Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: qwerty on April 17, 2007, 02:12:28 pm
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hi,
i was debating myself to pick a FF canon or a MFDB, anyway, i saw a refurbished 1ds mark II and i couldnt resist, so after i get the camera i pickup a 50mm just to try my camera was right.
First i noticed, and i used markII few time before, was my 50mm 1,4 distort every straight line that you put in front, i mean it gets a distortion like a if it was a wideangle no that big but something about 35mm lens . Second the resolution it´s good but not how i remembered, i still have some raws i shot a year ago with a standard zoom and a markII in a past job, these are quite similar if not better.
Today i went to buy a standard zoom lens, just for fun, my intention is buy a L lenses set in a future. I picked up a 28-135 is, it matches the resolution of my 50mm if not better, Is system works perfectly, and i dont get nasty distortion on 50mm position.
So my questions are, has nobody noticed some distortions with his 50mm?? is 50mm 1,4 generally not that good?? i did some homemade tests with both lenses and all f settings, and my 50mm doesnt get any better. What bothers me more is its barrel distortion, any thoughts???
cheers!!
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Hi!
50 1,4 certainly has some barrel distortion, it's not really suitable for repro or similar work where straight lines near edges are needed (unles using software correction). The distortion is seen on cropped sensor also but FF is really merciles. Sharp for portraits though.
Cheers,
J
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So my questions are, has nobody noticed some distortions with his 50mm?? is 50mm 1,4 generally not that good?? i did some homemade tests with both lenses and all f settings, and my 50mm doesnt get any better. What bothers me more is its barrel distortion, any thoughts???
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Generally, distortions can be corrected in CS2 with either 'free transform' /distort or warp, or 'filter'/distort/lens correction. Barrel distortion is really only a problem in relation to some vertical or horizontal in the scene which one knows should obviously be vertical etc. With landscapes or portraits it shouldn't be a problem.
The 28-135 IS zoom appears to be sharpest at 50mm but still not as sharp as the 50/1.4, according to Photodo tests done some years ago. Having just checked the figures for you, we get a rating for the 28-135 at 50mm of 0.81 at f4.5 and 0.82 at f8, compared with 0.84 for the 50/1.4 at f4 and 0.86 at f8.
The over all rating for the zoom is 3.5 out of 5 and for the 50/1.4, 4.4 out of 5.
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well, i see that 50mm 1,4 from canon doesnt get any great reviews, maybe i felt in love with my old nikkor and i thought that canon one would be same. I´m realizing myself that shooting digital and get lenses shorter than 85mm is so expensive or painful (contax, leica thru adapters rings, puffff!!!)
Thanks for the tip, i know i can correct perspective and distortion with photoshop, but thats time consuming, and i disagree with you, shootings portraits or full length bodies the barrel distortion is still there and appreciable. Roll on the PTlens again!!!
Thanks for your time!!
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well, i see that 50mm 1,4 from canon doesnt get any great reviews[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=113048\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
We must be looking in different places. I just typed in 'Reviews of Canon 50mm f1.4' into Google and I got several pages of favourable reviews for this lens.
I own a copy of this lens but I don't expect an inexpensive lens to be sharp and free of barrel distortion at full aperture.
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We must be looking in different places. I just typed in 'Reviews of Canon 50mm f1.4' into Google and I got several pages of favourable reviews for this lens.
I own a copy of this lens but I don't expect an inexpensive lens to be sharp and free of barrel distortion at full aperture.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=113065\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
first reviews are quite good but when you read more carefully, or read proper reviews ( i mean, good for me is maybe brilliant for you, and i dont trust anyone charts or freaky tests that are over internet) the fifty is not that brilliant.
I get barrel distortion over all apertures and 300 euros is not that cheap for a fixed lens, i dont want start any brand war, but a nikkor 50 1,8 af for 100 euros doesnt have any distortion, is sharper and has a prettier bokeh!!.
Anyway thats what i have, thats what i use, by the way i love my canon body and i doesnt agree with those ones who said that nikon bodies are better.
cheers
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first reviews are quite good but when you read more carefully, or read proper reviews ( i mean, good for me is maybe brilliant for you, and i dont trust anyone charts or freaky tests that are over internet) the fifty is not that brilliant.
I get barrel distortion over all apertures and 300 euros is not that cheap for a fixed lens, i dont want start any brand war, but a nikkor 50 1,8 af for 100 euros doesnt have any distortion, is sharper and has a prettier bokeh!!.
Anyway thats what i have, thats what i use, by the way i love my canon body and i doesnt agree with those ones who said that nikon bodies are better.
cheers
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Send the lens back, it sounds defective, my copy doesn't suffer distortion
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I have a couple questions regarding the photodo tests and ratings.
