{"id":1030,"date":"2014-07-30T08:17:59","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T08:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crunchyspaces.com\/content\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2014-09-29T11:24:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T11:24:22","slug":"nikkor-topcor-zeiss-sony-nex7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crunchyspaces.com\/content\/nikkor-topcor-zeiss-sony-nex7\/","title":{"rendered":"Night Photography with Nikkor, Topcor & Zeiss Lenses & Sony Nex-7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having just banged on about how little I care about comparing lenses<\/a>, it might seem odd to post a lens comparison.\u2026 of sorts.<\/p>\n

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Photo taken with a Zeiss Sonnar<\/span> T* E 24mm F1.8 ZA24mm and a Sony Nex-7<\/span> camera<\/p><\/div>\nBut this isn’t a lens comparison, in the usual sense of the concept. I’ve little idea which of these lenses is ‘better’ or ‘worse’, in relation to each other, or anything else for that matter. This post is more a report of some creative observations that I made, having taken them out for some long-exposure night photography<\/a> recently, with a mirrorless<\/span> digital camera and some adapters.
\n<\/p>\nThe lenses<\/h3>\n

The lenses involved are the following. Firstly, a Nikon Nikkor<\/span><\/span> 28mm f\/2.8 AI-s<\/strong>. The only reason that I have this lens, is that I bought a Nikon FM2n<\/span><\/span> SLR camera a while ago which, unfortunately, turns out to have dodgy shutters and costs far too much for me to get fixed. But the lens itself is in pretty good condition.<\/p>\n

Secondly, a RE Auto-Topcor 58mm \u01921.4<\/strong>, which came with a Topcon<\/span><\/span> RE Super SLR, which I bought for little reason other than I liked the look of it.<\/p>\n

Finally, both these lenses were up against a modern Sony\/Zeiss Sonnar<\/span> T* E 24mm F1.8 ZA24mm<\/strong> lens, which is built to fit the camera that I was using for this \u2013 a Sony Nex-7<\/span>. Obviously, the Nex-7<\/span> having a APS-C<\/span> sensor meant that the focal length<\/span> of all of these lenses is longer than their label. But let’s not worry about that.<\/p>\n

I see starbursts<\/h3>\n
Firstly, from what I could tell, the Zeiss was far sharper than the two older lenses. Also, upon zooming to 100%, both the legacy lenses seemed to me to have a slight ‘pixelation’ effect in some places \u2013 which disappeared when resized (downwards) in Photoshop. I’m guessing that there are all sorts of optical resolution reasons for this, which I’m not going to go into. And I haven’t done any test prints to see how this manifests.<\/p>\n
I should also say that, the photos with the two legacy lenses were taken on a different day to the modern Zeiss and so exposure settings were probably different. And yes, the images have been cropped and otherwise digitally tweaked slightly.<\/p>\n
The most interesting difference, for me, was the way in which the starburst light effects from the streetlights presented in the photographs. I believe that the number of bursts, is due to the number of aperture blades in a lens, and that the burst intensity is due to the f-stop used.<\/p>\n
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