Sunday, November 30, 2008

It's full of stars


K20D, Lensbaby 2.0 Fun piece of glass, and has a surprisingly sharp "sweet spot" compared to the original Lensbaby. (More)

Stuart McGuire


From a local car restoration place / junk yard. K20D and DA 21mm Limited.
Overcast day, and it actually rained when taking these shots. Had to be quick; while the K20D is weather sealed, the lens isn't.


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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Edge sharpness of the 30/1.4 -- example

I got curious as to just how well or poorly the 30/1.4 performs along the edges. It is certainly fairly soft there when wide open, but how about stopped down? I took the pumpkin/Halloween shot below and checked it out...
..and interestingly, it performs pretty darn well! The below samples shot at f/7.1

First, the unmolested (i.e. non-HDR processed) image.



Next, a 100% crop from one side:



Bad? Not at all! While it doesn't perform quite as admirably as my 40mm Limited, I wouldn't hesitate to use this for an overall walk-around lens. As I said in an earlier post, it's nothing to be praised resolution wise when you get near the edges/corners, but neither should you heed the advice of those who claims it's so soft the edges are just wasted and unusable...

For landscapes/architectural, you might find it lacking (there's some distortion too), but for a general purpose "normal" prime it is probably pretty ideal assuming you get a good sample.
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