So, here is question for the Olympus masses. If a lens is technically
as sharp as another, but in practical handheld photography isn't as
sharp, is it actually as sharp?
Here is the scenario. The other night at the Iowa Zuikofest, we did
some ad-hoc lens testing. Joel with the 5D ghetto cam and me with the
E-1 lead sled. I was testing handheld. However, I was using
best-possible handheld techniques where I was anchored up against a
wall and tripodded my body. Techniques which usually yield me with
some pretty respectable results. Yet, the shutter speeds were low,
with the fastest being 1/100. Definitely way too slow for anything
other than entertainment. Yet, something strange happened.
I shot with Joel's 90/2 and 85/2 as well as my 100/2 and 100/2.8. In
aperture-priority mode I shot at each aperture. Blurries kicked in
with a vengence past 1/15. No surprises there. I'm not perfect.
But what has gotten me puzzled is that at all apertures both 100mm
lenses out performed the 85 and 90. And not by a small margin either.
Technically, these lenses should all be relatively close to each
other. So, here is what I'm thinking. As smooth as the E-1 is (and it
is extremely smooth), I might be getting some shutter vibration that
shows up at the shorter focal length lenses. Yet, something else I
noticed and even verbalized it when doing the testing. Both 100mm
lenses "snapped" into focus whereas the 90/2 and 85/2 weren't quite so
definite. Just maybe my focus is a bit off, but at that I should have
seen it show up elsewhere in the photo of the mustard bottle. Hmm.
Upon closer examination, the 90/2 and 85/2 MIGHT have been focused a
touch closer, but that just shows that I couldn't manually focus them
correctly.
I'm wondering how Joel's tests with the 5D turned out.
My subject distance was about 2 meters.
I also was testing bokeh. Without a doubt, the 90/2 and 100/2 in
leagues of their own, but here is a quite perusal. These pictures had
chairs and tables of the dining area spread out to the distance with
some closer, some farther and some even farther away. I shot the
length of a dining room.
90/2. Wide-open is gorgeous. M
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