Hi, yesterday my smc-DA 14/2.8 arrived. Here are some short impressions. Maybe I'll find some time to upload some images, later.
- Very good built quality, no plastics, pure metal! - It has a smaller image circle than a 35mm lens (as expected) but I'm quite sure that the imgae circle ist wide enough for a larger CCD (maybe crop factor 1.3). - Although the difference to the 16-45 is only 2mm, the field of view is obviously larger - The shortest focussing distance is 17cm - that's fine - The new "Quick-Shift Focus System" works really good. The focussing ring is 1.5cm wide and moves smooth. - It is wide open (2.8) sharper than the 16-45 wide open (4.0); You have to stop down the 16-45 to 4.5 in order to get the same result. - The 16-45 is told to underexpose one stop. The DA14 exposes comparable to other lenses, i.e. a little bit lighter than the 16-45. Yesterday we had som really difficult light conditions: the sun was shining but there was a thin veil of cloud resulting in a light, white sky. I was making the test in an industrial ruin with dark areas so the range of contrast was very high. In the result there is some obvious purple fringing on pictures with open aperture. And as the DA14 takes lighter pictures than the 16-45 and has a wider aperture opening, this effect is more visible with the DA14. But as far as I understand this is not a problem of the lens itself (as CAs would be) but a common weakness of the CCDs. Summary: The lens makes a lot of fun (especially because I have missed a wide angel for my *istD). The built quality is superb. The image quality seems to be very good for this focal range, but it is too early for me to give a final conclusion. There will have to be more test under better conditions ;-) Cheers, Heiko
