Three 135mm lenses compared

[iangreenhalgh1]

I decided to test three of my many 135mm lenses as I'm selling off all but the best. All images exactly as they came out of my camera (NEX-3).

Lens A:

f2.8:


f4:


f5.6:


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f2.8:


f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f2.8


f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:

[iangreenhalgh1]

Lens B:


f2.8:


f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f2.8


f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f2.8


f4:


f5.6:


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:

[iangreenhalgh1]

Lens C:

f4:


f5.6:


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:



f4:


f5.6


f8:


f11:


f16:


f22:

[Pancolart]

Big work. But which are they? Otherwise i think you could easily skip all shots above F11.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Okay, I'll tell you what three lenses they are but not which is which, see if people can guess.

Pentacon preset M42

Auto-Exaktar (Samyang) M42

Jupiter-11A M42

[Pancolart]

I think you already put them in correct order .

[martinsmith99]

Keep the lenses and sell the NEX

[iangreenhalgh1]

[Lloydy]

To my eyes, which I freely admit aren't a great judge of lenses, I like the Jupiter. The Samyang doesn't seem to have anything 'extra' over an average lens. The Jupiter is slow, but in it's good zone it shines.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Yes, I like the Jupiter too, looks great to my eyes and pretty sharp even wide open.

I agree about the Samyang, it's nothing special but it does it's job competently with good sharpness.

It's pretty hard to decide what 135s to keep and which to sell, I have loads more of them and there are no obvious candidates for disposal (aside from that damn awful Vivitar 2.3/135 that is).

[eddieitman]

Ii tried processing those images and for me its 3,1,2 but 3 has better microcontrast giving better 3d when processed correctly.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Cheers for the feedback Eddie, the J11A really surprises me how good it is, I think I'll keep it.

It's so hard to whittle down my 135s as I have quite a few really good ones - Three different Konicas, a Steinheil, three different Pentacons, a Zeiss, the J11a, a Topcon RE and a few more....

I have sold the Vivitar 2.3/135 as it was pretty crap compared to the others and a very nice early M39 J11 is also off to a good home due to having had a conversion to an unusual mount and needing restoring to M39 so thats two down at least...

Worst of it is I rarely used anything longer than 50mm....

[iangreenhalgh1]

I processed three of the J11A shots and to my eyes they look pretty good.

[eddieitman]

Ahh thats much better, as i said the Jupiter is a stunning little lens, and for what it fetches it's hardly worth getting rid of it for such a high quality lens, use it on extension bellows and its also amazing.
I took a whole series on the Pickering war festival with mine and pretty much every one was outstanding with great detail, makes a fab portrait lens in my eyes.
I find that a good F4 lens is better than a poor F2.8 lens and i dont need the speed as mostly where i am shooting i can use it at that speed.
And notice how this lens is so much better now that you can focus it correctly.
As i recall you discarded it as junk on the Canon

[martinsmith99]

Much better.

[Lloydy]

Wow......what a difference a bit of processing makes. That IS a good lens.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Aye, all I did was Auto Tone in Photoshop and then some sharpening.

That 10D I had was incapable of producing a sharp image so all my results from it are to be ignored, hence I have to reassess all my lenses on a decent camera.

[Lloydy]

I've got Photoshop, version 7 I think, but I hardly use it, for what I do I use Elements 6, which is now so old it's free on the internet.
I very rarely bother messing with pictures that need a lot of saving, but I have no problem with a bit of minor adjustment, so I always use as my first try the 'Auto' colour correction, contrast and levels in Elements, and generally I find it difficult to beat them.
I also use the adjustments in Faststone, they are quick and easy and do a great job, and as I use Faststone as my preferred viewer it's simple to do minor adjustments.
I think it's something that we have to do on some lenses, with my two favourites - the Pentacon 30 I turn down the reds, and the Schacht 100, I boost all the colours. Then I see the sharpness.

[iangreenhalgh1]

I find with most lenses some correction is needed, even the best I have such as the Hexanon 3.5/28 I have to play around a little, it doesn't need much contrast adjustment of colour adjustment, just fine tweaks. Auto Tone in Photoshop tends to work great for most shots, it's mostly my HDR shots I have to play around with to get colours and contrast just right, but I have developed a 'secret formula' for my HDR work that I'm not going to reveal all the details of as it took me a long time to work it out and I want to keep it as my own unique 'look'. It's very time consuming to process HDR pictures the way I do, especially the panoramas made from many shots stitched.

The thing that annoys me is that damn piece of crap 10D held me back so much, as soon as I got a NEX my work improved by leaps and bounds overnight. Maybe my 10D was faulty in some way but it was incapable of making a sharp shot and I tried a lot of lenses with it, definitely the camera at fault.