Jörg Krüger
100 mm Lens Comparison, Center
100 mm Lens Comparison, Center
Sample pictures of this group of lenses.
This chart consists of 200x200 px crops of a 7360x4912 px picture by a full frame sensor, taken from the center. The crops of each line were made with one lens, the used f-stop is indicated in the crop. As a reference, the exposure was taken from the Pentax macro lens at f/5.6, so every exposure for each lens was 1/60 s at f/5.6 and 1/125 s at f/4 and so on. Also the white balance was taken from this capture, to compare colors. The photos were taken with ISO 100 in JPG format, highest quality, without any picture "enhancement" like sharpening, saturation, noise reduction or lens correction, the crop was directly taken from the ooc picture.
The focus was set manually with 16x magnification of the live view accurately onto the "COLOR" on the right film cartridge. The electronic shutter was used, the distance sensor to subject was about 3.4 m.
Like in previous comparisons: none of the lenses has real problems to provide a good image, as long the subject is in the center. The Pentax macro is fine already wide open, sharp and contrasty, but is suffers from "purple fringing" in the red area. The border around the "100" is really ugly and it doesn't disappear completely by stopping down. At f22 and f32 the effects of diffraction are clearly visible. At f2.8 the Sigma is less sharp than the Pentax, the contrast from f4 on is very good, but doesn't reach the one of the Pentax. On the other hand, the rendering of the red area is done much better by the Sigma. At f32 the Sigma isn't as bad as the Pentax, but (macro-)photographers should avoid this f-stop anyway.
The Pentax zoom lens is already sharp wide open, but the contrast is low up to f5.6, there is also some glare. The Fujinon turns out well, from f5.6 on it can compete with the macro lenses.
The Pancolar is like expected somewhat soft wide open, quality increases by stopping down, but it doesn't reach a high level. Here the Fujinon is clearly better. At f2 the Jupiter is less contrasty than the Pancolar, otherwise it is similar. However, the longer focal length of the other lenses matters, the writings are about 20% larger and hence better readable.
In the competition of the low-budget lenses the Hanimex is ahead. It is surprisingly good for an 3-element lens. The Steinheil is less contrasty and shows some glare wide open, but is far away from being an optical catastrophy.
100 mm Lens Comparison, Center
100 mm Lens Comparison, Center
Sample pictures of this group of lenses.
This chart consists of 200x200 px crops of a 7360x4912 px picture by a full frame sensor, taken from the center. The crops of each line were made with one lens, the used f-stop is indicated in the crop. As a reference, the exposure was taken from the Pentax macro lens at f/5.6, so every exposure for each lens was 1/60 s at f/5.6 and 1/125 s at f/4 and so on. Also the white balance was taken from this capture, to compare colors. The photos were taken with ISO 100 in JPG format, highest quality, without any picture "enhancement" like sharpening, saturation, noise reduction or lens correction, the crop was directly taken from the ooc picture.
The focus was set manually with 16x magnification of the live view accurately onto the "COLOR" on the right film cartridge. The electronic shutter was used, the distance sensor to subject was about 3.4 m.
Like in previous comparisons: none of the lenses has real problems to provide a good image, as long the subject is in the center. The Pentax macro is fine already wide open, sharp and contrasty, but is suffers from "purple fringing" in the red area. The border around the "100" is really ugly and it doesn't disappear completely by stopping down. At f22 and f32 the effects of diffraction are clearly visible. At f2.8 the Sigma is less sharp than the Pentax, the contrast from f4 on is very good, but doesn't reach the one of the Pentax. On the other hand, the rendering of the red area is done much better by the Sigma. At f32 the Sigma isn't as bad as the Pentax, but (macro-)photographers should avoid this f-stop anyway.
The Pentax zoom lens is already sharp wide open, but the contrast is low up to f5.6, there is also some glare. The Fujinon turns out well, from f5.6 on it can compete with the macro lenses.
The Pancolar is like expected somewhat soft wide open, quality increases by stopping down, but it doesn't reach a high level. Here the Fujinon is clearly better. At f2 the Jupiter is less contrasty than the Pancolar, otherwise it is similar. However, the longer focal length of the other lenses matters, the writings are about 20% larger and hence better readable.
In the competition of the low-budget lenses the Hanimex is ahead. It is surprisingly good for an 3-element lens. The Steinheil is less contrasty and shows some glare wide open, but is far away from being an optical catastrophy.