Alternative 50mm Lenses For Sony NEX (Part 2)

Weather has been somewhat unpredictable lately here In San Jose, so when the clouds finally cleared up on Sunday, I grabbed my bag of photo gear and finish a couple of long-delayed tests. Last week I run through a quick comparison of 50mm rangefinder lenses on Sony NEX-5n and I wanted to finish testing this setup before moving on to something new.  This time around I used Sony NEX-7, but also changed focusing distance, moving closer to the MFD for all lenses - this is where I'm hoping we will see the most difference among all lenses. As in the previous section, this part of the review focuses on bokeh, DOF and color rendering, not resolution or various artifacts like vignetting. I did not use focus bracketing and did not refocus lenses when moving from one aperture to another - this would put lenses that have focus shift (i.e. Sonnar, Nokton, Jupiter...) at a disadvantage, and hence I would not recommend using the samples below for evaluating lens sharpness. In part 3 of this review I will do a bit more comprehensive test for resolution, lateral CA and vignetting. Again, no commentaries - figure out what you like on your own or wait for part 3 if you're curious to know which lens(es) I liked personally.

In the meantime, here's a summary of the shooting conditions:

• Sony NEX-7 with v1 of firmware
• WB set to Daylight (5,500K, +10 tint)
• RAW, Adobe RGB space
• ACR with default settings: Blacks +5; Brightness +50, Contrast +25
• JPEG max quality
• 1.5m focusing distance
• 2 shots per lens - max aperture, and stopped down to f/4

Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.1

Carl Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 ZM

Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/2 ZM

Leica Summicron 50mm f/2 Rigid

Leica Summicron 50mm f/2 Collapsible

Leica Summarit 50mm f/1.5 LTM

Jupiter 3 50mm f/1.5 LTM

Canon 50mm f/1.2 LTM