Blend is Beautiful
I agree with the above coffee advert - blend is beautiful. This sentiment is valid for certain aspects of photography, too. Often, it is desirable to have a very smooth blend of background blur, or bokeh (the Japanese word for blur).
In the pursuit of the perfect blend, I’ve acquired Sony’s latest FE-mount lens, the SEL55F18Z. As pointed out by friend and fellow photoblographer Björn Utpott (his blog is a source of daily inspiration), I have a lens with a similar focal length and aperture already - the Canon nFD 50mm F1.4.
Even though the weather today was completely overcast, I took both lenses with me on the way to the shops and performed something of a comparison.
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This isn’t a scientific test by any interpretation, but one thing is clear - the new FE 55/1,8 is very sharp wide open, and does not have any purple fringing, or suffer from chromatic aberration (CA). When the nFD lens is stopped down to f/4, the image is very sharp. The new Sony FE lens is sharper, but this may not matter to some. I would still recommend the nFD lens to those on a budget, or wanting to use manual focus glass… but I would recommend the new Sony FE 55/1,8 Zeiss lens over it… every time.
Incidentally, you may (or more likely, may not) have noticed a change to the homepage of this site. I hope you like it! I’ve also changed the “reviews and gear” section, listing my ramblings in reverse chronological order.
I hope that you enjoyed the photos, and found the (non-scientific) comparison interesting.