Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/11/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Henning, I value your opinion on lens performance tremendously. You pay attention to these details. I only use my photos to draw my own conclusions. Before I retired one of my jobs in charge of quality control for my company was to photograph the insides of burned out buildings and to document the artifacts of the fire that may have caused a problem. My tools of choice were the Nikon N70 body and the Nikon AF 28-105 zoom. To this day I still think this zoom has perhaps the least amount of distortion of any zoom I have ever used. It is my reference. But it is not that wide in this age of digital cameras and 1.3 to 1.6X crop factors. If I don't see distortion in my photos then it doesn't exist. I don't see distortion in my WATE, my Nikon 14mm and my Nikon 17-35 zoom. You can probably measure it in a lab but I don't see it. I can't comment on the CV lenses except for the vignetting, which I saw. The Canon zooms were so bad I couldn't fully correct the barrel distortion in CS2. My advice if you own one is to enjoy it because it is a very sharp and contrasty optic. Just stay away from straight lines towards the edges of the frame. On a 20D body the 24-105 is much less of a problem. Len On Nov 5, 2007, at 2:11 AM, Henning Wulff wrote: > Sorry; I just looked at the WATE distortion curves again; they're > not much better than those of the Zeiss 15/2.8. In any case, if you > want low distortion out of the box, get the CV 15 (or 12). They > both have less. And combine that with the 21/4.5 Biogon, which has > way less. > > Or shoot large format; the 35/4.5 Apo-Grandagon has a wider angle > of view than the 12/5.6 CV and it has no distortion. Same for the > 47/5.6 Super Angulon XL. > > The 14's for the SLR's, the zooms that go down to 16 or 17 all have > serious distortion. The best is probably the 12-24 f/4-5.6 Sigma. > It has very low distortion, and I don't think I have ever bothered > to correct the small residual amount. > > -- > * Henning J. Wulff > /|\ Wulff Photography & Design > /###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com > |[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information