Home

Please support mflenses.com if you need any graphic related work order it from us, click on above banner to order!
SearchSearch MemberlistMemberlist RegisterRegister ProfileProfile Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages Log inLog in

Cheap focal reducer tests with several lenses (pic heavy)
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
View previous topic :: View next topic  


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 1:57 pm    Post subject: Cheap focal reducer tests with several lenses (pic heavy) Reply with quote
I've been enjoying my focal reducer. It's just incredible that it's put F1.0 and faster in my hands. I've put together several pictured collected using it. So far I really like it. Rather than listen to naysayers or praises, here's a few pictures I did while trying to see how it affects image quality.

I use an EF-MFT adapter sold by c.kee on ebay.

Part 1: (8mm F3.5 FE, 17mm F3.5, 28mm F2, 55mm F1.2)
http://beomagi.blogspot.com/2014/03/evaluating-cheap-focal-reducer-with.html
Part 2: (24mm F1.4, 85mm F1.4, 135mm F.Cool
http://beomagi.blogspot.com/2014/04/evaluating-cheap-focal-reducer-with.html

A few pictures from the links.








By far my favorite lens on here is the Samyang 24mm F1.4. It's replaced the 25mm F1.4 Panasonic Leica lens as my regular walk-about.


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Looking good! I might get one of these cheapo reducers for my e-pl5. What is it you prefer about the 24/1.4 to the Pana 25/1.4 though, the wider view?


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
ManualFocus-G wrote:
Looking good! I might get one of these cheapo reducers for my e-pl5. What is it you prefer about the 24/1.4 to the Pana 25/1.4 though, the wider view?

~$95 man - it's a decent way to go Wink

There's several aspects really. I like auto focus. I think spot AF using the touch screen is pretty accurate on the EP3, but when my kid starts running around I need MF - and the electronic coupling just feels off. I can't track her that well. I like MF when the focus ring has a good feel - and this is nice smooth and well dampened.

The 25mm F1.4 vignettes like most fast lenses do when covering their intended area. There appears to be less vignetting in the adapted 24mm. I should test this. I've found that shooting high ISO and correcting for vignetting leaves me with noisy corners. Since the Samyang 24mm is a FF lens, and the effective crop on speedboosted MFT is 1.44x, this is possible.

The 24mm Samyang seems to handle distortion well. RAW files for the 25mm PL show heavy distortion. Corrections to this reduce sharpness a little, so I tend to leave it uncorrected.

When converted of course, the samyang 24mm is wider and brighter - Wider isn't so much a positive, fov needed is situational, and preference subjective, but I have a choice. Brighter image and shallower fov is quite nice to have, and the bokeh is smoother than I was expecting.

I'm willing the bet the PL 25mm F1.4 is sharper and handles flare better, but I would have to properly test that. The 24mm samyang (bower) came with a hood, so I've been using it. Of course, the PL is smaller, but I just don't have a need for smaller lenses so much.

There is a boost in sharpness with the focal reducer. At least I think there is, but I've not measured anything. Also since it's brighter, comparing the 24mm Samyang with the 25mm PL means stopping down the Samyang 24mm to F2.0 to achieve the same brightness which further sharpens it up. Would be an interesting test. I should include the 35mm F2 Nikon AIs I tried out earlier as well (http://beomagi.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-little-test-of-4-different-25mm-f14.html) since that becomes ~25mm F1.4.[/url]
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
Page 1 of 1