Canon FD 55mm 1:1.2 S.S.C. ASPHERICAL samples on A7 (many!)

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

I bought this lens a few months ago and I really loved it right from day 1, I already showed a few pictures in other threads on this forum, but it's probably better to post them all in one topic, so I'll do that here.
Feel free to discuss them and the lens here, but please don't be too harsh, some of them are ment to be nice pictures, some are mostly ment to show particular properties of the lens Wink

Pictures are all sooc jpg's, except for the automated resize + copyright + small usm after resize with +- 0.2px, 60% with FastStone and most are at f/1.2, unless otherwise mentioned. All are 1920x1280 px if you click on them, except maybe I'll also post some full 24Mp samples.
Sharpness, contrast and colors and all is set to neutral in my A7 except I have DRO set to auto.

I'll write some of my thoughts about the lens later, but first some photo's (if this is too much please let me know, I couldn't find the exact rules about this), first batch: daylight nature stuff

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#19 (one on 12mm tube @ f/1.2)

Greetings, Koen

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

And some evening and night stuff:

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#12 (this one is slightly edited and a full 24Mp image)

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RTI · Joined: 15 Jul 2011 Posts: 282 Location: Moldova, Chisinau

Impressive, both the lens and the samples. Thanks for sharing.

jamaeolus · Expire: 2015-08-20

Gorgeous colors. Some very very nice work. Timely, as I am starting to look for a "normal" FL superfast for my a7ii. Doubt this is in my price range though....

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Thank you both so much for your kind replies!

When I was looking for samples of the 55 after I bought the lens, but didn't have the chance to shoot with it much the first few days, I noticed that there weren't that many samples online, certainly not on FF, and the pools on Flickr are full of images made with the non-asph and even completely other lenses.
I realize there might be a bit too many images here now, but I hope that this way, someone who searches for this lens can sort of make up his (or her) mind as to what this lens is and isn't capable of. That and I am also bad at selecting and was kind of expecting the (very convenient!) drag and drop upload thing to say stop at some point.. Twisted Evil

The colors wide open are indeed what I probably love most in this lens (together with the center sharpness maybe), especially in difficult situations it still seems to always magically find the right colors, nr 15, 16 and 18 of the second series are mostly illuminated from behind and the lights in front are just the few small, colored light bulbs who's reflections can also be seen in the glass in nr 17, and still the colors look quite saturated yet natural, but of course there is also the A7's sensor and auto white balance to thank for this Smile

As for the price range, I hardly dare to repeat what I payed for mine so I'll link to it: http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?p=1464068#1464068 Wink

Hope you find a nice lens at a good price too, sometimes you can still get lucky!
Edit: if you can use al lens like this a stabilized body you can probably take a family portrait by the light of a single candle! Someday, but my last camera stayed for 7 years, so we'll see..

WNG555 · Joined: 18 Dec 2014 Posts: 784 Location: Arrid-Zone-A, USA

Simply lovely! Happy Dog

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

Such a great series!!

invisible · Joined: 06 Jun 2013 Posts: 344

Tremendous pop!

Mr G · Joined: 27 Jan 2014 Posts: 187 Location: London & Essex

Hi guys, great shots, I have the chrome nose, breechlock ssc version which I picked up for £20 a couple of years ago in a charity shop. Just keep your eyes open, some bargains are out there!

Nordentro · Expire: 2015-01-29

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Wow, thank you all for all these very nice replies!

Yes, it has great pop, I don't suppose it would look bad in the Zeiss lineup Smile

The non-asph really is a different optical design, the asph obviously has and aspherical element but also a floating element, the last lens is stationary, this should helps with the close-up performance, and I guess it does! This doesn't mean the chrome nose and other versions aren't just as good or even better at some things, it seems those have better detail across the field, my Rokkor 58mm 1.2 has too, but I think the asph probably has better contrast and colors wide open.

I found this interesting German test again: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3338/3561983301_6005527a79_o.jpg
Lower figures mean better, but I think the center score of the Pentax @ 1.2 is a bit strange, because it's better than stopped down a few stops, perhaps it should say 53 instead of 35, but who knows?
What's also interesting are the prices, 750 DM, apparently translates to about 3000 $ in modern money, that's close to Otus territory, and that's still a deal compared to the Noct-Nikkor witch costed more than double and can't keep up optically, according to these old tests.

