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Songklaburi, eh? One of my favorite spots. Lovely people there.I think corners can benefit from f/11, especially if the lens is focused at infinity and the lower corners are in the foreground, which is totally at the opposite direction of the field curvature of this lens. Here are 2 examples taken at f/9.5:
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Exactly! :thumbup:Songklaburi, eh? One of my favorite spots. Lovely people there.
Hi CarstenEdward, have you done any tests where you slowly zoom out, taking pictures the whole time, and watch the curvature? I wonder if there is somewhere close to 16mm where the corner curvature suddenly moves forward a lot, to help make certain kinds of shots.
No I haven't but that would make a good assignment for this weekendEdward, have you done any tests where you slowly zoom out, taking pictures the whole time, and watch the curvature? I wonder if there is somewhere close to 16mm where the corner curvature suddenly moves forward a lot, to help make certain kinds of shots.
The Zeiss MTF charts show this complex wavy field curvature. I had the 16-35mm for a short time, was thrilled at the prospects for this lens on my A900 as part of my landscape shooting kit, but even at f/11 most of the corners and some of the edges were unacceptably soft for me, most especially at 20mm and 24mm (although the performance was excellent at 28mm and 35mm). Of course the center sharpness was stunning and the microcontrast very high. I ended up going with Minolta legacy glass, the 20mm f/2.8 and 28mm f/2.0 which had cleaner corners at f/8-f/11 but do have a mellower drawing style compared to the snappy Zeiss.The corners are interesting. In each shot, there is one corner which is very sharp, but in an unusual way. The plane of maximum sharpness appears to curve back rapidly starting perhaps 3/4 of the way into the corners, so the usual kinds of shots with foregrounds coming to the camera will always be soft in the corners. However, subject matter further back than that (a river below the walkway, a tree behind a tree next to the statue) suddenly come into sharp focus in the extreme corners.
Hi Carsten,When you say Minolta 20mm, do you mean the Sony 20mm which is a Minolta design, or a different lens?