(All charts from photozone:
http://www.photozone.de/leicam)
I realize that looking at mtf50 charts is a rather soulless way of looking at the hobby, but sometimes f/4 is the sharpest a lens has to offer.Sometimes the lenses start out sharp and stay that way. (
http://www.dxomark.com/Lenses/Carl-...unted-on-Canon-EOS-5DS-R---Measurements__1009)
Those are expensive, fast lenses though.
Do you use a manual focusing screen? I have a D3100 set up this way. Fun for a while, but manual metering was a right pain.
You took 2 of the most expensive and new Apo-lenses. Picking the best examples out of a bunch of 20-30 lenses Leica produced is not too serious...
I refer to ALL Leica lenses and I think the work of Erwin Puts (since the 1980´s up to now) with very precise analyses right out the laboratory is more substantial than the little columns of photo zone….you did find them even on Leica´s own homepgae as pdfs for a long time, perhaps they are still there. I KNOW THEM.
I still own more than a dozen Leica Primes of the SLR system (at least 5 Apo Lenses like the legendary Apo 3,4/180, the Apo 2,8 180, the Apo 2,8/280, the Apo 1,4 Ext.) and took many tens of thousands of pictures with them over the decades. But NO real realistic leica Owner would claim that their max Performance is NOT in the f5,6/8 RAnge…
BTW: If you look at the
NON-Apo Noctilux, it is even harder: This lens is optimized for f = full open and for more than f8 and more. between full open and f=8 this lens is as bad as cheap lenses.
I purchased the Leica system because of its superiority in the 80s and perhaps still in the 90s.
Since then the quality of the competitors lenses has dramatically advanced and is nearly on par. At least, for TREAL WORLD performance.
OIS is mostly MORE than compensating an eventually still existing difference in REAL LIFE photography.
Nowadays the OVER-ALL-system (Optical performance, ISO-performance, AF-precision, OIS, SENSOR (!!) and internal image processing for high-ISO pictures) is more important than just the lens itself, as it was before. This era is long history since now about 20 years.
I give you an example: In Formula-1, it is NOT the one with the most performing motor, but the best over-all-racing-car (I call it "racing car system") that wins.
You are just looking at the motor…
I tried to find a comparison made some years ago on dpReview (might be around 2012/2013) .
They presented high-resolution pictures of a Fujifilm X-Pro1 and a Leica M digital.Leica - as the rest of all the brands - still has the Bayer filter - while Fujifilm its unique X-Trans-sensor.
Both don´t have low pass filters to prevent Moiré. A picture of an old House with a window showed clear: As for Moiré-supression Fujifilm is far superior to leica while the image quality itself is on par.
That showed clear that in digital photography you have to look about the WHOLE SYSTEM and not just about the lenses.
Same for digital lens correction: In the meanwhile nearly every of the top brands use digital correction. Even in-camera now.
I was very impressed when I first used this feature in postproduction in Canon´s DigitalPhotoProfessional software. Amazing.