This site shows the MTF graphs of a lot of 1.2 lenses and explains the drop in resolution I notice outside the center, even stopped down to f/5.6, so I guess my lens is perfectly in spec, and I don't really care, I have other lenses for that if necessary.
http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/technique/hslenses.html
http://www.imx.nl/photo/optics/optics/page81.html

Greetings,
Koen

kryss · Expire: 2017-09-18

Only 13 posts in 5years but well worth the wait,excellent shots that need an excellent photographer as well as great lens not easy to use and get such excellence.

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

You mean 0.00% of total / 0.01 posts per day isn't impressive to you? Laughing

I know and I have even been reading here for a few more years before that, I always felt a bit reserved to post in English, I used to be quite active on a Belgian photography forum in those days, but that one isn't very interesting for MF stuff at all so I finally got around to posting here and quite happy about it! And I promise I'll post some more stuff from some of my other lenses, but I guess I'll never get to a good average of posts per day anymore Wink

Thanks a lot for the great compliment on the photo's!
To be honest, it doesn't feel so hard to use compared to other fast lenses, the pop certainly helps a lot when focusing and the A7 usually takes good enough care of the exposure, I do use center metering for this lens, otherwise you risk overexposure because of the vignetting.
This lens certainly has something magic!

davidblue1984 · Joined: 29 Dec 2013 Posts: 68

great shots!

shapencolour · Joined: 03 Oct 2013 Posts: 270

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Thanks for the compliments!

@shapencolour: my pleasure! Not sure if you ment to include all those pictures in the quote though?

@David: referring to your question in an other topic, as you can see, it does flare a little sometimes, but nothing problematic imo. I guess it was indeed the adapter to blame if it gets too crazy, with the BS-58 hood on you even have to try around a bit to get it most of the time.

kryss · Expire: 2017-09-18

As an ex Brit,living in Canada for past 45 years I can assure you your English is almost on par with your Photography. Like 1

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Thanks again Embarassed

We are lucky in Belgium (Flemish part) and Holland the dutch language area is too small to justify the costs of dubbing movies and tv shows, we get subtitles instead, that makes it easier to pick up a language, but writing is still a bit more difficult, but of course spell checker and google translate are very helpful sometimes Smile

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

This is a small preview of some non-scientific test I did between these 2 popular f/1.2 lenses, this is a 100% crop from a sooc jpg from the middle of the frame, all settings in my A7 are set to neutral, so no picture styles or boosted colors, contrast, sharpness and stuff like that. (and yes, I still use this very old Canon program for comparing images, it's also much faster than the Sony software)

This doesn't tell the whole story of course, that's why I did this test with lots of different scenario's like I would normally shoot, which I would like to show to you, probably best in a new topic, if anyone is remotely interested that is, but I wouldn't mind some input on how to present the images the best way here, I now have them all online on my dropbox, it consists of 26 full 24Mp images and this one crop for a total of +-300Mb.
The easiest and probably also most convenient way to show them is by just uploading the full images through the drag and drop, that way you can see them all underneath each other at the ideal screen resolution for anybody and easily open them in new tabs to switch between them, but of course that's quite a big amount of data for the forum servers. So I could also just give the link to the dropbox folder..
I could also directly show resized images and then some crops underneath them, but that would become too much work and more importantly look too cluttered, since they are so different for sharpness around the frame.
I couldn't get the images from my dropbox to show here, so that's not an option.

Ok, so no interest at all, but you can find the link in the next post anyway Wink

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

First I'll post the link to my small Rokkor vs FD test here since it is online anyway:

Minolta_Rokkor_58_12_vs_Canon_FD_55_12_ASPH

Dropbox isn't the most convenient way to compare images, if you just watch them inside that site they are compressed, so you have to download them via the button (not by right clicking on them) to view them at best quality.

I think if you change the end of the link like this: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ly4g42yuaxv8bck/AADmMOOQgPljApE-cc7L3J0Ea?dl=1
You can download the whole lot (+- 300mb!) at once as a zip.