Are the tests and rating for a single lens or an average of several lenses (a sampling)? Seems with all the discussions about the variation between lenses, a test of a single lens would not likely be representative of a customer's lens.
The Canon mtf curves shown in photodo do not appear to be the result of tests. Canon publishes their theoretical (best you can get) curves. The photodo curves show no disconnect (offset) between the saggital and tangential curves at zero displacement (center). This offset is caused by misalignment of lens elements during assembly. It seems very unlikely that a representative lens (or even aan average of several lenses) would be perfectly aligned.
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I have a 1ds II and a 50 1,4 and find it quite sharp and with very little barrel distortion, is not a L lens, and feel plastic and cheap, but does the job well, send yours back.
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I think you are looking at the wrong points. I use a 50 f.1.4 on a 1Ds MkII.
1) Yes, there is some distortion, but this is true of nearly all fast primes.
2) Yes, at f/8 it probably won't show much difference to your 28-135 - all lenses these days are very good at f/8. But the 50 will also be very sharp at f/2... try shooting at f/2 with your 28-135. Oh, it doesn't go to f/2 does it? If you are only going to shoot at f/8 you don't need a prime - you won't see any benefit.
Julian
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If you are only going to shoot at f/8 you don't need a prime - you won't see any benefit.
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Probably not quite true, Julian. My father used to say 50 years ago that all lenses are equal at f8. We've upped the ante since then. I would say that all lenses are equal at somewhere between f11 and f16. (That is, all good 35mm lenses.)
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Our copy of the Canon 50/1.4 is one of our sharpest lenses. I put it in front of the four L zooms we use.
I've not notice an barrel distortion, but our type of work doesn't demand for perfect lines.
It is used on both a 1DM2 and a 1DsM2. I find it brutally sharp at 2.8 and beyond. More open and it provides very sharp and quite pretty images!
Sounds like you have a bad example.... get it back to Canon. -Scott
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Me too slightly disappointed by the 50/1.4's performance (on 5d) it's nothing to write home about. With those nice wide-open portraits the head has got to be somewhere not too far from the center region of the image because vignetting and corner unhsarpness would rob the face from important detail. Cant remember seeing this with the Nikon 50/1.4, at least not this bad. Same goes for distortion. Canon, time for a 50/1.4 mark II, or even L?
ps anyways it's nice to have a a place where you can complain about such trivia.
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yep,
i´m with you, nikkor one perfomes better in every aspect, i dont complaint being soft wideopen, but its distorton is making me crazy, and i dont think is such a trivial problem, im not in arquitechture stuff, if it were the case i would throw my canon lens after 2 shots, i´m on fashion photography and well, everything is permited in that field, i want to control distortion and apply it when ever i want it, and not deal with it every shot.
Anyway, i put my freaky 28-135 Is lens (poor, very poor made lens) and it performs better than 50mm, i use lights all the times so 1,4 dont care for me, i was used to fixed lens in medium format so think to use it aswell in digital, i learn i have to spend huge amount of money to get decent results with fixed lens!!.
cheers!
jp
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If distortion is important, the 50mm macro has very little, but is apparently a little softer.
http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/ca...50_25/index.htm (http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_50_25/index.htm)
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You can of course use your nikkor with a simple adaptor as long as you don't mind stop down manually focused shooting. If you look on the Alternative forum of FM you will find a bunch of guys to whom mounting a Canon lens on a Canon body is heresy!
I didn't find the 50mm 1.4 to wow in any way, wide open it was ugly and soft and at f5.6 my 24-70L wasn't noticeably worse. The 85mm 1.8 on the other hand is a real beut of a lens that blows away my 24-70L. That said the 85mmL that I tried at a CPS conference made my 24-70L look like a milkbottle which hadn't been washed out yet!
Annoyingly the 50mmL doesn't seem to be better in any way other than the speed and bokeh wide open. Opinion seems to be that it isn't as sharp, slower to focus and a waste of time if you are going to stop it down past f2 or so. It would be nice if Canon had made a decent 50mm, i.e. a wider 85mm 1.8 but with all its attributes.
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The Canon 50/1.4 is sharpest at f8, as is the 50/1.8. They are probably close to being as good as any lens at this aperture. But some lenses get better at f5.6 and f4, even at f2.8 sometimes, but not these 50mm primes. Both the 50/1.4 and 50/1.8 are very soft at full aperture (at least mine are).
It would be interesting to see a comparison at f1.8 between the 85/1.8 and the 50/1.8 and 50/1.4.
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The Canon 50/1.4 is sharpest at f8, as is the 50/1.8. They are probably close to being as good as any lens at this aperture. But some lenses get better at f5.6 and f4, even at f2.8 sometimes, but not these 50mm primes. Both the 50/1.4 and 50/1.8 are very soft at full aperture (at least mine are).
