Rainer Viertlböck
pro member
i just posted this little article in another forum,- might be from interest here for someone, who knows.
about lenses and architecture i tried a lot of stuff in 35mm. and ended up with some lenses which do a fairly good job, although except the sigma 12-24 not any wa lense is really good corrected,- and the bad thing here is that all this wides show more or less significant moustache distortions, which is very difficult to correct in a way, that distortion will not show up if you put a straight line in parallel to the image border. and this often is a must in architecture motifs.
with shift lenses you furthermore have the problem that the distortion becomes unsymmetric.
for 35mm i use:
sigma 12-24 / this lense is by far the best corrected wide angle lenses which ever was madefor 35mm systems. its really funny.... problem with it is that the samples are very different, most of them suffer from bad centration, which will result in unsharp edges, often just one or two edges for some unsymmetric mounted lenses inside the optic. try 5 and you will get a real good one out of them. its worth the effort.
shift lenses are good from olympus in terms of sharpness and distortion ,- but this is relative. i wouldnt say they are really good- compared with 4x5" lenses or mf digital lenses ( schneider + rodenstock ), but better than all other existing 35mm shift lenses they are.
all other wide shift lenses ,equal if nikon, canon or schneider are not sharp if you shift more then 4-5 mm and all show significant distortion. here the nikon is best,- but the lense really isnt that sharp. same about 35mm focal length. olympus is best, together wit hthe contax,, but this lense shows - as alll zeiss wides - significant distortion again. the olympus not.
worthest thing is that the oly lenses show very much CA. really very much.
i use a lot the zoerk adapter together with pentax 645 af lenses. here the 35 mm AF lense is very good. sharp and not much distortion. very good lense to stitch two images to get impressive resolutions, which equal my 33mp sensor or even can exceed it for panoramas.
also the longer lenses from pentax 645 are very good. i have the 45/55/75 and all are great. the longer ones are also corrected nearly perfect.
about the sigma 12-24 again one word:
it shows at 12mm around 2% distortion, which is NOT moustache and therefor perfectly correctable.
this is the same distortion % than shows my 5000 $ rodenstock 28HR,- which equals 21mm in 35system.
its really impressive.
about lenses and architecture i tried a lot of stuff in 35mm. and ended up with some lenses which do a fairly good job, although except the sigma 12-24 not any wa lense is really good corrected,- and the bad thing here is that all this wides show more or less significant moustache distortions, which is very difficult to correct in a way, that distortion will not show up if you put a straight line in parallel to the image border. and this often is a must in architecture motifs.
with shift lenses you furthermore have the problem that the distortion becomes unsymmetric.
for 35mm i use:
sigma 12-24 / this lense is by far the best corrected wide angle lenses which ever was madefor 35mm systems. its really funny.... problem with it is that the samples are very different, most of them suffer from bad centration, which will result in unsharp edges, often just one or two edges for some unsymmetric mounted lenses inside the optic. try 5 and you will get a real good one out of them. its worth the effort.
shift lenses are good from olympus in terms of sharpness and distortion ,- but this is relative. i wouldnt say they are really good- compared with 4x5" lenses or mf digital lenses ( schneider + rodenstock ), but better than all other existing 35mm shift lenses they are.
all other wide shift lenses ,equal if nikon, canon or schneider are not sharp if you shift more then 4-5 mm and all show significant distortion. here the nikon is best,- but the lense really isnt that sharp. same about 35mm focal length. olympus is best, together wit hthe contax,, but this lense shows - as alll zeiss wides - significant distortion again. the olympus not.
worthest thing is that the oly lenses show very much CA. really very much.
i use a lot the zoerk adapter together with pentax 645 af lenses. here the 35 mm AF lense is very good. sharp and not much distortion. very good lense to stitch two images to get impressive resolutions, which equal my 33mp sensor or even can exceed it for panoramas.
also the longer lenses from pentax 645 are very good. i have the 45/55/75 and all are great. the longer ones are also corrected nearly perfect.
about the sigma 12-24 again one word:
it shows at 12mm around 2% distortion, which is NOT moustache and therefor perfectly correctable.
this is the same distortion % than shows my 5000 $ rodenstock 28HR,- which equals 21mm in 35system.
its really impressive.
