A personal 50mm comparison

[sparrow6224]

Hi. I shot a roll of film on Friday testing out my 50mm rangefinder lenses -- the VC 50mm f/1.5 Nokton; the 50mm f/2 collapsible Summitar; the Canon 50mm f/1.8; and the Rigid Summicron (not DR).

The Nokton was considerably -- a lot -- less sharp even than the old 'glow-y' Summitar. (Indeed I'm wondering if it's somehow not sitting properly with the LTM/M adapter on it).

The Canon and the Summicron were neck and neck. I'm posting the pics to get your reactions. If people want to see the Nokton and Summitar I'll post them tomorrow. I've also thrown in one shot from the Skopar 35/2.5 because I admire it so much. The four 50mm shots are 100 percent crops; the Skopar, give it some credit, is at 125 percent.

The camera was the CL. All shots at f/4 and 1/125. The film was 400-2TMY rated at 400 and developed in Xtol 1:1 mixed with Rodinal 1:100, at 20C for 9 minutes.

Here we go: first, two shots from the Canon:



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And here are the two best Summicrons:



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Finally just for fun, one of the 35mm Skopar, which I used between each 50mm lens to mark the division.





Not bad against the big boys. At 125 percent no less.

You can see these in larger format on my flickr page and, as I noted, if I get requests for it I'll post the Summitar and Nokton shots there as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/commodiusvicus/

I'd love to hear your thoughts. That Canon 50/1.8 has been a shocker since the first roll I took with it six months ago.

Vince P

 

[ferider]

From your comparison it looks like the Canon is (a) longer and (b) distorts noticably, compared to the rigid. Can you confirm with larger pictures, please ? Thanks.

 

[dave lackey]

From your comparison it looks like the Canon is (a) longer and (b) distorts noticably, compared to the rigid. Can you confirm with larger pictures, please ? Thanks.

Yes, Roland, it would be nice to have that. Really big difference there. The Skopar seems so much wider as well. What's up?

Also, I wonder how each lens would stack up throughout the aperture range as I think they would have different results for each lens.🙂 I rarely shoot at f4, especially with the shutter speeds of most of my cameras limited to 1000s, but that's just me.

 

[sparrow6224]

The Skopar is of course wider -- it's a 35mm lens. I said, I was including it just for fun.

I think the length difference has to do with the crop and how I changed my sitting position.

I'll post the full size photos shortly. Also I'm interested in the distortion issue because my untrained eye is not seeing it.

Vince P

 

[Krosya]

Well,
since you dont have pic from nokton posted - hard to say, but if you say that it is way softer - you either have a poor misadjusted lens or something got messed up during the photo taking. In my experience Nokton should be better or at least the same as any of your other tested lenses.

 

[sparrow6224]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/commodiusvicus/

Hi everyone thanks for comments. ALL the pictures, full size tiff files, are now uploaded on my Flickr page, and for easier viewing are also a "set" which you will see in the column on the right. The black areas at the top of the portrait shots are the window frame. If there is a different distance to the subject in any shot over any other, it's because I leaned out the window, to avoid the window frame.

I'll be interested in further analysis. Krosya -- I intend to test the Nokton 1.5 further as I know it's supposed to be a sharp lens especially by f/4.

I think most rangefinder lenses have reached their peak sharpness by f/4. With that prejudice in mind I wanted to use the fastest shutter speed possible to avoid any differences due to camera shake. I have a table top tripod I should have used and will next time.

Vince

 

[chris00nj]

The Nokton is sharp and has high contrast at wide apertures.