Maxing out the Armamentarium
Or do they? Of course I ordered the lens in advance of the paycheck, and it arrived (good old B&H!) within 48 hours. Today, in fact. Here's this evening's note to Neil.
OK, here we go. The usual drill. Identical photos (of books and bookshelf) with two lenses, the Canon L and the Tamron. Raw files exactly as taken, no sharpening or levels or nothin'. Examining the results at 200%.
- 28mm f/4.0 -- The Canon is very slightly better in the corners. The Tamron is very slightly better at the center.
- 35mm f/4.0 -- The Tamron is much better in corners and center. In fact, the Canon looks OOF. May take this one over.
- 50mm f/4.0 -- The Canon is much better in corners and center. In fact, the Tamron looks OOF. WTF?
- 60mm f/4.0 -- The Tamron is much better in corners and center. The Canon looks OOF.
- 75mm f/4.0 -- The Canon is slightly better at the center, the Tamron much better at the edges.
Later. Used more light and a more firmly braced tripod this time.
- 50mm f/4.0 -- The Tamron is better in the corners, much better in the center
- 28mm f/4.0 -- The Canon is very slightly better in the corners and in the center. It's almost a wash -- needs inspection at 300% to see any difference.
- 35mm f/4.0 -- I truly can't tell the difference.
- 50mm f/4.0 -- The Canon is very slightly better in the corners and definitely better in the center.
- 60mm f/4.0 -- Tamron slightly better in the corners, still better in the center.
- 75mm f/4.0 -- Can't tell the difference.
- 75mm f/8.0 -- Can't tell the difference.
- 60mm f/8.0 -- Tamron slightly better in the corners, centers identical.
- 50mm f/8.0 -- A wash; possibly a very slight advantage to the Tamron.
- 35mm f/8.0 -- Slight edge to the Tamron at both center and edge.
- 28mm f/8.0 -- A wash.
I mean, what the fucking fuck?
Here we have two lenses. Street price of one is $400, the other $1200. The cheap one, let's be honest, outperforms the expensive one in the strictly optical, image-making department. The expensive one has the advantage of image stabilization. It's far superior mechanically, weighs twice as much, is smooth and slick. It gives a bit more wide angle (24mm vs 28mm) and a bit more telephoto (105mm vs 75mm). Then again, its max aperture is f/4; the cheap lens is f/2.8.
My conclusion is that the Tamron is one hell of a bargain so long as you're careful not to drop it or take it to Bosnia in the rain.
Of course pride of ownership is everything, so I'm going to put the Tamron up for sale on eBay and make the L-Canon my standard lens.
Not.
I agonized. Next day's mail:
Still rather perturbed about the lens, but my tests were careful ones. The Tamron's optically at least the equal of a lens costing three times as much. Go figure. Perhaps state of the art for the two lenses is the same, and Tamron economizes on materials, mechanicals and quality control. Tests I've read suggest there's a lot of variation among samples of the Tamron. And I'm sure it wouldn't stand up to as much use as the Canon. And sure, the Canon has image stabilization, and a 4.3x zoom range versus 2.7x, and may focus closer, and certainly focuses faster and more quietly, and focus is internal with no rotating ring, and it has a red ring around its rectum, 'cause it's a Canon "L" with mucho macho. Nevertheless it's an f/4 versus f/2.8, and costs $1300 rather than $400. Go figure.
Later in the day:
My conclusion is that there just isn't a zoom lens available for the Canon, at any price, that's better than the Tamron, in terms of image delivered. Bloody sheesh. I do miss my razor-cutting Zeiss lenses, really miss 'em. If God made anything sharper than that Makro-Planar, he kept it for himself.
The good news is that the Tamron is one super lens. And now I have $1,300. Maybe I should get one o' them new Minis.
