Received my 2nd unit Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f2.8 from the UK yesterday and decided to make a few shots just to confirm all is OK. This unit costs me GBP40, doesn't look much different than the earlier unit with the exception of the color of the distance scale, orange on this unit and green on the earlier one. Both are "MC" for muil-coated.
The benefit of having a lens with a short focusing distance is well iluustrated here. I put 4 lenses side by side to capture the image of a Leica M Summicron 50 2.0 lens at each lens's minimum focusing distance.
I pit together the following lenses:
- a Nikon Nikkor 50mm f1.4 with a minimum focus distance of 0.45m
- a Canon FD 50mm f1.8 with a minimum focus distance of 0.60m
- a Asaha Super Takumar 55mm f1.8 with minimum fovus distance of 0.45m
- a Carl Zeis Jena Tessar 50mm f2.8 with minimum focus distance 0.35m
You may want to disregard image sharpness here and pay attention to subject image size achieved at minimum focus distance and bokeh.
Relative position of subject vs background appears similar, however the background bokeh achieved with a the f2.8 lens almost lies between f1.8 and f1.4 despite the larger minimum aperture.
The relative size of the subject is also biggest with the lens with the smallest minimum fovus (a given since image capture was at each individual lens's minimum fovus distance). Canon FD with minimum fovus distance of 60cm has a smallest relative subject size with more of the background included giving it a larger apparent perspective angle even if they are all 50mm lens.
