Originally posted by Class A No offence, Wieland, but I don't think your statement about AF not being quicker for SDM lenses is true in practice. The most relevant part of AF speed is determined by the camera, not the lens, which is why we can expect to see AF speed improvements even with SDM lenses where the "end to end" speed is fixed by the power of the lens motor.
Well, I did only a few tests.
This of course requires further testing.
I can only say that for me the result was, that the speed under the Photokina lighting conditions was the same. We put the cameras side by side on a table and let them focus on something nearby. The speed was the same.
There may be some subtle difference her and there, yes, possible, but it is nothing that I would say "Wow, this is it" about.
One must differenciate 2 things here:
1. The maximum speed of the motor and
2. The algorithm speed of the software.
I think that the SDM lenses are motor speed limited. They just cannot turn faster. It doesn't matter that perhaps the algorithms are faster. This is clear to me now.
To check if the algorithms are faster, one should use shaft AF, of which the motor is clearly fast and strong enough. I didn't check this because there was not enough time.