hypothetical question impossible to answer Wink but I tried and wrote that, if used on dSLR, I'd choose the S-M-C 1.4/50 and the Takumar 2/58, if on NEX I could not let go of the Pen-F 1.4/40. The Takumar f2/58 may not fare well in this test but offers unique rendering taking amazingly beautiful photos!


PostPosted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 10:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
fermy wrote:
First, thanks to kuuan for doing this. Doing something like that requires inordinate amount of work and dedication, personally I doubt I would ever undertake such an endeavor.

I am sure all these lenses are good enough for most practical purposes, so sorting out the wheat from chuff can not be the point. On the other hand, if I take the same scene say with Fujinon 50mm f1.8 the picture would be different to say Ricoh 55mm f1.4 or Pentacon 50mm f1.8. I am speaking about the lenses I have, but I am sure that there are similar differences between the lenses presented here.

So these lenses really are different, but when one looks at the test, the differences are not highlighted. IMHO that's the the problem of presentation, rather than of the test itself. I am not criticizing, but rather want to understand myself what's the best way to do and present lens shootouts between quality lenses.


+1....I am interested in what the positive differences(what is special) between lenses are.
Very great effort with this test! I am just now looking through it.


PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:47 am    Post subject: new test of 32 normal lenses on Sony A7 Reply with quote
Just completed another test comparing 32 normal lenses, but this time on 'FF' Sony A7.
Opened a new flickr account for this, here it is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuanslenstests/collections/72157670921126335/

most lenses are the same as in the first test on NEX5n, some new ones, above all RF lenses, some left out, still Pentax / Takumar heavy.
I hope it will be of use, cheers, andreas


PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks!

Looking through your results -
First impressions - the older RF/SLR lenses are just, well, not suitable to this style of photography. or not unless they are stopped down a lot. The poor contrast and the "glow" is very apparent, and the corners are bad. Probably best for atmospheric portraits in available light - ideal if you need to photograph beautiful women smoking cigarettes in dark cafes.

Besides those there isn't a great deal of difference between the more modern lenses.

The standout among the f/1.4s, very slightly, seems to be the Pentax M 50/1.4, though others have better corners. Perhaps I am biased. Why anyone would care about corners at f/1.4, I don't know.

f/1.4 generally is not so good for high image quality regardless of the lens. Its got limited utility as something other than a special effect. Or at least its not good for shooting things in the garden in bright sunshine.

The second tier, the modern 50/1.8-50/2 are great values, capable of excellent results wide open.
The Topcor, the Oly and the SMC Takumar f/1.8's are the standouts I think in overall performance at their max aperture, the Rokkor PF being the runner up.

The Super-Takumar 55/1.8 was surprisingly mediocre.


PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 11:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
luisalegria wrote:
Thanks!

Looking through your results -
First impressions - the older RF/SLR lenses are just, well, not suitable to this style of photography. or not unless they are stopped down a lot. The poor contrast and the "glow" is very apparent, and the corners are bad. Probably best for atmospheric portraits in available light - ideal if you need to photograph beautiful women smoking cigarettes in dark cafes.

Besides those there isn't a great deal of difference between the more modern lenses.

The standout among the f/1.4s, very slightly, seems to be the Pentax M 50/1.4, though others have better corners. Perhaps I am biased. Why anyone would care about corners at f/1.4, I don't know.

f/1.4 generally is not so good for high image quality regardless of the lens. Its got limited utility as something other than a special effect. Or at least its not good for shooting things in the garden in bright sunshine.

The second tier, the modern 50/1.8-50/2 are great values, capable of excellent results wide open.
The Topcor, the Oly and the SMC Takumar f/1.8's are the standouts I think in overall performance at their max aperture, the Rokkor PF being the runner up.

The Super-Takumar 55/1.8 was surprisingly mediocre.


Hi Luis,

thank you for looking and commenting.

I agree with your assessments. Certainly some lenses are sharper wide open, have better corners, less glow, more contrast asf., characteristics which commonly let us call them 'better' lenses.

The older lenses, specially the old rangefinder lenses fall behind but that also means that they have strong characteristics which makes them interesting for creative photography, for portraits, I like using 'normal' lenses for portraits.

Of course one would not use a f1.4 lens wide open in the garden around noon on a bright summer day. Still I hope that the set up is telling though I understand it's not ideal for all. I hope it shows characteristics and that users will notice them, not judge performance in a converntional sense only.


PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 6:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for all the work it took to put this test together. I'm an A7 shooter myself and have some of those lenses and hope to own others in the future, so this is a very valuable resource.

I hope you don't mind, but I tried to make all the samples a little easier to access:

http://www.lenshunters.com/tests/a7-normal-lenses-test/

If you prefer that I wouldn't use your work in this way, let me know and I'll take it offline.

Some of the Pentaxes are missing from there at the moment, but I can add them in. If anybody has problems or ideas for improvement, please let me know. Image loading might be slow, fullsize 1,5-3,5 Mbyte images are loaded for each lens/aperture combination.


PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
MartinV wrote:
Thank you for all the work it took to put this test together. I'm an A7 shooter myself and have some of those lenses and hope to own others in the future, so this is a very valuable resource.

I hope you don't mind, but I tried to make all the samples a little easier to access:

http://www.lenshunters.com/tests/a7-normal-lenses-test/

If you prefer that I wouldn't use your work in this way, let me know and I'll take it offline.

Some of the Pentaxes are missing from there at the moment, but I can add them in. If anybody has problems or ideas for improvement, please let me know. Image loading might be slow, fullsize 1,5-3,5 Mbyte images are loaded for each lens/aperture combination.


Oh my, this is simply amazing Martin, thank you very much for that!
SOOO much better to compare! No 100% crops needed, any part of the frame of any two lenses at any aperture can be compared directly!Simply great, thank you so much! ( Sure a lot of work but I suspect even less than I had to do with all the 100% crops and putting all these files in order in flickr. You should teach me how to do this!!! )
oh, and I'd be pleased if you could include the other lenses too, specially Topcor-S 2/5cm, Takumar 2.4/58, Takumar 2/58, Auto Takumar 2/55, SMC Takumar 1.4/50, Pentax M 1.4/50

thank you also for mentioning that it was me who took the photos. May I ask, to write instead "Test images shot by Andreas Griesmayr..." something like: "Test images shot, copyrighted and originally published by Andreas..and shared here with his permission" - which I am giving you herewith ( but may withdraw any time in case your site is or becomes commercial )
I'd also be happy if you added a link to my 'main' flickr stream where one can see 'real' photos taken with these lenses: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/collections/72157604973031858/

thank you so much again for making my test images so much more useful!
cheers, andreas


PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 7:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for your kind permission to use the images; I updated the credits. No commercial intent here for the foreseeable future.

I will try to add the missing lenses in a day or two.


PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
And I can second the suggestion to see https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/collections/72157604973031858/

Its got Kuuans incredible collection of Asian street photography.
There is so, so much in there.


PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 10:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
MartinV wrote:
Thank you for your kind permission to use the images; I updated the credits. No commercial intent here for the foreseeable future.

I will try to add the missing lenses in a day or two.


thank you very much once again Martin!
cheers, andreas

edit: WOW, and I just saw that you already added all the lenses, thanks!!!!

Last edited by kuuan on Thu Jul 14, 2016 10:30 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 10:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
luisalegria wrote:
And I can second the suggestion to see https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuuan/collections/72157604973031858/

Its got Kuuans incredible collection of Asian street photography.
There is so, so much in there.


thank you Luis. Happy to know that you enjoy some of my photography Smile


PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
My compliments on the image compare web page MartinV, works really well. Did you write the javascript yourself? Any possibility of using it, with full acknowledgements?


PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks for the positive comments, glad I could do something useful. The code is something I just threw together without paying a lot of attention to cleanliness and reusability, because I was just eager to see the results :) I hope to work on it some more (more refined visuals, maybe showing current crop region on the thumbnail, etc.), so improvement ideas are still very much welcome.

MarcusBMG, if you are able to use it as-is, without any warranty or guarantee of support, then it's OK to use it non-commercially by crediting and linking to lenshunters.com. If it's photography-related, please share :)


PostPosted: Mon Jul 18, 2016 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Like 1

Thanks for all the efforts gentlemen!


PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 4:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
most welcome.

someone had noticed that the images of the SMC Takumar 1.4/50 seem not correct. I had to find out that there is a problem with the lens, closing the aperture the iris closes more than it says. This means that f2 on the SMC corresponds to the half stop between f2 and f2.8 on the S-M-C ( and roughly all others ), f2.8 to the 1/2 stop between f2.8 and f4, f4 = f5.6, f5.6 = 1/2 stop between f8 and f11, f8 = f16.

cheers, andreas
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