Originally posted by robbiec Curious that there is a noticeable drop between f/5.6 & f/8, almost analogous to a higher ISO at which a certain accelerator comes into play?
just speculation of course but I'm getting my pop corn out just in case.
I don't think so. I think we just see diffraction kicking in. If you look at testing of a lens like the Nikkor 50 f1.4G, you see that its peak sharpness in the center is around f4, for the borders it is f5.6. But it is nowhere near as sharp in either place below f4. With this lens, the sharpness wide open is amazing and just stays steady till it start to drop a bit. We just aren't used to seeing such excellent border performance at f1.4.
Originally posted by pres589 I also thought that was odd, that f8 wasn't quite what f5.6 offers in terms of resolution. That said, I'm not an optics designer, and it seems like this lens was designed with max aperture resolution & sharpness as a top requirement. They also didn't even bother with f22 which indicates that extreme stop-down just wasn't of interest to the design team.
For sure. This lens is going to be shot at wide apertures, otherwise, what is the point?