Stuart Richardson
Active member
The only problem with the Olypmus zooms is they fit over a half frame sensor.
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And you went for the car?? Going soft in the head?! :ROTFL::ROTFL:As for the perfect car...The whole thing cost a little less than a Mamiya AF645II with a ZD back . . . . . . . . . .
My experience with the Mamiya 43 mirrors yours Stuart. In fact the entire 7II system is proof that at rational prices (note I did not say cheap!!) you can have a true state of the art system. When I feel the need to shoot film this is the rig I reach for. Never been disappointed. When the results are not good I look at the eye peering into the viewfinder.This meshes well with my general experience. I have yet to see a better 25mm lens than the biogon for the M camera. Admittedly, I have not used the 24mm elmarit, which is supposed to be very similar. I do have the 24-70 for the Nikon, but where the Zeiss shows practically no distortion at all and extreme sharpness across the frame, the Nikon has a good bit of distortion and only decent sharpness in the extreme edges. Don't get me wrong, it is still very very good, but still far from the 25mm Biogon. The only wide angle lenses that I have used that come close are other other Leica, Mamiya and Zeiss primes -- the Mamiya 43mm being the best wide angle of any maker that I have used, followed by the 25mm biogon, 50mm FE distagon, then in the almost as good category, the 19mm Leica R, 18mm ZM, 21mm biogon, 40mm Schneider, trailed by a number of others.
Hi ArneHi Jono, interesting test. I can certainly confirm the results re the 25 mm Biogon, a stellar performer. I wonder if the rather disappointing performance of your new Distagon is due to poor resolution per se or the effect of a fairly strong curvature of field. It might perhaps perform better on 3D subjects than a flat wall. I seem to remember that Lloyd Chambers made some comments in that direction in his blog some months ago.
No - I disagree, the problem with the 4/3 system is that they don't seem to have access to a decent sensor (for high ISO).The only problem with the Olypmus zooms is they fit over a half frame sensor.
HI SteenStill the limit is the image circle of the optics.
A full 35mm optic has an image circle with a diameter of ~43mm.
A 4/3 optic has half the size image circle with a diameter of ~22mm.
The max sensor area of a 4/3 sensor is about half the size of a full 24x36mm sensor.
Personally I believe that at the end this limit is going to be a serious problem for the 4/3 system in general.
I even believe that at some point the DSLRs will grow out of the 24x36mm format.
Let's see in ... about five years from now
Jono, of course you have a very important point there, and I surely believe we will in fact see completely new DSLR mounts dedicated for digital image capturing in the next five to ten years. As a matter of fact I was surprised that Sony didn't make a completely new mount from scratch when they entered the DSLR arena. It was a historic chance. Now they are probably stuck with the Alpha mount for many years ?(...) The reason the 4/3 lenses produce such good edge to edge sharpness wide open is that despite the small image circle and sensor, the lens mouth is between the nikon and canon size - (...)
I think they were trying to make sure of keeping hold of the Minolta faithful (there is, after all, a lot of good minolta glass around). Ironically, it becomes clearer and clearer that good old glass is not very suitable for modern digital sensors (witness the fact that the new nikkor zooms often perform better than the old primes).Jono, of course you have a very important point there, and I surely believe we will in fact see completely new DSLR mounts dedicated for digital image capturing in the next five to ten years. As a matter of fact I was surprised that Sony didn't make a completely new mount from scratch when they entered the DSLR arena. It was a historic chance. Now they are probably stuck with the Alpha mount for many years ?
Well, perhaps - if so, the removal of the 'bayer blur' would also tend to make 4/3 more attractive . . . suddently you aren't talking about a 20mp limit, but a '60'.Of course there is also another unpredictable factor in play as we may at some point see some more sensors with stacked photosites a la Foveon ? That might change the game quite a bit.
I actually haven't shot much with the 25 but have quite a bit with the 35. The weather has been AWFUL here in Seattle. I will try and start a new thread and post some examples of the 35 though which I've been doing some studio and performance work with.I'd like to hear more of what Charles has to say about his new Zeiss lenses. 25 so so? 35 in another league? Tell us more, post something when you are able.
Neil
Oh, don't tempt me! I could sell my 24, get the Biogon, and still see a profit!Have you ever used the 25mm biogon Charles? Because it seems like most people who have used both rate it as the equal (though not a twin) of the 24mm elmarit. Sean Reid has a good comparison of them and the differences are very minor...mostly related to contrast...the Zeiss has a little more as well as a bit more edge to edge resolution but less center resolution. But the differences are quite small. Both of them are extraordinarily good. At the price you paid, I would probably have gone for the elmarit, but when I got the biogon it was 800 something dollars new (I was in Japan at the time and the currency exchange was better), and the 24mm is 3000 or so now, right? Even then it was above 2000.