Lens Comparison- RED 50mm / Zeiss 50mm / Nikon 50mm

Ryan E. Walters

Ryan E. Walters

Well-known member
I recently took some time out to compare the differences between three 50mm lenses and to see for myself the difference between a $100 piece of glass and a $6500 piece of glass. I wanted to see what you are paying for when you buy the more expensive glass. For this test I used the HVX-200 equipped with the Letus Extreme and a Nikon F mount along with a PL mount. The lenses used in this test are as follows: a used Nikon 50mm f1.8 ($100); a new Zeiss ZF 50mm T1.4 ($550); and the RED 18mm - 50mm Zoom T3 (f2.8) set at 50mm ($6500).

For the results you can check out the rest of the entry at my blog: Now that's a nice piece of Glass!

In short, the better glass you get, the better the final image will be. You can get ok results with lower quality glass- there are examples of this all over this site. But if you want to step up the image quality, having a quality lens will help you.
 
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This might be a good thread in which to point out that the quality of the 'glass' itself is not really the cause of the difference in price from prosumer to professional lenses. I've seen some comments, for example, about the DVX100 lens as being 'designed' for about 500 lines of resolution (ostensibly since it's for DV use). But no one degrades their glass intentionally, and the lens manufacturing techniques today allow even relatively inexpensive lenses to have outstanding optical performance. Nowhere is this more evident then when you look at the incredible HD+ quality images from the Andromeda--shot through the DVX100 stock glass.
 
Great test ,
Thanks ryan. Kind of disappointing thoiugh because i don't want to spend the dough on Zeiss glass. Interesting how much more fall off there is on the Nikon. It might be interesting to look at a Nikon 80 zoom as those are more modern and very sharp.

BTW is there any way to make those pics bigger. Clicking on them didn't do anything for me in Safari.


- Lenny Levy
 
Lenilenapi said:
Great test ,
Thanks ryan. Kind of disappointing thoiugh because i don't want to spend the dough on Zeiss glass. Interesting how much more fall off there is on the Nikon. It might be interesting to look at a Nikon 80 zoom as those are more modern and very sharp.

BTW is there any way to make those pics bigger. Clicking on them didn't do anything for me in Safari.


- Lenny Levy
Click to expand...

Thanks. It wouldn't surprise me is a newer piece of Nikon Glass performed better. I've used the Nikon 17 - 35mm f2.8 before and it feels like a great quality lens. I didn't have it for these tests, but from my use of it in the past I would think that it would hold up well.

As for the pictures- I switched over to using iWEB for my site (For ease of use / simplicity), and as of now I do not know of a way to have it make the pictures bigger.
 
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