[marcusBMG]

OK so ideal conditions prompted me to set up my big ol slik tripod, weighted, and shoot off with my K3-ii - apsc but similar actually more pixels relative to K1. I thought I had a tak lens cap kicking around somewhere, but apparently not, so the sunagor one will have to sub. My set up includes test ornaments owl and kingfisher. Distance was slightly less than 30m, but no room to move further.
Focus in 10x LV, mainly on the black stripes. Remote release, MLU, ~10secs delay. Shot in RAW but I just cropped the pics as is in Faststone, so the processing is just in camera. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume essentially similar processing of these pics for the comparison, however comparison with GUB's pics is more uncertain. Crop of the set up:

DFA 150-450mm - reference.

DAL 55-300mm

Tamron Adaptall SP 300mm f5.6 54B


Sigma DL 100-300mm f4.5-6.7


Adaptall 23A 60-300mm f3.8-5.4


Pentax FA 100-300mm f4.5-5.6


Pentacon 300mm f4


Tamron Adaptall 300mm f2.8



NOTES/COMMENTS below.

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Last edited by marcusBMG; 08-31-2021 at 06:42 AM.

[DonV]

Thanks for the effort; interesting results.
Really shows the increased tendency for fringing of older design lenses.

[marcusBMG]

NOTES/COMMENTS
1. The DFA 150-450mm is comfortably the best but given it cost 10/20/50 times as much as any of the other lenses apart from the tamron 300mm f2.8 (4x).. well it does emphasise my point that it costs exponentially more for incremental improvement.
2. Given that many of the vintage lenses show a significant gain in iq stopping down, for me it is important to show that.
3. My example of the DAL 55-300mm is optically more representative than DUB's. A good lens (but mine has sticky focus so I never use it ).
4. The adaptall 23A 60-300mm is demonstrably slightly short of 300mm, which I already knew from previous test pics. I have several of these, they are consistently good.
5. Conversely the 300mm f5.6 54B was a bit disappointing. In the field, comparing general results, I regard this and the 23A as comparable usually.
6. The results for the Adaptall SP 300mm f2.8 60B were a bit below par for me in this flat cloudy light. For comparison, here are results from the previous evening when it was sunny.




At middling F the lens is competitive with the DFA for resolution. This also reflects that the light is a factor in what results you can get - certain lenses can show better or not so well. I would make this comment in respect of the FA 100-300mm as well actually, the results I got out in the field (see my posts in relevant threads) are suggestive of a better lens than indicated by the results above.
7. The pentacon 300mm f4. The first crop is sharpest focus. The second is minimum CA focus (the mid point where you can see the fringing change) - there is a slight difference in position. It is an interesting question as to whether this is something inherent to the design, or showed up by the high level of digital scrutiny, or perhaps due to use on digital rather than with film. Anyway I thought it was interesting.

[DonV]

The Tamron 300 f2.8 is amazingly good/sharp wide open and just a touch of purple at the highlight.

[GUB]

Great work Marcus. Surprising how comparable they are even with mine.
Your caps have ended up on screen bigger than mine because of the K3 pixel density. On screen your pixel is presented at the same size as mine.
My images are raws with the exposure adjusted to almost hit the right hand side. Had to do that because my degree of overcast was constantly changing. I didn't pay attention enough to the white clipping in some I think.
The "sharpen" is turned off in raw.
Your DAL 55 - 300 is showing why people love their 55-300s.
But the stand out to me is that Tamron 300 2.8. That is 2 stops faster than your DFA 150-450. I think it is a bit of an illusion that your sunny samples of it appear to have less fringing. I feel they are a bit clipped.

[RedRuff]

Interesting comparison. Good to know the Tair 300 4.5 is decent... I just got mine unstuck from the Zenit ES it came with. I had good results so far with the ES - just need to find an M42 to K adaptor for the K1

Though I have a feeling my F*300 will put it to shame

[marcusBMG]

Great work Marcus. Surprising how comparable they are even with mine.
Your caps have ended up on screen bigger than mine because of the K3 pixel density. On screen your pixel is presented at the same size as mine.
My images are raws with the exposure adjusted to almost hit the right hand side. Had to do that because my degree of overcast was constantly changing. I didn't pay attention enough to the white clipping in some I think.
The "sharpen" is turned off in raw.
Your DAL 55 - 300 is showing why people love their 55-300s.
But the stand out to me is that Tamron 300 2.8. That is 2 stops faster than your DFA 150-450. I think it is a bit of an illusion that your sunny samples of it appear to have less fringing. I feel they are a bit clipped.

Thanks.

I adjusted the exposure on camera to get a centred histogram, using "M" manual shutter setting to avoid any discrepancies in Av between lenses/F stops. The tamron 60B shots aren't clipped on the histogram for the original RAW, but the white parts are catching the light. IME cloudy conditions can often be fringing conditions, something about the flat scattered light I think. Good lighting from the front will naturally minimise fringing.


Off the cuff I thought pixel wise it would be more equivalent, but just checking: K1 crop mode is 16mpx or so isn't it, so yeah, higher pixel density. Could've used the KS2..

[GUB]

Off the cuff I thought pixel wise it would be more equivalent, but just checking: K1 crop mode is 16mpx or so isn't it, so yeah, higher pixel density. Could've used the KS2..

In this setting where we are pixel peeping yes your K3ii has enhanced the performance of the lens probably not just from increased resolution but also from the increased viewing size here. But that is just something to be aware of.
If there is one thing I have learned from this experiment is that stopping down say one stop from open on this older glass has much more effect on fringing than it has on sharpness. Just something to be aware of when shooting in contrasty conditions.
When are your making your blackberry jam?

[GUB]

Actually I covered that advantage here on #42
More reach on APS-c demonstrated - Page 3 - PentaxForums.com
That was with the extreme "advantage" of the Q's tiny pixels. So yes you enhanced a bit with the K3 but not that much.