New DXO Mark info

[KmH]

DXOmark does lenses (no rumors here) | Nikon Rumors

DxOMark - Lens with Camera

 

[Derrel]

I can only imagine who shows up first to tell us that the DXO Mark work is entirely crap, and cannot be trusted. Depending on how the lenses test out, I'd bank on a midwesterner or two to show up to denigrate their work, or a west coast resident...

 

[cfusionpm]

The 50mm 1.8 II on a 1Ds III ranking 7th is weird enough, but the 1.4 on the same body ranks 9 spots lower at 16th? ....:raisedbrow:?!

 

[Derrel]

The 50mm 1.8 II on a 1Ds III ranking 7th is weird enough, but the 1.4 on the same body ranks 9 spots lower at 16th? ....:raisedbrow:?!

My intuition proved accurate.

The Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM: a multi-sample evaluation - SLRgear.com!

This article might explain the 50 1.4's weak showing...it would seem from this five-sample test of five recent Canon 50mm 1.4 EF lenses that there is "something" amiss with the lens's assembly or componentry...all five of the 50/1.4 EF models tested had absolutely horrific blurring on one edge....as in really,really bad...Some have speculated that since the lenses all tested bad on one corner, that perhaps the problem lies in the way the lenses are actually physically assembled on the line.

 

[cfusionpm]

I'm just shocked because the 1.8 that I owned was total garbage and my 1.4 performs quite well.

Edit: and The-Digital-Picture seems to show contradictary results: Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens - Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens Comparison - ISO 12233 Resolution Chart Results

*shrug*

 

[KmH]

I'm just shocked because the 1.8 that I owned was total garbage and my 1.4 performs quite well.



*shrug*

Is that conclusion from technical testing, or is it an opinion?

 

[Derrel]

I'm just shocked because the 1.8 that I owned was total garbage and my 1.4 performs quite well.

Edit: and The-Digital-Picture seems to show contradictary results: Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens - Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens Comparison - ISO 12233 Resolution Chart Results

*shrug*

Well, The Digital Picture shows test crops from only ONE, single 50/1.4 lens versus ONE, single 50/1.8 lens; the link I provided compared FIVE different 50mm 1.4 Canon lenses to one another, and also provides a link to five 50mm 1.4 Nikkor lenses compared to one another.

**Un-shrug* :enlightened:

 

[cfusionpm]

Is that conclusion from technical testing, or is it an opinion?

It was from me taking a bunch of pics to compare the two before I sold the 1.8. I was curious myself what the difference was so I took some test shots of action figures in a DIY product box at various apertures and the results were most similar to those on The Digital Picture. So... I guess I just got lucky with my copy.

Derrel, don't you have a 50 1.4? How does it compare? Do you think the 1.8 II is better?

 

[Garbz]

Bah DXO Mark is a load of crap. The only true way to tell lenses apart is to line them all up and use a divining rod to determine which of them have too many minerals in their glass.

Good enough Derrel

 

[Derrel]

Is that conclusion from technical testing, or is it an opinion?

It was from me taking a bunch of pics to compare the two before I sold the 1.8. I was curious myself what the difference was so I took some test shots of action figures in a DIY product box at various apertures and the results were most similar to those on The Digital Picture. So... I guess I just got lucky with my copy.

Derrel, don't you have a 50 1.4? How does it compare? Do you think the 1.8 II is better?

There has been some speculation that the recent 50/1.4 EF lenses, like those tested in the five-sample test, since they are all wonky on one side, might be suffering from some type of assembly line fault or flaw, or perhaps are suffering from some type of parts problem. Like the owner of Lensrentals.com wrote a while back, lens makers can have "problems", and sometimes the problems come from parts suppliers which make and sell parts to the camera/lens makers; if a part, like a retaining ring or spacer is out of spec a little bit, it can have,potentially, very severe effects on entire batches of lenses built with those parts. THis is not a one-manufacturer issue, and the Lensrentals guys write some pretty good articles about quality control and breakdowns, and so on.

