[Leica] An informal test of my 50/1.5 Zeiss Sonnar (on a Contax Iia)

[don.dory at gmail.com (Don Dory)]

Jeffery,
If you look at Susan you will see that part of her sweater looks very
sharp.  I suspect the focus was off either because the RF is just a little
off or that you just missed by a hair.  My Sonnar is pretty sharp at 1.5 in
the dead center few mm and then loses it toward the edges.  If you can put
your main subject in the middle it looks very good.

Don
don.dory@gmail.com


On 3/30/06, Jeffery Smith <jsmith342@cox.net> wrote:
>
> I have never seriously used my 50/1.5 Sonnar because my Contax IIa isn't
> terribly light-tight and its rangefinder is out of vertical alignment.
> However, having just bought a 50/1.5 Sonnar in Leica LTM mount, I tried to
> see what the lens could do. I don't have any of the fancy equipment that
> Erwin Puts has, so my lens test consists primarily of walking around the
> campus annoying people under different lighting situations. Here are four
> shots from that roll of Tri-X.
>
> http://www.400tx.com/Susan.html f/1.5
> http://www.400tx.com/Michael.html f/2.0
> http://www.400tx.com/Thomas.html  f/4
> http://www.400tx.com/Phillip.html f/5.6
>
> My knee-jerk reaction is that it is a pretty good lens with nice bokeh,
> but
> isn't razor sharp wide open (Susan may be blurry because I was at 1/50).
> So,
> it gives me pretty much what my Summarit and Canon 50/1.2 lens give me
> wide
> open...less than stellar images. However, closed down just a stop it
> starts
> performing fairly well.
>
> Jeffery Smith
> New Orleans, LA
> http://www.400tx.com
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>