Roto Till Time ~ mid-Till ~ part Two

After successfully hunting and gathering, that is to say, after lassoing and dragging home a pretty little Sony 55mm f/1.8 FE ZA, it was time to compare it to two lenses it is intended to replace.  These being a beautiful Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS and a good condition Nikon Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai.

 

Using le Canard as my subject, I took my by now mundane standard approach to comparing various lenses.

Setup ~ 

• Sony A7, ISO100, 2second delay, AWB
• Bogen tripod
• Lenses -
• Sony 55mm f/1.8 FE ZA
• Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS
• Nikon Nikkor-S Auto f/1.4 pre-Ai

• RawTherapee to snug up the curves, with _no_ Capture Sharpen, just the lens and the sensor
   

Comparison ~

To confirm the AF system of the Sony A7 was doing it's "thing" properly, I included a manually focused pass with the 55mm lens.

As always, click on the image and enlarge to 100percent to see whatever there is to be seen.

 

Comments ~

It appears the A7 AF system is indeed doing it's "thing" properly.  I really can't do any better by manually focusing.  

This is a Good Thing(tm) as the whole reason for Roto Tilling my lens collection is to gain automation as a way to help my aging eyes and to speed up the process of image taking.  It was getting to be a PIA having to slow way down to manually focus the Nikkors.  Increasingly I am not able to "nail" the focus, even with me taking my time.

Looking at the center of the field we can see where the Sony 55mm f/1.8 is sharp from wide open.  The Nikkor lenses show under-corrected spherical aberration at wide open.  This, I'm thoroughly convinced, is a deliberate design choice.  I think the Japanese appreciate the subtle "sfumato"-like rendition under-corrected spherical aberration can give. I'm keeping the Nikkor-S Auto just in case I can figure out how to use the shumato effect in Europe.

Stopping down, by f/2.8, the Nikkors and Sony lenses all look the same in the center of the frame.  The Nikkor Pixie Magic at f/1.4 and f/2 is now gone.  Said conversly, if I didn't want the focus automation, there is absolutely nothing wrong in terms of resolution with the old Nikkors.

At edges there are more obvious differences between the three optics.  The surprise is the Nikkor-S Auto at f/4 and f/5.6 which is clearly quite sharp at the edge.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sony is very sharp at the edges across the field.  I have say that current lens design appears to have meaningfully improved the species at the edges at wide apertures.

One of the reasons for selecting 55mm on Full Frame Sony A7 mirrorless is that it is the equivalent to my old and much loved 210mm Schneider Symmar-S MC f/5.6 that I used when I shot 4x5 film.  I shot the 210mm for decades and it served me well.  I think it will take a year of use to see if that's how it turns out in practice with the Sony 55mm.