Hi all,
I'm excited to be able to give a quick (preliminary) test of the 35mm-A vs FA...
Note that this is a quick comparison only, I only just received the 35mm-A & a 645-to-EOS adapter a few hours ago; so had to rush home to grab my Canon & 35mm-FA! (I wont have the 645D for another few months, but this Canon test should do).
I only shot these in jpg, so once I do a final test in RAW & do proper post-processing then the test will be more valid (both lenses will show their resolving power much better in RAW). However I did apply deconvolution (Optipix Refocus) to both images to achieve a sharp result (by the way, I found out that Photoshop CS5's 'smart sharpen' with lens blur achieves just as good a result as Optipix for deblurring the sensor Color Filter Array image softness...) The attached images show a small 100% crop in the order A/FA/A/FA.
Preliminary findings:
1. The FA is *subtly* sharper, and quite extraordinary (but even so, the A is still sharper than my Zuiko 21mm!)
2. The lens coatings on the FA give superb color rendition (I had to apply curves editing to the 35mm-A image so it's color & tonal depth was comparable to the as-shot 35mm-FA image...!)
Sorry about the lack of inspirational shots; but I'll do another proper test within the next week, comparing the RAW's. But all in all, they're both great lenses (these jpg's look like my Zuiko RAW's!). With a bit more post-processing; the 35mm-A can get quite close, but the FA appears to in fact be superior & rightly claiming it's place at the top...
Cheers, Marko