20 standard lenses full aperture test

Note that AWB was used so the camera may be adjusting color shot-to-shot. I would think that color rendering of different lenses might be more apparent if the same fixed white balance was used for all shots.

I should've set fixed WB, that would be optimal. But on the other hand, the lighting did not change during the shoot.
 
The Primoplan lens is kind of neat, would have liked to see the lowly and common Pentacon 50mm f1.8 lens in the mix.
 
A few years ago, I performed a similar test on six different 50mm lenses (two Nikon, two Pentax, and two Fuji). I shot jpeg images with the camera mounted on a tripod, same subject to camera distance, fixed daylight daylight white balance, fixed shutter speed, fixed ISO, and aperture set wide open and at f/8.


50mm Lenses by Narsuitus, on Flickr
 
And the good old 50/3.5 Elmar looks to be among the best in that regard!

While that is certainly true, and the Elmar is really a very good lens, most of these lenses will have much improved out of focus effects if you stop them down to f3.5.
 
I'm very surprised at how similar the coated Summitar and coated Summar are. If the differences in color balance were corrected, they would be hard to tell apart.
 
I am glad that your test included the QBM planar 50/1.4. I love this lens.
Thanks.

I did a similar test 15 years ago. I had to use film.
The Rigid Summicron did well.
 
I looked at all the photos first, picked what I thought best mostly on bokeh. For me: Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Primoplan 58/1.9
 
Back
Top Bottom