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Zoom Shoot Out

C

cliffpatte

Speed camera anarchist
As a matter of interest, and also to kill half an hour, I put together a little set of shots taken with various zoom lenses and one prime. All lenses were set to about the same field of view (equivalent to 35mm on a crop body or 53mm on full frame) The same subject (a jug with some flowers in it) was shot at ISO400 and F5.6 and 1/125th on each body (two bodies used were Nikon D7000 and Sony Alpha 200) - if you want to know which one is which, turn on Show Info

Slideshow herehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/cliffpatte/sets/72157626734979975/show/

PS, for me, this is the best of them:


35mm 1.4 Centre Crop by cliffpatte, on Flickr

Although in this test there is not that much in it between all the Nikkors.

With the Sony / Minoltas, the newer plastic one is sharper and more accurate in terms of colours but neither is a patch on even the oldest and cheapest 24-85 Nikkor in terms of sharpness and punch. The Sony bokeh is particularly horrible. At 85mm the 24-85 AF-D Nikkor is actually OK from a bokeh point of view, but in a centre crop shoot out, only the AF-S 35mm prime really looks nice edge to edge.
 
D7000 and AF-D 24-85 1:2.8-4 @ 85mm would be my choice simply for the portrait orientation and bokeh
 
I'm with Paul on that - I think the vase has better clarity.

I like the one with the D3X best though.
 
Top 3 for me: images 1, 2, 10. Did not look at info. Interesting variation in results in respect of colour depth and density of image by which I mean some looked under exposed - might be variations in light over the hour you spent.
 
Cav, assuming that 1,2,10 is a preference sequence, then you have selected a £1.5K lens as the best, and have consigned the kit zoom supplied with the Sony Alphas to the also ran bin. No 10 is of course a 50mm prime on a FF body.

I have just added the Lumix 14-45 zoom to the mix by the way.
 
Cliff - if you have another spare half hour, I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between a MF ~80mm colour negative shot and a Nikon D3x digital shot with a 35mm prime.
 
Guy, happy to oblige - however please bear in mind that it'll take a wee while to get the colour developed. On the MF front, my 80mm HC lens is at the menders, so it would have to be the GF670 (Fuji folder) which would be a 5 * 4 frame shape. New Portra is probably the best bet I guess.

**

correction - just looked in the film stock carrier bag / box and all I have is Fuji 160C - so that is what I used ... results to follow
 
cliffpatte said:
Cav, assuming that 1,2,10 is a preference sequence, then you have selected a £1.5K lens as the best, and have consigned the kit zoom supplied with the Sony Alphas to the also ran bin. No 10 is of course a 50mm prime on a FF body.
Click to expand...

It is a preference sequence. You have told me the price of no.1 - is it a zoom?

What type of lens is no.2 and the price?

No.10 is a prime (not sure about the "of course comment" since it is 3rd) - what price?

That leaves 7 others unclassified only one of which was a kit lens - what is the provenance and cost of all the also-rans?
 
Looks like the cheaper lens in the also-ran category are in expensive company...not sure what this establishes, though. It is also worth saying that I found none of the images poor.

The other question remains as above: "Interesting variation in results in respect of colour depth and density of image by which I mean some looked under exposed" - is this the lens or something else?
 
Cav said:
The other question remains as above: "Interesting variation in results in respect of colour depth and density of image by which I mean some looked under exposed" - is this the lens or something else?
Click to expand...

All the images were shot at the same manual setting** - 1/125th, F5.6, ISO400, based on an incident light reading just in front of the nearest flower. Variations in lighting might account for some differences.


** Except for the Lumix lens which was used the next morning and the light was a bit brighter
 
Cliff,

Perfect lens consistency (both intra and inter) is pretty rare in my experience, so the f/5.6 setting on the aperture ring might actually be f/5.2 on one lens and f/5.9 on another or, on the same lens, f/5.2 in one shot and f/5.9 in the next.

This may account for the slight differences in exposure.

Joe
 
Joe Petrik said:
Cliff,

Perfect lens consistency (both intra and inter) is pretty rare in my experience, so the f/5.6 setting on the aperture ring might actually be f/5.2 on one lens and f/5.9 on another or, on the same lens, f/5.2 in one shot and f/5.9 in the next.

This may account for the slight differences in exposure.

Joe
Click to expand...

You may be right, but most of these lenses don't actually have aperture rings, so that is actually the read out on the camera itself ;-)
 
Cliff,

What the ____? They're putting aperture rings on camera read outs now?!?

Joe
 
Joe Petrik said:
Cliff,

What the ____? They're putting aperture rings on camera read outs now?!?

Joe
Click to expand...

Beats me pal. The Minolta doesn't even tell you what focal length it is on let alone what aperture - and as for a distance scale forgeddaboudit

Meanwhile, here is the comparison that Guy wanted:


Orchid and Fuji by cliffpatte, on Flickr

D3X 35/1.4 GN
Click on image to access flickr and view all sizes etc ...


Orchid by Fuji by cliffpatte, on Flickr

Fuji GF670 plus Fuji Pro 160C film (C41 processing by Genie)

To my eyes, at 100% view on the full sized scan (I made them the same number of pixels across the width), the Nikon is sharper, but the MF image has more texture in the white petals. The Nikon has warmed them to a slightly off white colour, so the C41 image is more accurate colour wise (this could of course be corrected in RAW processing on the Nikon.)
 
Thanks Cliff. What aperture was the Fuji at? Scanned @4000ppi on your Nikon?

Interesting - at a quick look, it seems that while the digital has more apparent detail/resolution, it doesn't focus on the details that I actually want to see. The MF somehow gets the essentials without the clutter. Or something.
 
No problem

F6.3 (ish) on both

The Fuji negs were scanned on the Coolscan 9000ED at the default resolution (I didn't use the 8* multipass option as the grain isn't all that small to be honest). The default resolution is about 11016 * 8964 (for 6*7 negs) so I resized it to 4032 wide to match the Nikon.

I think the firmware in the Nikon tries to restore apparent sharpness in the smallest details after the Anti Aliasing filter has done its business. So you get really sharp little tiger faces in the Orchids but the petals are somehow a little on the soft side compared to the MF film. Its a shame the Gadget show doesn't do a proper comparison instead of comparing the Nikon D700 to the F5 at ISO400 - when they should have compared the D3X to the Texas Leica, obviously.
 
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