Please evaluate

[mike_young1]

I have been doing SLR for about 9 months. I am just getting the mechanics of it

but I am still weak on the IQ. I have a 5d and two L lenses. Recently I

purchased several Olympus Zuiko Om lenses and adaptors. I paid over 1000 us for

each of the L lenses and paid less then 50 us for each of the Om lenses. Could

some of you experts please look at the attached shot taken with a 5d with an Om

50 1.8. It looks good to me. Could you please point out a $1000 difference

between it and L shots. I am not trying to be a wise guy. I just want to

understand. I know that Om lens is manual focus and manual fstop and I

certainly appreciated the shortcomming of that but how about the actual shot?

tia mike<div></div>

[fmueller]

Had the picture been taken with a Canon lens, there would have been some pretty girls in the foreground. Had it been taken with a L lens, they would have been topless!

[eric friedemann]

1. Even out horizon line.

 

 

2. Too much open sky at the top of the image and its too bright- cropped, used gradient tool.

 

 

3. The foreground is too dark and too flat- used selective contrast.

 

 

4. Sharpened.

 

 

An overall criticism is that the pier and lifeguard station are too small in the image. Either make them a bigger part of the composition or leave them out altogether. The point of the photograph should be more apparent.<div></div>

[jason_hall4]

It looks soft to me. Hard to tell with this size image. What aperture did you shoot at?

 

Jason

[mike_young1]

Frank, next time pretty girls I promise. As far as your second comment I suspect it may take me more then L glass to deliver.

[jason_hall4]

This would be a good canidate for HDR. Well if you had bracketed.

[mike_young1]

Jason, since the camera does not know the apature I can only go by my memory and I believe it was about f11.

[danielleetaylor]

You don't say what L lenses you have. The Canon 50 f/1.8 is tack sharp and costs less than $100. So what if it doesn't have an L in the name? That would be a fair comparison for a 50 f/1.8 in another mount.

 

It wouldn't be fair to compare the Om lens to a 50 f/1.2L. The L is 1 stop faster and sharp wide open. It's not fair to compare it to a 50 f/1.8 in terms of price without considering what it can do that the 50 f/1.8 can't. And what that involves in terms of optical design and manufacturing.

 

If you don't understand when or why that's worth the extra price, then you don't need it and it's not worth the extra price for you.

 

The comparison is even more unfair if your L lenses are zooms. The Om lens can't zoom. And a simple 50mm optical design is not comparable in terms of price to a complex zoom optical design. If a 24-70 f/2.8L looks as good at 50mm as a 50mm prime, that's a major accomplishment considering the complexity of zoom design.

 

My $80 50mm f/1.8 is as sharp as my $1,000 300mm f/4L IS. But then, my 50 f/1.8 can't take shots like this at an airshow. There's a lot more glass in the 300mm, and that glass is more complex, to say nothing of the IS mechanism. All of which is related to the a focal length of 300mm vs. 50mm. That one difference completely changes the complexity of the lens design. That's why one is price A, and the other is price B.<div></div>

[mike_young1]

Daniel, your points are well taken. I have a 100-400 is and a 70 200 2.8 non is. I certainly realize that the L zoom lenses give me many additional shooting options. What I was asking was really if I took the same pictures with a 30$ lens and then compared it to a >1k$ lens

would an experienced individual be able to tell them apart.

tia mike

[danield]

Mike

 

Well, take the $75 Canon f/1.8 50mm EF lens, and you will ask the same question, and this lens has AF and automatic aperture!

 

There is something else that goes into the L lenses that makes worth the price difference for some people: build materials, reliability and resistance to wear, along with exotic glass materials and bigger/heavier elements with better image quality. To each lens its own, the good thing is that you are in a system that allows you all these choices!

[beauh44]

Hi Mike,<P>

 

<I>What I was asking was really if I took the same pictures with a 30$ lens and then compared it to a >1k$ lens would an experienced individual be able to tell them apart.</i><P>

 

Not necessarily and if an experienced photographer was using both lenses, probably not. As Daniel and others have pointed out the $75 EF 50mm f/1.8 is a really sharp lens and I doubt most people could tell the difference between images shot with it and the 50mm f/1.2 "L" at around $1300.00. Lots of manufacturers make excellent 50mm lenses. It's the zooms, wide-angle and long telephotos that can get tricky.<P>

 

I suspect most people could tell the difference between an image shot with a $200 mirror lens at 500mm and the Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS. The latter is around $5 grand though. ;-)<P>

[mark u]

There are certainly some OM lenses that compete very strongly on image quality with Canon's offerings. A few have quite high second hand values, reflecting top flight optical excellence, and some represent real bargains especially if your style of shooting can handle or even benefit from the implications of no automation. The greatest OM/Zuiko strengths are the shift lenses and wider angle primes.

 

However, comparing shots taken at f/11 is where the optical differences between lenses are generally minimised. If you always use narrow apertures then you will have little or nothing to gain from paying for lenses with good performance wide open.

[mike_young1]

I want to thank all of you guys for your input. Another couple of years and I may have some of this sorted out.

good luck mike

[uncle_ziba]

If you stop down to f8 or 11 I doubt anyone can tell the difference without looking *really* close. It's the wide open performance that most money goes to. The landscape shot that you posted was at F2 and if was shot with anything other than 50 mm, yes the L glass would have been sharper and have more contrast and possibly better color rendition. At 50 mm you can't beat Canon 1.8 as others have pointed out.