FSU 50mm lens Tests

[sockeyed]

Alrighty. So, over the weekend I conducted rather unscientific tests on a batch of 50mm FSU lenses. I composed a boring but useful shot in a nearby parking lot, mounted my Bessa R on a sturdy Manfrotto tripod, metered with my Lunasix S, and, using a cable release, fired off shots at f/2 or 2.8, f/8 and f/16 or 22 on each of my lenses. I describe the shot as 'useful' because it had good details in the centre and the edges, like signs or license plates. The test only really deals with sharpness, although some conclusions can be drawn about colour and contrast, but not about 'bokeh'.

I used Superia 100 film because I had a roll of it rolling around in my fridge. I had it processed and scanned at 3360 x 2240 on a Fuji frontier.

The lenses used are 4 samples of the Jupiter 8, 2 Industar 61L/Ds, an Industar 61 'panda' and an Industar 26m.

The Jupiters all performed well, the I-61L/D's were surprisingly bad wide open, and the 'sleeper' was the I-61 Panda.

I have posted all of the pictures on a photo-sharing site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sockeyed/sets/101231/
Unfortunately they've been resized to 1600x1200

I'm not so good at web-work , so if someone's interested, they'd be welcome to use the pictures to extract crops of details and compare them side-by-side or whatever. Each picture can be downloaded using the 'all sizes' button.

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts!

 

[matu]

It's an interesting test, I wonder how would it be a test comparing different lenses of the same type and wether the differences are from the way they where made or from the design of it.

 

[sychan]

Thanks for posting the tests

Thanks for posting the tests

It was interesting seeing the warmer colors on the old J8 compared to the later versions. It seems that the later lenses seemed to all have a cooler color than the old lenses.