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Re: [OM] Can't believe this happened! Hope it didn't happen to you

Subject: Re: [OM] Can't believe this happened! Hope it didn't happen to you
From: "Carlos J. Santisteban" <zuiko21@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 21:00:39 +0100
Hi Moose, Ken, Joel and all,

From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
>I'm still mystified by the allure of the 50/1.2.*  It's only 1/3 stop
>faster than f1.4.

Well, it's closer to be half a stop faster ;-)

At such small f-numbers there's a lot of rounding in action, but half-stop
faster than F1.4 (or f/1.4142135..., the square root of two) should be near
f/1.19 -- f/1.2 seems accurate enough to me. OTOH, a third of a stop faster
than 1.4 is more like f/1.26.

f/1.7 is half the speed of a f/1.2. The f/1.8 used on Zuikos and other
brands is like 2/3 stop slower than the typical 1.4.

>In return for more money, you get a lens that performs
>slightly less well and is slightly bigger and heavier.

But there may be some differences in "taste" -- that's why we have so many
overlapping lenses :-)

>The difference in optical performance vs. the >1,078,000 50/1.4 in
>Gary's tests is pretty minor - except wide open.

Despite being the best version of 50/1.4 Zuikos, it's far to be class-leader
in any way, at least at the widest apertures :-(

>But wide open is where
>you focus an auto aperture SLR.  I'd think that having a C quality image
>to focus on would be a problem, especially at f1.2, where DOF is
>extremely shallow, so focusing accuracy is critical.

Yes, wide open performance affects severely focusing accuracy (on the matte
field, of course) -- I learned it with the 35/2. The 50/1.2 is not _that_
bad, but really has more snap at the screen when stopping down to 2 or 2.8.
I think these lenses really need the split-image.

Ken Norton wrote:
> Strange thing.  Some of us feel there are other optical characteristics
> other than just "sharpness".  But I know that you know that.

Yeah, for sure.

> I'm a fan of the 50 F1.4, had a nice silver-nosed one.

Precisely. According to my astro-tests, this is the worst of its class...
but in real-life, terrestrial pictures it shows a certain look, very
difficult to describe but surprisingly nice to the eyes. I believe Ángel
Lobo agrees with me about this ;^)

Moose wrote:
>Yeah, I'm assuming that those characteristics would be much the same for
>those two lenses. Both come from the later stages of OM lens
>development, use the almost identical double-gauss design

'Almost' is the key here. There are no evident differences on the optical
design of the several 50/1.4 Zuikos, neither between the 55/1.2 and 50/1.2,
but there are notable performance _and_ character differences.

>I'd expect your 50/1.4 to be closer to the 55/1.2 of more
>similar vintage.

Had a 55/1.2 for a short time. Didn't like it. The 50/1.2 seems to perform
much better -- in the contrast/sharpness department, although it's said to
have much worse bokeh than the 55.

Ken Norton wrote:
> Bokeh of the 1.4 is pretty good, but just a touch "crunchy"
>(current word of the week) as compared to some other lenses.
>I prefer the Bokeh, even with the DoF and AoV differences
>of the 35 F2.8 to the 50 F1.4.

Could be -- I no longer have a 35/2.8. In a similar path, the Voigtlander
40/1.4 (for rangefinders) is a superb performer, but its bokeh is nowhere as
nice as the 35/2.5 or the surprising 50/2.5.

From: Joel Wilcox <jfwilcox@xxxxxxxxx>
>It's probably one of the smaller 1.2 lenses out there.

It certainly is. I thought Minolta's Rokkor-X 50/1.2 was of comparable size
(their older 58/1.2 was HUGE!) but, seeing both side by side, the Zuiko is
clearly smaller -- as it should be ;^)

Cheers,
-- 
Carlos J. Santisteban Salinas
IES Turaniana (Roquetas de Mar, Almeria)
<http://cjss.sytes.net/>
-- 
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