The cult of lenses 17-- lens practicality vs ultimate performance:
A few days ago I was lucky enough to have a good opportunity to compare my Batis 40mm f2CF vs Sony's FE35mm f1.4GM vs Sigma's 35mm f2 C Dn.
The Sony GM and the Sigma 35mm f2C lens were not my own lenses , the GM was our lab's , the Sigma was owned by one of our students here.
I expected the GM and the Batis would be quite much sharper than the Sigma cheap lens , and given the size and price of the Sigma's very humble 35mm f2 C, I thought it would be able to compete with the other two lenses.
The true rival lens from Sigma to the Sony 35mm GM is the Sigma 35mm f1.2 Art Dn, everybody knows it , I also know that, but it is not an interesting lens to me. The Sigma 40mm f1.4 Art is also very interesting to me at all. I find these monstrous lenses extremely impractical outside of our studio or lab.
As my recent main interests in photography are :
1 sneakers , 2 weather documentary, so no one of these huge almost must be used on a tripod kinda lenses are practical.
I need to walk miles and miles , sometimes even photograph while I am running in a trail course, so for me size is a real important feature or quality of any lens.
This is why I excluded the obvious Sigma contenders from the above mentioned comp I did a few days ago.
I think the FE35mm f1.4 GM is outstanding , even match the resolution of much bigger lenses like the Sigma I mentioned , in fact it may even clearly beat the Sigma 35mm f1.2 Art and Tamron 35mm f1.4 SP , which was according to LensRentals and our own tests the sharpest lenses in this focal range.....
I think it is remarkable, and Sony has done that without increasing the lens size or weight, in fact they even made it cheaper and smaller than the FE35mm f1.4ZA, the old mediocre 35mm prime from them.
I do not know how they could do all of this amazing works, but they did, and the lens is obviously the no1 lens in its class category. However, the resolution advantage of the GM over the Batis 40mm f2CF is not really huge , to me not very significant difference , definitely not huge enough to give up its close focus ability and my preferred 40mm FOV to get the Sony GM.
Sure it is a very personal matter, but I always wonder this kind of small resolution difference in a lab level test really makes our end results much better ?
Sure the new GM is outstanding lens as I said many many times and I think I may even get that lens although I am not a fan of 35mm FOV and honestly hate the aperture ring on any lens. The ring is annoying , always get badly frosted and sometimes become very rigid or even broken.
My Loxia 25mm f2.4 broke so many times because of that terrible loose aperture ring. I never understand people still want that ancient ring on their modern lenses.
Anyway, I like the FE35mm f1.4 GM and if I were a 35mm person I would definitely get it in a heart beat, though I am not a fan of that FL, I am not fan of the barrel design of the GM prime.....so I am still debating and testing it in a university lab , at home and in our university studio.
The comparison test I did was a part of my real world test of that lens. I did not want to admit this but I was stupidly excited about the FE35mm f1.4GM as I am normally all over the best resolution figure I can get in a specific FL.
But after testing it side by side with my other lenses , I realized that I may not really love the colors , and its flare resistance not great. Sure it will perform great in any resolution test done with Immatest, but we do not use the lens in studio on a tripod most of times, plus we do not know how it actually performs at infinity compared to the Zeiss 40mm f2 CF or the Sigma 35mm f2C.....again , to me small practical size is very important, sure the Sony FE35mm f1.4 GM is small and light for a 35mm f1.4 lens, but still bigger and heavier than the lens like the Sony's own FE35mm f1.8 or the Sigma 35mm f2C.
And it is much heavier than the Ziess Batis 40mm f2CF. And most importantly it is not as well sealed as the Zeiss.
Another big plus of the Zeiss is it can shoot almost semi macro like closeup , and at near infinity focus range it is almost as sharp as almost any Sigma 40mm f1.4 Art sized lenses and the Sigma 40mm f1.4 is a gigantic lens and may be even sharper than the new 35mm GM at infinity and near it.
So for me the new GM might not be worth the money , I am not a portrait shooter or bokeh freak, so at 35mm, I think f2 is more than enough. Even those f1.4 or even f1.2 lens cannot produce super shallow DoF at 35mm FL anyway.
Honestly, I way positively surprised how good the cheap Sigma 35mm f2C is , it is super sharp at least 80 percent of the frame, only in the edge and extreme borders it may be visibly softer than the Sony GM or their own 35mm f1.2 Art.
In fact, its central resolution may even match a very good copy of the Sony FE35mm f1.4 GM , with a bit less pronounced distortion.
The FE35mm f1.4 GM is obviously the best 35mm lens ever made for any 35mm camera system in terms of lab resolution and overall image quality as many members of the rendering cult at FM already saying....but I think its resolution figure near infinity is not as great as the Sigma 40mm f1.4 Art or Sony's own 135mm f1.8GM.....but then an almost flawless 135mm is much easier to design than an outstanding 35mm f1.4 prime.
So maybe it is not very fair to compare it to the Sony FE135mm f1.8GM or Sigma 105mm f2.8 Art Dn , but there are a few sharper lenses than that in near infinity range or any distances longer than say 50 feet focus range.
After my last lens purchase in 2020 , the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Dn and the FE135mm f18GM before that, I have become much more cautious about any of my lens purchase and testing.
I used to buy lenses just because it was hyped or I like the resolution figure..but now for me at least , the hype game is not really important any more. I just care about how a lens I may wan fit in my current lens lineup and my own lens use cases. Some lenses do not fit into that very well. Some lenses, even though they may not be the best optically, fit better or work better for some specific use cases like mine.
As I find that , I just decided never pre-order or jump on a new lens when it is still super hyped.
A few weeks or a month of rational thinking time really helps us honestly evaluate any lens if we really need it ,or if it fits really well into our respective lens kit , or if it actually works great or better than our current lens for our specific type of apps or works.
And by doing that I could resist many of new lenses and cameras as I do know these new lenses and cameras do not improve the final image quality or picture ,or video quality of my photography.
Honestly do you see any one shooting with the latest lenses on the latest Sony or Leica or any one's camera look better at FM or DPR?
To me they look pretty identical to what they shoot a few years ago. In fact many phones work at Flickr or Instagram seem to be better than their best work made with the Phase or the Leica or the A7R4.
And it really bugs me when people say phones are crap or worse than any REAL camera.....it is not the case any more.
In many cases phones are the only one option for us to get certain types of images... For example I cannot shoot my mom's cats with my serious cameras as they hate a big lens or camera or shutter sound, but they smile at my phone.
For natural pet shooting I think there is nothing really even match the latest phones.
And in a real dangerous or risky place you do not want to your 35mm FF cameras in the first place, it is too obnoxiously big and it is too intimidating or attention- grabbing.
Now I honestly think phones the best cameras in the world for many many of apps. And I really appreciate the COVID-19 long break we had here , without that amazing long break in last summer, I would never have realized that and would still have been wasting tons of dollars /yens on lenses every month.
