"There aren't enough lenses" is an often heard complaint about the Sony NEX system, usually lobbed at the platform by users of the more established micro 4/3's system which unsurprisingly has more lenses available today.
Another common complaint - the Sony kit lens isn't good enough, a charge usually lobbed by someone who hasn't used it.
In fact in the middle of its focal length the kit zoom isn't bad at all.
The attached 100% crop and scaled down 1200 pixel representation of the same provides an example of the 18-55mm Sony E mount kit lens going up against the acclaimed Zeiss ZM 25mm f/2.8 Biogon. For good measure I've included a test sample, taken on a different day, using that same Biogon lens on the Ricoh GXR Mount A12.
Unless nitpicking, on the NEX-5N the Sony kit lens compares well enough with the Zeiss Biogon. Not bad for a kit lens. The camera itself, not the lenses, is responsible for the overall softness when compared to the GXR and in particular edge and corner softness or smearing will be found with some wide angle lens designs on the NEX.
On the GXR - no question, I want the Biogon. This camera, like the Leica M9 costing many thousands more, has no anti-alias filter fronting the sensor and it turns out this returns more than just increased accutance but improves the behaviour of wide angle lenses on cameras with short back focal lengths like the Ricoh GXR or Leica digital M cameras.
If only the NEX were anti-alias filter free...
All rain and no sun make Mike a gloomy boy in December!
I've been checking out a few small cameras this year and the one which appears to have a firm hold on me is the Ricoh GXR. It's a real photographer's camera, oddly but usefully modular, and probably won't be everyone's cup of tea. The Mount A12 GXR module allows me to use my existing rangefinder lenses - all manual focus, well built and mostly very high performing pieces of glass - on a digital body designed just for these types of lenses.
One thing I've learned - compact cameras with large sensors work for me. I've sold off my medium format equipment and gone small and couldn't be happier.
While other cameras like the Sony NEX series can be adapted to host such lenses, they were never designed from the outset to support rangefinder glass but by happy accident they work well enough, but not to their full potential. Edge and corner smearing are problems the Sony NEX has with certain lens designs - mostly found at the wider focal lengths.
The GXR having been designed for these lenses does not suffer from these edge and corner issues, and overall goes several steps further, resolving fine detail better. The difference can be striking in fact, all the more surprising given the GXR sensor is an older 12.3 megapixel Sony (they are a big sensor player) design competing against the current 16MP sensor in the NEX. Shooting landscapes at infinity, the GXR resolves more detail - that much is clear. The NEX has its advantages too but those will disappear as the GXR Mount A12 becomes the Mount A16 - inheriting the same sensor as the NEX - early in 2012.
I've been shooting this same brick wall with my lenses on the NEX and now Ricoh GXR Mount A12 to give me some sense for how each camera treats my selection of lenses.
This post will be updated with additional crops over time.
Attached are files for:
- Zeiss ZM 25mm f/2.8
- Zeiss ZM 35mm f/2