Still later – the bulletins are getting closer together:
I've been thinking about this. Beyond a certain point, isn't it folly to worry about sharpness in the strict line-pairs-per-mm sense? It's the impression of sharpness, which has a lot to do with textures and contrast and relatively little to do with resolution, that's most important. The Impressionists made much hay out of that discovery. However, unlike those guys I'm trying to get my effects in black and white, where you can't use contrasting colors to give the illusion of sharpness. I do need a good lens.
Another day has passed, I'm home from work, and:
This evening I tried the L against some primes that I know to be very good, the 50/1.8 and the 85/1.8.
- At f/4 the L was considerably better than the 50/1.8 at the center and indistinguishable from it at the corners.
- At f/8 the L was still better than the 50/1.8 at the center and slightly better at the corners.
- At f/4 the L was about the same as the 85/1.8 at the center -- maybe just a shade better -- but not as good in the corners
- At f/8 the L was better than the 85/1.8 at the center and not quite as good in the corners
- At f/4 the L was considerably better than the Tamron at both center and corners
- At f/8 the L was very slightly better than the Tamron in the center and still better in the corners
So why did the Tamron equal or beat it in earlier tests? Well, they were of flat walls. This one was of a 3-D situation, with various items at various distances. And it's clear the L and the Tamron focus at different points. The Tamron focuses a bit short. I don't know how that could've given it an advantage, but it's the only thing I can think of. So I'm now convinced the L is a stellar lens, better than most primes. And will keep it, forsooth.
posted by LH at 3/01/2006 11:18:00 PM
2 Comments:
How the hell can it be better than primes? Doesn't add up. Try shooting a backlit situation. The L will probably flare more than the primes.
Barak,
Easy - some primes aren't so hot, some zooms are great. That said, I'm surprised myself at how good the newer zooms are, even some cheap ones like the Tamron 28-75. Time marches on, progress is our most important product, etc etc. When I was a stripling the big news was the Zeiss Hologon, a 16mm lens with constant f/8 aperture and a remarkable ND filter that blocked another two stops of light from the center of the lens to "eliminate vignetting." It wasn't offered as a separate item; it came already mounted in a Zeiss camera with no rangefinder or prism, and the whole business cost a fortune. However, it was the only way to get a rectilinear wide angle image of 160 degrees, or whatever it was. About the same time Nikon astonished the world with their retrofocus six-millimeter fisheye, which covered 180 degrees but produced a circular image surrounded by a blank, or rather black, field.
You can now get an f/5.6 Voigtlander 12mm lens in Leica mount, and it actually focuses - the Voigtlander 15mm ditto. Both make excellent images (I had the 15 for a few weeks) and cost a fraction as much as the Hologon, which was available in non-autofocus mount for the Contax G1/2. For my Canon DSLR I have a 10-22 zoom which is the equivalent of a 16-35. It's fairly small, well made, and gives me excellent results even at 10mm (without much vignetting).
I resisted zooms until pretty recently, but the advantages of the new designs were just too much for me. It's true they're bigger than primes, and more fragile, and more expensive, and have smaller apertures, and don't work on rangefinders (except for one Zeiss model), and the very best primes still have the edge in contrast and resolution. But that advantage isn't visible to me in the prints I make (seldom bigger than 12 x 18"), and I need only two lenses in my bag (10-22 and 24-105), and seldom have to stop shooting to change a lens, and get intermediate focal lengths as easily as 16/21/24/28/35/45/50/85/105. Flare hasn't been a problem for me. I use hoods, of course, and sometimes block the sun with my hand - works well enough. It's a compromise, but what isn't? And I'm mortally certain I've made lots of photos over the last few years that I wouldn't have been able to get without a zoom.
The 24-105 is what stays on my 20D most of the time. For macros I do use a prime, a cheap but sharp Sigma 50/2.8. It's built like a toy but gets the job done. I also have Canon's 85/1.8 in the stable for rare portrait sessions. But those are arms enough for any battles I'm likely to join.
Les
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