Olympus E330 lens test 3

50mm lens shoot out

• see also:
  • E330 lenstests 1
  • E330 lens tests 2 - super telephotos (200-350mm actual focal lengths = 400-700mm effective)
  • Olympus E330
  • E330 with OM lenses
  • Olympus E330 macrophotography
  • Olympus E digital
  • Olympus OM
  • lenses and lens testing
  • Olympus C8080 lens tests

My conclusions:

• testing lenses on stars is one of the most visually easy methods of comparison as pin point high contrast star images show up aberrations and purple fringing readily.

• these tests show that all legacy lenses tested need to be stopped down 1-2 stops for reasonable performance except the Zuiko OM 50mm f/3.5 macro which was really good at its maximum aperture albeit a slow f/3.5.

• the Olympus Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.8 easily beat the Carl Zeiss T* 50mm f/1.7 lens designed for Contax 35mm.

• the best of these when wide aperture is needed is the Olympus OM 50mm f/1.4 used at f/2 or f/2.8.

• there is not a lot of difference on these images between the 50mm primes at f/2.8 although the CZ still showed some purple fringing. 

• the real world images show very intense, sharp purple fringing of the CZ lens while the fringing on the OM lens is much less distracting - although the images are not exactly comparable as the OM images are not as sharp and are a little more over exposed.

this is a full image of Orion showing how much was cropped - this is the Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.7 at f/1.7 - some coma aberration on r bottom corner star in addition to the severe purple fringing on the brighter middle stars.

these were taken on a tripod at 800ISO, NR on, in light polluted urban area with exposures 0.7-4.0sec depending on aperture and manually focussed using live preview at 10x magnification.

the Oly E330 live preview with live boost on easily showed the main stars of Orion (magnitude 2.5 or brighter) at f/2.8 or wider apertures. At f/5.6 it was just possible to make out and focus on the brightest star beta Orion which is magnitude 0.45.

OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens at f/1.4 - lots of aberration wide open	OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens at f/2 - this is the best when you need wide apertures but for even better appearance at the cost of 1 stop, f/2.8 may be the way to go. I used this lens for my comet photos	OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens at f/2.8
OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/1.8 - not bad wide open but not as good as the f/1.4 lens at f/2	OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/2.8	OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/4
Carl Zeiss T* 50mm f/1.7 lens at f/1.7 severe purple fringing, much worse than the OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens wide open	Carl Zeiss T* 50mm f/1.7 lens at f/2.8 still some purple fringing	Carl Zeiss T* 50mm f/1.7 lens at f/4
Olympus OM 35-105mm lens at 50mm f/3.5 some coma wide open - although this is my favourite OM zoom it further supports that old zoom lenses just are not as good as primes	Olympus OM 50mm f/3.5 macro at f/3.5 very nice but it is f/3.5	Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-45mm kit lens at 45mm f/5.6 not as good as the OM primes, even when the primes are at f/2.8

Now for some real world tests designed to show up purple fringing - one of the main problems with digital photography.

In this test, a photo of a tree in daylight, exposed for the shady trunk of the tree which results in over-exposure of the sky and purple fringing tendency at the edges of the tree and leaves against the sky.

This is a common scenario as portraits are commonly taken with this lighting at wide apertures to give narrow depth of field and purple fringing is quite distracting if it occurs.

full size view - CZ 50mm f/1.7 at f/1.7 - not very nice at all!

Olympus OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 - some motion blur and over-exposure but purple not as intense as the CZ lens	Olympus OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/2	Olympus OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/2.8
Carl Zeiss 50mm T* f/1.7 lens at f/1.7 - yuck!	Carl Zeiss 50mm T* f/1.7 lens at f/2	Carl Zeiss 50mm T* f/1.7 lens at f/2.8 - still yuck!
Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-45mm kit lens at 45mm f/5.6 (wide open) - bearable but only just!