On Jun 28, 2006, at 9:11 AM, Jens Bladt wrote: > Wow 12%. That's impressive, Godfrey. > I know Pentax is often (you must know the good stuff) good value > for money. > I just didn't know Leica was that expensive. >
It's actually even a greater difference than that ... From B&H Photo: Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH $2,850.00 Pentax SMC-FA 50mm f/1.4 $219.95 ($169.95 with rebate) Not taking the rebate into account, the Pentax lens is 7.7% the price of the Leica lens. I was thinking that the Leica lens was around $1800, which is what I remembered from pricing it about six years ago. > BTW: I took a shot with the SMC-M 1.7/50mm @ F. 2.. > It seems to be sharper than the FA 1.4/50. Or is manual focusing > just more > accurate ;-) > http://www.flickr.com/photos/bladt/177086175/ Regards focusing ... Yes, manually focusing an f/1.4-1.7 lens is potentially far more accurate than using autofocus. The AF system on the Pentax bodies is accurate enough to focus an f/3.5-f/4 lens critically at wide open aperture, but not accurate enough to do justice for an f/2.8 or faster lens. The manual focus indicator (green light in the viewfinder) in particular is almost completely worthless... I found that with both the f/1.7 and f/1.4, I could turn the focusing ring about 20-30 degrees from when the indicator came on at 1m distance. Focus varied a great deal on the screen, but the indicator didn't note the change. Usually, taking apertures are not wide open so the standard focus inaccuracy in good light is compensated for by DoF, but if you want sharp results you have to learn how to see the focus transition and maximum sharpness point on screen. The M, A, F, and FA 50mm f/1.7 lenses are all optically identical. The A50/1.4 received a minor refresh from the M series version and is optically identical to the F and FA versions. Tested on a bench, the f/1.7 lenses perform with higher contrast and better sharpness when wide open than the f/1.4 lenses. Comparing at f/2, most of the difference in resolution and contrast are gone between them, although they both improve further until about f/4-5.6. The f/1.4's superior out of focus rendering is apparent until about f/4-5.6. At f/8, it is impossible to tell them apart for all intents and purposes. The f/1.7 lenses exhibit better flatness of field at close distances, making them more suitable for macro work with extension tubes. If I didn't have a 50/2.8 Macro, I would have kept a 50/1.7 for the macro setup. OK, that's enough lens performance testing reportage for me for today... ;-) Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