It would be interesting to see a comparison at f1.8 between the 85/1.8 and the 50/1.8 and 50/1.4.
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I did at one point do a comparison of the 1.8 and 1.4, the 1.4 is sharper wide open even though it has an extra half stop, the bokeh of the 1.8 is slightly softer, the 1.4 can be quite disturbing wide open at times. I don't have any 50mm at present otherwise I would do it for you, the 85mm is not wow sharp wide open but it's pretty good, certainly more than acceptable on my 5D and the bokeh is very pleasing.
I've been doing some shooting recently with the 24-105L, now that is a lens with really weird bokeh, edges become spidery and horribly ugly.
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I did at one point do a comparison of the 1.8 and 1.4, the 1.4 is sharper wide open even though it has an extra half stop, the bokeh of the 1.8 is slightly softer, the 1.4 can be quite disturbing wide open at times. I don't have any 50mm at present otherwise I would do it for you, the 85mm is not wow sharp wide open but it's pretty good, certainly more than acceptable on my 5D and the bokeh is very pleasing.
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Pom,
I would say that two lenses like the Canon 50/1.8 and 50/1.4 are so close in general performance that quality variation amongst different copies of the same lens will result in the cheaper 50/1.8 sometimes being the equal of the 50/1.4.
At least that's the case with my copy of the 50/1.8. It appears to be very marginally better than the 50/1.4. Having just done some extensive testing of these 2 lenses at each f stop, I can confirm that the 50/1.8 is very marginally sharper in the centre than the 50/1.4 at both f1.4 and f1.8. Away from the centre, resolution falls off so drastically with both lenses one would think one was using a pin-hole camera.
How some people can claim such lenses are sharp at full aperture or even one stop down, beats me. The Photodo MTF charts below tell the story. What's interesting here is the MTF response of the 85/1.8. At full aperture the response is remarkably flat at all frequencies tested, all the way to around 15mm from the centre.
Those who are using the 85/1.8 with a cropped format DSLR should be getting equal sharpness right out to the corners, at full aperture, provided the corners are still in focus, which is often not the case. However in the dead centre and up to around 7mm from the centre, the 50/1.8 could be sharper, depending on copy variations.
[attachment=2414:attachment]
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Man, my 50mm f1.4 puts to shame any L zoom (at f2.8+), let alone the 28-135mm, it just obliterates that lens. My 85mm f1.2L is even a tad sharper than the 50. The 50 and the 85L are probably the sharpest 2 lenses that Canon makes.
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Man, my 50mm f1.4 puts to shame any L zoom (at f2.8+), let alone the 28-135mm, it just obliterates that lens. My 85mm f1.2L is even a tad sharper than the 50. The 50 and the 85L are probably the sharpest 2 lenses that Canon makes.
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Really? Post a couple of shots at f2.8 and f8 (of the same scene) and let's have a look.
My 50/1.4 is very soft at f1.4 and the lens Photodo tested is also very soft at f1.4 as you can see from the graph.
Just goes to show how much quality variation there is between different copies of the same lens.
But I see we are at cross purposes. You are talking about f2.8. The 50/1.4 is significantly better at f2.8 than at f1.4 but not nearly as sharp as it is at f8. Also it doesn't appear to be nearly as sharp as the 400/2.8 at f2.8.
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I've been using the EF 50mm f/1.4 with a 5D for a year and a half. I think it's a great lens -- sharp, nice contrast and color, and beautiful bokeh.
It is not a flat field-field or rectilinear repro lens.
F/1.4 gives very shallow depth-of-field. I've shot at F/8 and have made tack sharp 20" X 24" enlargements.
The reasons for opting for a 1.4 over the 1.8 go way beyond sharpness alone.
I bought the lens for its bokeh and the extra stop of light it lets through the viewfinder.
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I've been using the EF 50mm f/1.4 with a 5D for a year and a half. I think it's a great lens -- sharp, nice contrast and color, and beautiful bokeh.
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Of course it's sharp..... at f8. Most 35mm lenses are sharpest at f8 and the 50/1.4 is no exception. However as you stop up from f8, resolution gets worse and worse till at f1.4 it's truly lousy.
Of course, I realise that when using f1.4 you are mainly after shallow DoF. Because most of the image, at f1.4, is seriously out-of-focus, the parts that are in focus might appear to be relatively sharp, and indeed they are relatively sharp, but not relative to f8.
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Of course it's sharp..... at f8. Most 35mm lenses are sharpest at f8 and the 50/1.4 is no exception. However as you stop up from f8, resolution gets worse and worse till at f1.4 it's truly lousy.