Nikon's D2h had the horrible "dead meter" syndrome, due to a part they bought from a 3rd party supplier...NASA almost had some dead astronauts years ago due to a supplier's QC issue...it's a real bugger to track this kind of stuff down. Anyway...five consistently bad lenses, all out of whack on one side...that sounds like a systematic problem, either on the assembly line, or with the component parts, or with some type of QC issue "somewhere". The earlier 50/1.4's never had this reputation....these lenses were tested in January of 2010...my 50/1.4 EF is from 2007,and seems to be quite a good 50mm lens. I have not tested it really super-critically, but it seems pretty flare-resistant, adequately sharp, and reasonably reliable.

I had a 50 1.8 EF-II, the current plastic-mounted lens, made around 2005, and it was a flare-prone, green-ghosting piece of crap. One of the absolute worst 50mm lenses I have ever owned, and I have owned a lot of 50's, from the 60's,70's,80's,and the 2000's. While it was SHARP and the contrast was good, it has other problems, like horrific ghosting and flare when shot toward strong light in the summertime...it was simply really,really crappy; the flare-resistance of a 50mm is, to me, a critical issue. If you cannot point it toward a light source, either during the day, or in dim light, and have it resist flare or ghosts, or both, to me, it is useless as a fast 50mm lens. So, in that respect, my 50/1.4 EF is a much better lens than the 50/1.8 I gave away.

Sometimes a lens maker will make unannounced changes to either a lens design, or to its manufacturing process; sometimes I think the changes are for the better, but one of the things Japanese camera companies try to do is to figure out ways to increase efficiency or to cut corners to increase profits on products they have made for a while; I think it is possible that the more-recent 50/1.4 lenses might have some type of a fly in the ointment,so to speak. Maybe they got some bad retaining parts, or maybe the way the lenses are held in the assembly jigs is allowing a slight decentering, since the rigorous lab tests are showing the 1.4's are suffering all on ONE side,and the problem is not random, but fairly uniform. That seems like a process error to me...

Sorry for the long post.

 

[cfusionpm]

Yes, but none of that directly answers my original question: Do you personally think the 1.8 II is better? And as such disagree with the 1.8 II being ranked higher and considered a better lens, according to DxO?

I think you're too concerned with reletively trivial information and are kind of missing my bigger point and haven't given any reason to believe the 1.8 II is in any way better than a good copy 1.4. This leads me to believe that you either also disagree with DxO's ranking (which would mean the "scientific" DxO might actually be wrong about something) or agree that perhaps they got a bad copy of the lens (which would be a misrepresentation of the lens as a whole, more or less nullifying the results). Or another option is that they don't care about making sure they test good copies of lenses, and are satisfied with whatever numbers they can get and post on their site to generate more views, regardless of proper representation.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how such a garbage POS lens like the 1.8II is somehow ranked as one of DxO's best, sitting behind only the 85 1.8 and 24-70 2.8 for Canon (which seems odd in of itself...). I mean, I've always known they were full of crap, but this one seems to need a lot more explaining....

 

[Derrel]

I can only imagine who shows up first to tell us that the DXO Mark work is entirely crap, and cannot be trusted. Depending on how the lenses test out, I'd bank on a midwesterner or two to show up to denigrate their work, or a west coast resident...

I rest my case.

 

[cfusionpm]

I rest my case.

So you concede to my points, which are valid criticisms? :thumbup:

 

[Garbz]

The thing about science is it requires a little faith.

We have several online Gas Chromatography machines at work some worth in excess for $600,000. One of the monkeys from an external lab told us a product we sent to them was wrong, but it looked right on our analyser. I told the techs and got a straight faced question of "What do you want them to read?".

The problem with these types of sites in general is that the come under no scrutiny. They may be perfectly correct and repeatable. Their results may be bogus simply because of the methods they use. We'll never know because there's no independent body that governs and certifies them.

As for the lens question I'm staying out of this