Weird Summaron Field Curvature?

[Melvin]

The following shot was taken with a Summaron 3.5 LTM @ f8 1/500 on Velvia 50, scanned at 4000 dpi on an Imacon scanner.

Full Frame:

Center crop(sharp):

Center foreground crop(sharp):

Center right(blurry):

Center left(blurry):

I don't think I'll be using this lens for landscape photos anymore.

 

[kbg32]

Not so sure it's your lens. No matter what anyone tells you, Imacons are not great for scanning 35mm film. This looks like a scanning problem. The film is not being held flat. From what I can tell here, the grain goes in and of focus across the field of the film. Your close-ups look "mushy". No definition and lack of sharpness.

Can you scan your film with a different scanner to compare?

 

[Melvin]

I don't think it's the scanner, because the areas of sharpness and blurriness follow a consistent pattern: the imagery is sharp in an upside down V from the center to the foreground corners, but on either side of the center it's blurry. I also see this pattern in prints from different negatives made on an enlarger. Plus the Imacon gives me good results on images from other lenses.

It occured to me that it may be the scanner, and you may be right. There could also be some other variable, such as the lens not being fully locked on the camera.

 

[Sparrow]

Probably the film not flat? Try re-scanning with the neg rotated through 180 degrees, if it looks the same the fault is in the camera or lens, if not the scanner, narrows it down a bit.