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Some ultra-fast 50s on the G1

R

Ranger 9

Guest
Sorry, no Kinoptic and no $10,000 Noctilux... but since it was too hot to go outside today, I did spend some time experimenting with my newish 50mm f/1.1 Voigtlander Nokton and oldish 50/0.95 Canon, with the 50/1.5 Nokton as a control.

I wrote up some observations on my blog; feel free to cross-post the link elsewhere...
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
The images are just too small to see anything...
They're supposed to expand to full size (up to the width of your browser window) when you click on them. This doesn't seem to be working for everybody, though, so I've gone back and added clickable links for both sets of pictures. These will display a 1:1 crop in a separate browser window, so you can compare them side-by-side.

Note that if you visited before that change, you may need to flush your browser cache to see the new version.
 
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R

Ranger 9

Guest
While the rest of you have been having fun with your new GH1s and 20/1.7s :angel: I've been continuing to experiment with the 50/1.1 Voigtlander on the G1. I'm just now starting to get through a huge batch of pictures I shot two weekends ago of onlookers at the Fashion Week runway show; have picked a few to show here.

[One thing I like about photographing this event is that since everybody is snapping photos of each other with their digicams and phones anyway, and since everybody has gone to great lengths to look fabulous, usually nobody minds being photographed... in fact, usually the problem is to get the shot before they start posing for you!]

Note that this isn't intended as a serious "test" of the lens -- just some examples to show what shots with this combo look like under these types of conditions (although at least I tried to pick ones that had good focus and reasonably good exposure.) I think we all know by now that 3200 is pushing your luck with the G1, although I usually find the results at least tolerable as long as I don't underexpose at all; once you go even slightly under, the shadow areas start getting hazy and streaky.

I ran the screen-size versions through Noise Ninja to see if it would help with this, but it really didn't... it did smooth out color noise pretty well, but I don't know if it's a big enough advantage to be worth the bother of doing routinely. Anyway, here are the pics:

This one is at ISO 1250:

This one is at ISO 2500;

All from here on at ISO 3200:

Model gets a hug from her mom. I had to go to 1/50 for this one, so sharpness is compromised a bit by motion blur:
 

pellicle

New member
The images are just too small to see anything...
I thought the zoomed segments helped a lot ... allows one to focus on the pertinate issues at hand although I'd agree that larger (say 1600x1200) images for the click through would be nicer ... I guess that he's attempting to conserve space on his hosting (know that feeling).

Ranger ... bucket loads of blue fringe on the 1.1 Nokton. Have you noticed if this can be controlled with focus? I discovered that I can dial in less CA on my FD lenses by tiny focus tweaks. If one has the time its worth doing. General sharpness seems not to change but overall CA gets better.

you need a tripod and be using the EVF to see this ...

love the high frequency detail on the Canon too .. wish the others fingers were visible in the shots ... but the definition was s/hot
 
O

OzRay

Guest
That's the first thing I noticed with my 50mm f1.1, the purple fringing when shooting against bright backgrounds. It's almost gone by stopping down to f1.4 and completely gone when stopping down to f1.8. I guess that as long as you're aware of this, then it's not really a problem.

Cheers

Ray
 

pellicle

New member
Hi

That's the first thing I noticed with my 50mm f1.1, the purple fringing when shooting against bright backgrounds. It's almost gone by stopping down to f1.4 and completely gone when stopping down to f1.8.
you know, over the years it keeps comming back to me that f2 is such an effective speed for a 50mm ... cost effective and design easy.

I should get a m42 and test my olde Helios 55mm from my Praktika on it
 
O

OzRay

Guest
Hi



you know, over the years it keeps comming back to me that f2 is such an effective speed for a 50mm ... cost effective and design easy.

I should get a m42 and test my olde Helios 55mm from my Praktika on it
That said, f1.1 can be really useful when not faced with strong backlighting. :) Though it seems true about the f2, as my 28mm f2 doesn't exhibit the same purple fringing.

Cheers

Ray
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
I thought the zoomed segments helped a lot ... allows one to focus on the pertinate issues at hand although I'd agree that larger (say 1600x1200) images for the click through would be nicer ... I guess that he's attempting to conserve space on his hosting (know that feeling).
There's that, but it was more that since most of the image area is out of focus at f/1.1, it wouldn't be worth the load times to look at blurs. (Although if I got some nice blurs I'd put them into our "bokehgraphy" thread!)

bucket loads of blue fringe on the 1.1 Nokton. Have you noticed if this can be controlled with focus? I discovered that I can dial in less CA on my FD lenses by tiny focus tweaks. If one has the time its worth doing.
Actually, I had shot these with the G1 in black-and-white mode since that was what I had been intending to do with the final images. That puts the viewfinder image in b&w also, so I wouldn't have noticed any fringing nor been able to try to tweak focus. Wouldn't have been time for it anyway in this scenario, but I might experiment with it if I ever shoot any static subjects at f/1.1; thanks for the idea!
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
you know, over the years it keeps comming back to me that f2 is such an effective speed for a 50mm ... cost effective and design easy.
I don't think it's so much that it's "design easy" as that by now manufacturers have a lot of experience with that focal length/aperture combination and have had plenty of time to learn what works best. If you look at the old 50mm f/2 Summars, for example, you can see they were still struggling a bit! Still, it's a great spec for a compact, cost-effective design.

...that said, though, in practical terms for this type of situation you are likely to get a better overall result with an f/1.1 lens shooting at 1/60 - 1/250 than with an f/2 lens shooting at 1/8 - 1/30. The superior optical quality of the slower lens is pretty much negated by the fact that the dratted subjects won't hold still!
 
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