AdamM's Lens Tests

It would be hard to get every single great 50mm lens there ever was and test them, but i've done my best. Here's a test of all the 50mm lenses i could get my hands on.

Canon EF 50mm f1.4

Canon EF 50mm f1.8

Pentax SMC 50mm f1.4

Pentax Super-Takumar 50mm f1.4

Contax CZ 35-70mm f3.4 (ok.. not a prime, but as sharp as a prime as we'll see)

Minolta Rokkor 58mm f1.2 (ok, not a true 50mm, but a fun guest in this test)

Nikon 50mm (sourcing 2 different version)

Fujinon 50mm (ebay bid in progress)

Olympus 50mm (sourcing)

Contax 50mm (ebay bid in progress)

posted by AdamM

at 3:48 AM Permalink

| 1 comments

How good can a $90 lens be? (brand new!) The answer is good, quite good. There's two versions of this lens, a MkI and MKII. The MKI has a metal mount where the MKII is plastic, and is the one i have. Both are identical optically. The MKI feels like less of a joke than the MKII, which feels like a toy.

While this lens doesn't run with the elite glass in this world, it's a lens i highly recommend. Why? well, if you're new to photography and bought a body plus 'kit' lens, you're missing out on some of the most fun there is: shooting with fast lenses. You may also not know the specifics of the term 'fast' or 'slow' as it relates to a lens and its aperture. That's easy, here we go:

There's basically two main bits of information to define a lens: #1. The focal length (usually in mm) and #2. the lense's maximum aperture. So let's take the 50mm f1.8. 50mm is approximately the same FOV as a human eye sees (on a full frame sensor.. more on this later) and it lets in f1.8 amount of light.

The smaller the number, the more light it lets in. A

nything smaller than f2.8 is starting to get fast. The relationship isn't linear, so as the numbers get smaller, the differences between the

m mean more. Demonstrated in the above example, f1.4 lets in TWICE as much light as the f2. f5.6 lets in twice as much as f8. f16 lets in twice that of f22. Each stop lets in twice or half as much light as the next.

What's the fastest lens? Canon made a 50mm f1.0. Yes, 1.0, but it is very expensive and performed worse than the f1.2 which was a fraction of the price. It has now been discontinued.

Leica makes one called the Noctilux which is also 50mm and f1.0 (built and designed in Canada, i must add) It too, is horrifically expensive (and great)

Canon made an 50mm f0.95 for their ancient rangefinder cameras. f0.95??! does it let in more light than there is? noooo that's just the way the numbers work at this extreme end. It was big and heavy and flares like a banshee.

Stanley Kubrick did something pretty interesting, he (and some engineers) modified a specially build Carl Zeiss lens made for NASA, to fit on a movie camera. It was f0.75. He used it to shoot candlelight scenes in 'Barry Lyndon'.

There's some f0.75 and f0.5 and even f0.25 lenses used in special lithography processes, specifically with etching computer chips. I bet they cost a fortune.

Ok ok, what has this got to do with the Nifty Fifty ?? Fast lenses have small depths of field (DOF) which mean you can blur out the background to isolate and draw your eye to the subject.

Kit lenses, cheap zooms and essentially all point and shoot cameras have a serious limitation: They're slow. Check your kit lens, it may be f3.5-f5.6. Your point and shoot camera is around the same - or worse! - you're not going to get much background blur with one of those. It's physically impossible to get that creamy out of focus blurry background with those kinds of lenses/cameras, not to mention you won't be able to shoot in low light either.

So, for $80, the Nifty Fifty is your entry into the wonderful world of low light, blurry background portrait photography. Go for it!

Follow up: Some people have mentioned that 50mm f1.8 is the Plastic Fantastic, but it think that's the term for 18-55 kit lens...? Another suggested the 50mm f1.8 should instead be coined the Thrifty Fifty. A rose by any other name.....

posted by AdamM

at 7:27 PM Permalink

| 0 comments

Weird lenses on a Canon EOS? How???

0 comments

You can use non-Canon mount lenses on a Canon EOS body???

You bet! It's easy, sort of. The Canon EOS lens mount is arguably the best camera mount in the industry. It's very large and very close to the film plane. This allows a wide variety of other lenses to be used on Canon EOS bodies with adapters, which range from $9 to $100+. I've had great luck with the $20 ones. Some adapters have little chips on them to trick the body into thinking it has a Canon lens, so you still get the AF beep when things are in focus. Nice.

Use of fantastic (and often very cheap!) lenses from other manufacturers is a seriously cool benefit to Canon. Lenses from Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Contax, Zeiss, Leica - more - are all now able to be used on your Canon rig. Fun! All that you need is the right adapter, and a shift in shooting technique called stop down metering. This is because your camera can't 'talk' to the lens, so you have to adjust the aperture manually. There's a few different ways to do it, but it's basically something like this:

1. Set the lens to be wide open - so it's easiest to focus due to the most light and least DOF

2. Focus

3. Stop down to desired aperture - or leave wide open if you want that effect

4. Meter and shoot

With practice, it's almost second nature. Sure, you won't want to cover a sporting event with manual lenses and stop down metering, but portraiture is fine when you get the hang of it, and landscapes are no problem at all.

So why bother? Well, there's a lot of really great lenses old out there. Many are significantly better than Canon lenses at a fraction of the price. The Contax Carl Zeiss 35-70mm f3.4 is as good or better than ANY Canon L prime within its zoom range. A zoom that's better than a prime? You bet!

There's fantastic Olympus wide angles, great standard lenses, all sorts of treasures. The Pentax SMC 50mm f1.4 is better than the Canon 50mm f1.4, and you can get it for around a hundred bucks! It's much smaller too. The earlier Pentax, called the Super-Takumar, has radioactive thorium glass (don't worry) and wide open, creates some of the dreamiest effects you've seen.

Sorry, Can't do this with Nikon... (but you can put a Nikon lens on a Canon with an adapter!)

Here's a few of my coveted alternate lenses i regularly shoot on my Canon bodies. I only use about 4 Canon lenses now, and all the rest are alternates.

From top left, clockwise:

Contax Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Distagon. Supremely sharp with that '3d' Zeiss look. Fantastic

Minolta Rokkor 58mm f1.2! Utterly mind blowing. Tack sharp wide open, but it took some major surgery to adapt. More on this one soon.

Contax Carl Zeiss 35-70mm f3.4 The legend. This zoom is sharper than primes, also with a killer macro mode

Pentax Super-Takumar 50mm f1.4 The dreamy radioactive one. I use this a lot for portraits

Pentax SMC 50mm f1.4 Better than the Canon, a fraction of the price, super small and light.

Olympus OM 24mm f2.8 Sharp wide open, great colours, a stunning wide for around $120

The Adapter This particular one is a leica-R to EOS, (no Leica lenses yet...)

If you search alternate lenses EOS , you'll find lots of stuff. On ebay, search 'Pentax to EOS' or 'Nikon to EOS' etc., for all the different adapters.

Here's a link to a great forum on alternate glass. Lots of smart experienced people there.

Fred Miranda alternate lens forum

Good luck!

posted by AdamM

at 4:19 PM Permalink

| 0 comments

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