One of the side-trips I took while twisting and turning around a question of how best to upsize images was to take a slightly different look at comparing two lenses. One 50+ years old. The other is fairly recent. It is Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 (c.1972) vs Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 ZA.
The Nikkor-S was Nikon's first 50mm f/1.4. It's a plasmat design, single coated, manual focusing, and is about as simple as they can get. They can be fairly inexpensive, if you keep your eyes open.
The Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 ZA needs zero introduction. I've taken to wandering about with this lens mounted on an old Sony A7 (original). Used prices have fallen precipitously. I found a mint example for rather reasonable money..
The difference for this comparison is that I printed a few lens test charts and taped them to a wall. The comparison setup was what I've been using for years - tripod mounted camera, 2 second delay timer, 100ISO, Aperture mode, processed in RawTherapee, etc.
Comparing results and starting at f/2.8, can anyone tell a meaningful difference between these two lenses? Seriously. At f/4? Or f/5.6 on down through the aperture range?
Add a bit of Capture Sharpen and what do I have? Insanity, I tell you. Insanity!! Can't get any sharper than this, can we?
OK. Clearly (har!) there are differences at wide open and at f/2. The Sony is gorgeous and I imagine this is what 50+ years of consumer optical design will get you.
On the other hand, wide open and at f/2 the Nikkor looks like an early Voigtlander Heliar f/4.5 large format lens. Soft-ish wide open, but with sharpness underlying the veiling spherical aberration. There has to be a way of taking advantage of this, right?
Just as importantly, could we say the old Nikkor-S is still fully usable, 50+ years on?
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