The tree, window, and building crop shots show that the asph probably has clearer glass, and could use a faster shutter speed. I had both the pre asph v4, and the asph and used them extensively to find differences, but one factor that eluded me until I used them with a stepless shutter AE camera was that the asph glass was slightly clearer than the older cron.
Nevertheless, your summicron is showing excellent results for a lens of this age, and with an older design.
Yap, you do point out something that I have ignored, the "right" shutter speed for the ASPH. With a MP I'm not able to use shutter speed other than a full stop's one. I'm not sure if a fair test should use identical parameters in an outside environment.
The image on the left is from the old lens while the right is from ASPH.
IMHO, and this is speaking from my subjective impression,
🙂 I think what surprised me is the resolution from the old lens in the center, even wide opened, is even a bit more than the ASPH. If you look at the small Chinese characters at the bottom in the center 100% crop, to me I see a finer edge and details.
Secondly, look at the tree's crop and the overall images. The 8-element has a smooth transition from the foreground to the the background and it starts immediately. While in the ASPH's image you still see the tree is still in the "foreground" zone and suddenly all other things transited into background. This may gives the ASPH a more 3D look, or "Pop-up" effect, or a "razor-cut" foreground.
Thirdly, from the top-left corner which showing the windows. The old lens shows more defined texture than ASPH (look at the tiles). I would say this may or may not a good thing and is purely personal preference. Since some who say this will create a distractive background.
Fourthly, the old lens vignetted quite a bit when wide opened. Close it down to f/2.8 or even f/4.0 helps a lot. From other test images I also observe that the old lens gives a warmer color rendering, comparatively the ASPH's image will have a little bit blue casted.
Conclusion: Individual lens will have variation so I cannot generalize it. But is there a big different in these two particular lenses in a day to day use? IMHO, no. The different is there when you put two images side by side to compare, but no, I do not think it's day and night kind of different.
Will I keep both? I'm not a millionaire (I hope I'm
😀) and they both give me satisfied results and so there's no reason for me to keep both. Hey...anyone wants to have a chrome ASPH with full package?
😀