Comparing 35mm Lenses: Would you be interested?

Sorry I missed that post Raid, and I thought someone else was sending theirs. PM me if you want me to send my Beast and you can squeeze it into the lens schedule.
Cheers,
Mike
 
If Mike sends me his 35mm/1.2, it would be a direct match for the 35mm/1.4 ASPH from Fred for wide open shots.

Raid
 
I'm surprised to see so many chrome & silver lenses. From the tone of posts here, I thought that I was the only one who preferred something other than black. :cool:
 
I also prefer chrome lenses over black ones, but supposedly the black lenses can be lighter.

By the way, it is official now; Mike will mail me his 35mm/1.2 Beast!
We may have to take another family photo.

Raid
 
raid said:
If Mike sends me his 35mm/1.2, it would be a direct match for the 35mm/1.4 ASPH from Fred for wide open shots.

Raid
Click to expand...

As long as it makes it into a family portrait with those other little lenses, it's on its way tomorrow. ;)
 
Thanks a lot, Mike. Your Beast will hopefully not frighten away the rest of the lenses.

Raid
 
What do you think regarding this comment I just got on PN?
I don't mean to snicker or make fun of this comment but rather reflect on it. Is there a lot of truth to what is being said below? I feel that a lot depends on the set goals and the expected usage of the results. I get each time I do such testing a similar comment (or several ones) at PN. It seems that some readers are afraid that the results will show incorrect suggestions on the lens performances. One time, someone was really upset about it.


How would you respond to such a comment?

"I think this is a high input and low yield test. You can not test all lenses in different lighting conditions, different apertures, different distances and different films. You can not control the lens sample to sample variation, so a quick sample snap shoot of X lens may mislead readers. Readers still can not get the whole optical property of a lens. Raid I think you are wasting of your time and money."
 
raid said:
What do you think regarding this comment I just got on PN?
I don't mean to snicker or make fun of this comment but rather reflect on it. Is there a lot of truth to what is being said below? I feel that a lot depends on the set goals and the expected usage of the results. I get each time I do such testing a similar comment (or several ones) at PN. It seems that some readers are afraid that the results will show incorrect suggestions on the lens performances. One time, someone was really upset about it.


How would you respond to such a comment?

"I think this is a high input and low yield test. You can not test all lenses in different lighting conditions, different apertures, different distances and different films. You can not control the lens sample to sample variation, so a quick sample snap shoot of X lens may mislead readers. Readers still can not get the whole optical property of a lens. Raid I think you are wasting of your time and money."
Click to expand...

I would ignore this comment. It is typical of the negativity that I find on P.net. People that nitpick in this manner never get anything done because they always find something wrong to begin with. The glass is always half empty instead of half full.

Raid, be not deterred! Every effort contributes to knowledge & stimulates new questions for someone else to answer. All tests have their limits; they just need to be understood. Many curious minds here are interested in what you will find. It's to bad that this P.net poster doesn't share the same curiosity.

Let me add to all of the others who have thanked you for what you are doing. We all appreciate it greatly! :)

Huck
 
Raid,

The PN poster may have a point, but you are not trying to replicate MTF testing, you are using everyday photo opportunities to evaluate different lenses, which is far more valuable to me. If I am going to buy a piece of equipment, I would rather rely on a Luminous-Landscape non-review, Chris Weeks f-bomb laced in the field experience report or fellow RFF user opinion.

Cheers,
 
seconded! I think most of us are very interested in any kind of testing done and having done a little myself know that it takes up a lot of time. I for one cannot wait to see what conclusions come from your testing, thx in advance
 
Thanks for your support and reasonable comments. I will not let negative comments like this one deter me from such enjoyful and useful projects. At the very least, many people here will enjoy going over the results, and this by itself makes it a worthy project.

There are MTF curves available for almost any lens you need or want, but there are few online resources where you can view [and enjoy] comparisons of images from many RF lenses.

I will start today with one of the tests just to get the whole project moving and to allow you to submit comments to get me moving ahead for the second testing portion ... and so on.

Raid
 
Tonight I will start with a flare & bokeh test with challenging lighting. This will get all of us "in the mood" for more testing and also allow us to soon post some images. Someone has pointed out to me that "all lenses are sharp" in our collection of 35mm-40mm lenses, but not all will be equally resistant to flare.

While you get preoccupied with the flare & bokeh results in 2 days, I will then already have done tests outdoors. The challenge is shooting outdoors in Florida during the summer and then expect to use large apertures! I may have to shoot in the shade. Maybe the front porch will be suitable.There, I can use apertures 2.8~5.6 with ISO 100 film.

By the coming weekend, I will do the portrait tests with Dana's help. Before the weekend she will be at the daycare center during the day hours and out of reach.

Is this an agreeable plan?

I will do a lot of testing within one week and then open the door to return any lenses asked to be returned. I would like to do more testing for another week if possible, but I respect the wishes of the owners of these fine lenses. You can pm me at any time to request your lens to be sent back immediately.

Raid
 
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This is one randomly selected image from last night's first part of lens testing (for flare). I got back three rolls of film scanned, and the nest step will be time consuming labor in sorting through the images and to label each iamge for you. Roland and I will have to do some work.


In the image below you see the set-up that I chose last night. I wanted to test the lenses for flare. The focus point was at the matchstick that is stuck betwene the two porcelain horses. It is surprising to me that light transmissionw was not equal for all lenses. This also obvious [once you see the entire set of images] in the resulting esposure. I used f 2.0 @ 1/30 f 2.8 @ 1/15 f 4.0 @ 1/8, but this did not result in evenly exposed images for the different lenses. The other piece of evidence of this issue was the light meter reading (in the camera) that sometimes showed overexposure and at other times "perfect" exposure for the same aperture and speed settings.

What do you think of the set-up?


Raid


Roland1425657-R1-030-13A_1.jpg
 
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I am working with Roland to somehow get the labeled images to him so that he can upload them to a website designated for the lens testing. So far, all is going well. It is a pain in the ^%$# to go through all frames to figure out which image correponds to which lens and which aperture setting. When I made an error at any stage of lens testing and I had to take another shot, I had to recalculate which image corresponds to which situation.

Raid
 
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Here is a teaser ...

at the end of the roll,I turned all lights off, and I estimated the exposure for candle light with the Summilux @ 1.4.
It was about 1/2~1 second.

Summilux1.jpg
 
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