And I'll ad 2 more recent pictures with the 55 asph, both sooc jpg's @ f/1.2, as always you can click on them for higher resolution:

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#2 A photo of my mother, so you can of course post any criticism on the picture, but please be gentle on the model Smile

If anyone wants to add pictures with this lens i'm fine with that, but please limit them to this exact same lens, so not the 'basic' SSC or chrome nose or other versions (the AL is practically te same lens so that's ok), it's bad enough that they are all mixed if you search for this lens on flickr Wink

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Some new shots from last weekend (except the first two, those are a bit older), all wide open and unedited unless otherwise mentioned:

DSC09588_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01501_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01698_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01699_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01761_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01763_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

Aperture closed down to f/8 of f/11:

DSC01764_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01778_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01782_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

This one is also wide open (I'm almost sure) but edited, full 24Mp image in link:

DSC01783_(1)_copyright by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/koen_nhz/26364150686/sizes/o/

DSC01784_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01785_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01794_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01795_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01797_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01798_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01800_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01821_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01823_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01864_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC01865_1920px by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

Greetings,
Koen

pinholecam · Joined: 26 Nov 2012 Posts: 223

Thanks for these samples.
Its one of the ones most clearly stating that its the ASPH version, so I really appreciate the info.

The FD 55/1.2 ( I have the non ASPH) is perhaps the sharpest of the f1.2 50's that I've tried at f1.2.
However (to me), its also the one that has the most harsh bokeh in more situations than most.
With 'situations', I mean bkgnd types, distances to bkgnd/subject.

At times, it gives bokeh results that are are very good.
Its so far, the hardest f1.2 50mm to understand/learn for me up till this point.
I've yet to nail down exactly what situations work best.

There is often the busy-ness of the bokeh, with the OOF highlights seemingly going in different directions. (as opposed to a directional swirl of many old lenses)
Then there is the very abrupt clipping of the OOF highlights (optical vignetting) on the edges.
Lastly, the double lines in linear OOF objects.

For me, up to this point, I think that using to its strength would be to go close, avoid foliage type OOF highlights and linear ones too.
My few cents.

Koen Nhz · Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 84 Location: Antwerp, Belgium

Hey pinholecam, you're welcome Smile

Yes, this is the version which clearly says "ASPHERICAL" on the namering, not the crazy expensive AL version:

DSC_2120 by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

DSC_2119 by Koen Nieuwenhuize, on Flickr

I hate it (too) when people post photo's from other lenses in Flickr groups from one particular lens, so I always try to put the correct name.
From the outside it's hard to tell if someone would just exchange the namering, but in the Asph the rear element doesn't move so that's a good way to definitely tell them apart.

I've read somewhere that the non-Asph version has a little harsher bokeh, but indeed the Asph can get a on the wild side too, but I haven't really seen any pictures where I didn't like it myself, but for example the cat picture is on the edge, that's true, but in a test I actually found the bokeh from Rokkor 58 1.2 and the Asph in most situation almost indistinguishable:

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Minolta_Rokkor_58_12_vs_Canon_FD_55_12_ASPH

(Almost?) all the fast 50's get smoother bokeh once you stop it down just a little bit, so that might be worth a try!

The bokeh also seems to differ very much with the direction and harshness of the light, if you compare for example DSC01784_1920px to DSC01823_1920px I don't think the focus distance is all that different, but the bokeh is.

So in that way it's a lens you need to learn indeed, but as I like the bokeh in most situations for me this seems one of my easiest lenses to use, it sometimes almost feels like a point and shoot lens since it's so easy to focus because of the high contrast and small dof.

I looked at lost of pictures from other fast lenses and like most, but for example the modern EF 50L is too smooth for me, I think it's also a bit less sharp with a bit more CA when it's focused close up (without the floating element from the older lens, which really shines at MFD) and the softer bokeh makes the images look rather flat to me, I think the more vivid bokeh of the older lenses is one of the attributes that gives a more three-dimensional feeling to the photo's, but of course that's all just personal preferences.

Busy foliage is actually where i like the rendering best I guess, like DSC01778_1920px for example Very Happy

From the other fast 50's I think I like the results from the Porst 55 1.2 most, that has even more extreme bokeh.

mackeral · Joined: 21 Oct 2012 Posts: 64 Location: United States

Paired with the Speedbooster II Ultra it's astonishing. My favorite combo on my Fuji stuff right now.

marino24 · Joined: 11 Feb 2016 Posts: 84 Location: italy

i have the Chromenose 55 and the Aspherical 55 also the zuiko 55 , first one wide open is a litle bit sharp than Aspherical , zuiko is the worst wide open
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