F3: How well do you know lenses?

Duke M.

Duke M.

Veteran
Let's see how well you know these three popular lenses. (This isn't a stress test, it's an optimized test.) Three popular lenses with shots taken within minutes of each other, outdoors, all on the F3 with WB at 5600.

1. Rokinon 85mm Cine T1.5 at 5.6

2. Nikon 85mm F1.4 at 5.6 (there are several AI-S versions, this is the pro one with the big front element.)

3. Cooke 20-100mm T3.1 at 5.6. (Tripod moved to keep the focal plane in the same place.)

No color adjustments have been made. (With brightness and contrast I could have made them pop more.) I tried to make sure there was no glare. I saved these to PNG so there will (hopefully) be no resolution loss. I included the edge of the paper so you could judge CA.

Here's the question, which image is from which lens.

LensA-CU.jpg LensB-CU.jpg LensC-CU.jpg
 
I wouldn't expect to see difference between any lens when the image is shrunk that much, to be honest.

I myself only tend to see bad stuff on any given lens when wide open, on the extreme ends of a zoom. Lots of bad lenses clean up considerably at 5.6

If that's your point, then I agree. And I'd add any Japanese design within the last 10 years, you have to push it to it's limits to really notice it's bad points.

Anybody could see the difference between my Red 18-50 at 18 or 50, wide open, when compared to say, a Optimo Rouge at any mm or stop though.
 
Nate Weaver said:
I wouldn't expect to see difference between any lens when the image is shrunk that much, to be honest.
Click to expand...

I was just logging in to post after I realized that I didn't specify about the size. The image wasn't reduced. I took a crop so it should be pixel for pixel accurate if possible (unless this website changes anything.) If you put bigger PNG files in here they get changed to JPG and lose data.

As far as wide open, the three lenses vary from T1.5 to T3.1. There would be no way to compare wide open. As I said, this is an optimized test, but there are some differences and some unexpected similarities.

I have some PL converted Zeiss primes coming in that I may throw into the mix later.
 
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Is this a center crop? A lot of lenses look really good in the center... Also, this shot is very flat with bland subject matter, any half-decent lens will look identical under such conditions, because there is nothing to judge lens characteristics by. The biggest difference in any lens becomes apparent when faced with complicated lighting conditions or when wide open.

So what exactly is the point of this test?
 
Kolor-Pikker said:
Is this a center crop? A lot of lenses look really good in the center... Also, this shot is very flat with bland subject matter, any half-decent lens will look identical under such conditions, because there is nothing to judge lens characteristics by. The biggest difference in any lens becomes apparent when faced with complicated lighting conditions or when wide open.

So what exactly is the point of this test?
Click to expand...

This is kind of funny. when i did the stress tests people complained that i was trying to make good lenses look bad. this is an optimied test to see how the lenses look at their best setting

As far as center crops go, all of these lenses have consistant edge to edge sharpness.
 
Well yes, with about 2 megapixels of resolution, sharpness isn't an issue with almost any lens; but things like CA, flare, distortion and contrast still are. The subject has nothing that tests any of those aspects, and so it doesn't matter which lens you use, so the real answer is "all of the above".
 
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Tiny center cropped jpegs of images shot at f/5.6, I think it would be darn nigh impossible for any lens to stand out... or fall behind.


P.S. If I had to pick a favorite, LOL, it would be C followed by A. Their images just looks a little more three dimensional to me.
 
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