28mm Lens comparison: Sony vs. Leica vs/ Voigtlander

[anerjee]

I've been looking at buying into a digital M, and so I got hold of a M240 with an Elmarit ASPH for a short period of time.

My main FOV is the 28mm on full frame. On digital, I shoot on a Sony A7S + 28mm, on Film I use the CV 28mm f/2 Ultron.

For the test, I manually focused using 10x magnification for each photo. Focus is on one of the the buildings > 2 km away.

No post processing, other than using Lightroom to apply lens profiles.

The Voigtlander 28mm Ultron was manually coded as the 28mm Summicron, and so it appears as such. The applied Lightroom profile was manually changed to reflect the CV profile.

Also, I re-sized the M240 shots to the Sony A7s file dimensions using Lightroom itself.

First, the entire shot on the Elmarit.

Next Center Crops:

Next, Bottom right:

Finally, Top Left:

 

[anerjee]

My own observations:

The Elmarit is clearly better than both the CV and the Sony in all the crops, some more noticeably than others.

The Lightroom profile for the CV corrects vignetting better than the Elmarit profile.

The Sony lens is noticeably wider than the other 28mm, mainly to allow for software corrections I think.

Even in other shots, I can make out the Elmarit pictures as having a fantastic mix of sharpness and smoothness that make them stand out.

Secondly, the M240 is highly useable in available light situations. It's metering is conservative, but there is enough room in the raw files.

Buying a $7000 camera is not an easy decision, but I think the Elmarit is easier!

 

[biogo]

specially now

 

[bobby_novatron]

The Sony looks very very good. The Leica with Elmarit looks a tiny bit better. I see more fine details and resolution with the Elmarit.

Of course, pixel-peeping is a vexing habit, and unless you're printing things at poster-size or viewing images on a 50-inch HDTV 99% of people wouldn't notice a difference.

But IMHO, it's +1 for the Leica and Elmarit ASPH.

The Summicron 28/2 would probably have performed better stopped down to F2.8, but that's just a guess.

 

[Jan Pedersen]

There are no Summicron in this test as far as i read it, it is the CV 28 2 that is having the Cron's profile in the M240.
I would expect the Cron to do even better than the Elmarit.

 

[willie_901]

I doubt the differences between the SONY and Elmarit would have no practical impact in prints (even large prints) or JPEGs (digital viewing). This extends to typical crops from either lens as well.

 

[anerjee]

The Sony looks very very good. The Leica with Elmarit looks a tiny bit better. I see more fine details and resolution with the Elmarit.

Of course, pixel-peeping is a vexing habit, and unless you're printing things at poster-size or viewing images on a 50-inch HDTV 99% of people wouldn't notice a difference.

But IMHO, it's +1 for the Leica and Elmarit ASPH.

The Summicron 28/2 would probably have performed better stopped down to F2.8, but that's just a guess.

The difference in fine detail resolution and contrast across the image does make a difference even without pixel peeping. I don't own the elmarit, but I shot several 100 images with it, and the overall image stands out as having a clarity missing in the others.

I'm not a sharpness type of person; my other lens is a c- sonnar.

 

[anerjee]

I repeated the test with the Ricoh GR. Same setup, but this is the afternoon sun in December. I live in Singapore, so the month of year does not make a difference to the light.

It seems to me that the Ricoh lens is at least as good, perhaps better than the Elmarit.

Just look at the green at the bottom right, and the buildings in the background in the top-left corner crops.