Some 50/1.2 photos

This lens seems soft to my taste, but quite lovely because of that.

Joe - I like the pics. However, I think I like most the self portrait - strong composition. Sorry it isn't the 50! 🙂
best,
-Mark
 
Here's something interesting.. first; it's the 50mm wide open at f1.2 - not bad reallly - not as soft as I thought it might be.

The film is Acros dev'd in DDX @ 68F/20C for 9min (1:4).
Scan is unsharpened - resized only - in PS. Crop is 100% of 2820dpi scan unsharpened.

Here's the weird part - the film is clearly 100 ASA but at the beginning of this roll I shot off about 6 frames at 400ASA. I dev'd the roll as I would at 100ASA and it would appear that most of the images are actually "better looking" at 400ASA than at 100ASA.. not that the 100ASA shots are "bad" but the 400ASA shots, I would have thought to have been under exposed considering it's 2 stops under for metering. This shot is one of the 400 ASA shots. I can't explain it because not all the photos in the 100ASA portion of the roll came out looking any different - and I know for a fact that these first 6 photos were all set to 400ASA initially on the M6.

Dave
 
Lear said:
My experience with one was that is had awful barrel distorsion up close (see photo, I can garantee you that windows was straight) and was quite hard to focus right. It can be the lens I had, and not a general condition.

Ps: contrast in this shoot is tricky since I underexposed 1 stop (unintentional) although it is a low contrast lens.
Click to expand...

Aarrgh, confirms my personal aversion to superfast lenses. They are big, heavy, extremely expensive , more or less soft, tend to vignetting and the additional stop you get for the price is for limited use only because of the extremely narrow DOF.

These lenses are specialists, stylish overkill for 95% of all opportunities in everyday life. And if a lens has such a serious and obtrousive distortion fault like this one, the remaining opportunities for its use are extremely limited. A lens can be a bit soft wide open, it can have a not too perfect bokeh, but such an amount of distortion is not acceptable.

Interesting to see tho, that the most superfast-fans are among those, who can argue in endless discussions, what the sharpest lens on earth is. Maybe it's more a matter of "nice-to-have" than "nice-to-use".

Peppo
 
I disagree with peptonio, a good photograph does not have to be tack sharp or have amazing bokeh. It is about the feeling and emotion it evokes in the viewer. A lens with exterior distortion, vignetting, and soft focus can help to emphasise the subject. You cannot damn fast lenses b/c they are not to your taste. Every lens has its purpose, flaws, and beauty.

PS This lens isn't as big as you think (It is heavy though, but I like heavy. In my mind heavy = quality). I just got mine today, and am looking forward to seeing some results with it.
 
trittium said:
I disagree with peptonio, a good photograph does not have to be tack sharp or have amazing bokeh. It is about the feeling and emotion it evokes in the viewer. A lens with exterior distortion, vignetting, and soft focus can help to emphasise the subject. You cannot damn fast lenses b/c they are not to your taste. Every lens has its purpose, flaws, and beauty.

PS This lens isn't as big as you think (It is heavy though, but I like heavy. In my mind heavy = quality). I just got mine today, and am looking forward to seeing some results with it.
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agreed!

this lens is not so big. i'd rather have it on a camera all day than my 135/3.5

sharpness alone is a false god and if you think the world isn't a bit distorted in the first place ...

methinks peppo likes to shake the dust about.
joe
 
peptonio said:
Aarrgh, confirms my personal aversion to superfast lenses. They are big, heavy, extremely expensive , more or less soft, tend to vignetting and the additional stop you get for the price is for limited use only because of the extremely narrow DOF.

These lenses are specialists, stylish overkill for 95% of all opportunities in everyday life. And if a lens has such a serious and obtrousive distortion fault like this one, the remaining opportunities for its use are extremely limited. A lens can be a bit soft wide open, it can have a not too perfect bokeh, but such an amount of distortion is not acceptable.

Interesting to see tho, that the most superfast-fans are among those, who can argue in endless discussions, what the sharpest lens on earth is. Maybe it's more a matter of "nice-to-have" than "nice-to-use".

Peppo
Click to expand...

Yes, but if you need to shoot hand-held pictures at usable shutter speeds in dim light, what else are you gonna use?

I've always said I'd rather have a technically imperfect but effective picture rather than NO picture!

I think it's true that we superfast-lens users do discuss lens sharpness quite a bit, but there's a good reason: any halfway-decent lens is going to be pretty sharp at f/8. It's at the wider apertures where the differences between the good and the not-so-good show up.
 
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