Of course, I realise that when using f1.4 you are mainly after shallow DoF. Because most of the image, at f1.4, is seriously out-of-focus, the parts that are in focus might appear to be relatively sharp, and indeed they are relatively sharp, but not relative to f8.
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I agree the 50mm f1.4 isnt very good at f1.4, at f2 it gets much better, the 85mm f1.2L however is very good even at f1.2
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I don't know how you get into distortion with FFDSLR, but not with film. That sounds strange to me.
It's not strange to me. Although I've had a life-long interest in photography, that interest lay fairly dormant till the digital darkroom became an affordable competitor to the wet darkroom. I've had very little experience using wide-angle lenses with 35mm film.
I did observe, however, significant cornor fall-off and color shift on FFDSLR. It is not shown at all on film. This is from Contax Zeiss 50mm/1.4. I need to set lens optimiation to ~39 to balance it. Canon's 50mm/1.4 is much worse.
Trouble with film is, we have so many variants, just like digicams. If you are not noticing corner fall-off with film, yet the same lens does produce corner fall-off with a particular DSLR camera, then the logical explanation is the DSLR is producing sharper images at the point of focus than the particular film/lens combination.
However, there is another explanation. Sensor photodiodes may not be working efficiently at the edges with wide-angle lenses because of the extremely acute angle of the light rays. I've got no idea to what extent this might be a factor, but what I see tends to approximate to the Photodo MTF tests where resolution is shown as falling off dramaticall towards the corners in all lenses except a few really expensive ones.
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i dont want start another discusion but, we are now dealing about diferences on digital and film, my question is has nobody notice the motion freezing on digital, is completly diferent on film, i mean, i learn that 1/125 will freeze "that" on film, then on digital it doesnt work i have to use more faster shutter settings a stop or more faster, the same on studio, i have to use less power and use faster lights to freeze motion, sometimes it freezes motion diferent, sometimes it freezes just a part of the picture, dont know if anyone has encountered with these problems aswell.
sorry for my bad english, i guess you get the point.
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i dont want start another discusion but, we are now dealing about diferences on digital and film, my question is has nobody notice the motion freezing on digital, is completly diferent on film, i mean, i learn that 1/125 will freeze "that" on film, then on digital it doesnt work i have to use more faster shutter settings a stop or more faster, the same on studio, i have to use less power and use faster lights to freeze motion, sometimes it freezes motion diferent, sometimes it freezes just a part of the picture, dont know if anyone has encountered with these problems aswell.
sorry for my bad english, i guess you get the point.
There is no difference between a film SLR and a full-frame DSLR in regard to barrel distortion. Barrel/pincushion distortion is a function of the lens, not the camera, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. Take a shot with the lens in question attached to a film SLR and a full-frame DSLR and make equal-sixed uncropped prints, and you'll find distortion to be identical.
As to the effects of motion blur, the higher the resolution olf the camera, the more noticeable the effects of motion blur become. A small amount of blur hidden in the film grain can be quite niticeable in a well-focused DSLR image captured with a good lens.
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I agree the 50mm f1.4 isnt very good at f1.4, at f2 it gets much better, the 85mm f1.2L however is very good even at f1.2
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You must have an exceptionally good copy of the 85/1.2 then. I'd treasure it and never let it go.
As far as I can tell from the reviews I've read, the 85/1.2 and 85/1.2 Mark II are roughly on a par in terms of optical resolution, but the Mark II has better flare control and faster autofocussing and probably a few other improvements.
But let's not kid ourselves that these lenses are sharp at full aperture. Nothing could be further from the truth. At f1.2, these lenses would have less resolution than the cheapest Canon zoom that money can buy, at f8.
At apertures wider than f2.8, these lenses are quite awful as regards sharpness. Of course, you get lots of shallow DoF and nice bokeh and you get the opportunity to shoot in low light without a flash, but let's not kid ourselves the lenses are sharp at full aperture.
If you think I'm wrong, show me some comparisons between f8 and f1.2.
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This is becoming an amusing discussion.
There might be some "unsatisfied" owners of the 50 1.4, but I guarantee you most of
us (who own one) are quite fond of them. They take _GREAT_ pictures at any aperture (if
you know how and when to use it). Is it the sharpest? Is it the one with the least distortion?
I generally don't care. What I care is that every time I see pictures that come out of it
I feel happy I choose it instead of other lenses (particularly zooms). The 50 1.4 can do 1.4 (_very_ few other lenses can), it can focus faster than either 50 1.8 (MkI or II) and it is lighter and smaller than the 24-70L, and it is way cheaper than the 50 1.2L or 50 1.0L.
Any lens is a trade-off, but the 50 1.4 provides such a balance that it is my most used lens (and I own quite a collection of lenses, including various L and both versions of the 50 1.8
dmg