Common Zeiss CY vs Minolta MD-III designs

[stevemark]

I have compared a few common Zeiss CY lenses with their Minolta MD-III counterparts, clearly understanding that the corrresponding zeiss designs often are one decade (or even more) older than the MD-III designs.

All crops shown here are 100& crops from the extreme corner, directly out of camera. They were taken using a Sony A7 24MP FF camera, a stable Giotto carbon tripod with Manfrotto 410 head. To avoid shaking, the electronic first curtain was used as well as 2 s timer.

Lets start with the eldest Zeiss design, the Distagon 2.8/25mm, and its MD-III counterpart 2.8/24mm:

Even though the Zeiss design is about 15 years older than the MD-III, it certainly isn't worse. Looking at more test pics, and at other apertures i can say that the Zeiss surpasses the Minolta (contrast and detail resolution) especially at f8 - f11. The difference is, however, better visible using 40-50MP cameras.


Now the two 2.8/28mm designs! Both obviously were "budget" designs - quite affordable in the case of the Distagon 2.8/28mm, and very affordable in the case of the Minolta ... Quite similar performance again, but the Zeiss being better in the f8 - f11 range (less CAs):



Now the famous Zeiss Planar 1.4/50mm: Not much difference at f1.4, but - again - slightly better Zeiss performance at f5.6:



At f=135mm Zeiss begins to shine. As we can suspect from the Zeiss Sonnar 2.8/135mm MTF figures, the Zeiss has a very good corner performance even wide open. The Minolta MD-III 2.8/135mm (5 lens computation) simply can't compete, and neither can the famous Minolta MC/MD 2.8/135mm with four lenses (not shown here):

Be aware that, again, the Zeiss design is at least 10 years older than the Minolta!

Finally the classical tele zooms! I will show the results at f=200 or f=210mm, as these are most difficult to correct.

Again, the Minolta 4/70-210mm can't compete with the Zeiss design. The Minolta is as good or slightly better as most contemporary tele zooms (Canon nFD 4/80-200, 4/70-210; Pentax A 4/70-210, Konica 4/80-200 UC, Nikkor 4/70-210 and 4/80-200). It is clearly better than the previous Minolta MC 4.5/80-200, and it was developpe in cooperation with Leitz - yet, the Zeiss is way better. Agreed, the Zeiss is nearly one decade newer than the Minolta, and it was developped by Kölsch (who shortly after became the chief lens designer at Leica) ... but look at the difference!

Now discussion may start ...

Stephan

[hoanpham]

Thank you for posting. Very informative. I have a few Minolta but my copies might be bad ones.

[blotafton]

Great testing, thanks for posting!

[iangreenhalgh1]

What a waste of time, the far corners are by far the LEAST important part of an image.

Useless test unless one is incredibly anal about technical details.

A 1.4/50 is crap in the extreme corners wide open. Duh, we already knew that....

[sergun]

Great test. But you can put full size with Minolta 28 and distagon 28 at F8 ?

[stevemark]

[Teemō]

Stephan, it would be helpful to see the full image - where exactly the crops are coming from, and other areas... unless you plan to publish this in full on your website in which case we'll see it all there? I presume that certain aberrations (colour fringing, SA, coma etc. besides resolution) are consistently better on the Zeiss throughout the frame too, and not just at the edges? I expected the Minolta to be better considering your previous tests but I suppose those buildings have higher contrast/lower frequency details, which are also larger in the frame: http://artaphot.ch/systemuebergreifend/objektive/450-24mm

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[Gardener]

[TAo2]

[Gerald]

Nice bokeh at the corners!

[Antoine]

Nice test...So, I need to sell all my kit and buy old Zeiss technology?

[stevemark]