Lens Test - Fujinon NW 150mm f5.6 vs Sironar-S

[jbmia]

I'm posting this in the interest of sharing. No need for flaming or negative commentary. Please don't consider this a scientific test or conclusive in any way. I do plan to do another round of testing on this pair... The results very well may be due to sample variance...

With that said, here are the details. Having recently built out a 4x5 kit over the last year, I've read all the usual lens reviews and many forum posts to evaluate lenses for my bag. As many of you know, there are a few sites with well documented lens tests, but other than that, there's a lot of commentary and anecdotal evidence on this and other forums. In my research, I've read the phrase, "you probably won't notice the difference between it and something way more expensive" more than a few times. So much so, that I'd figured it was it basically true. Based on reading this phrase so many times, I wanted to really see for myself if the Fujinon NW 150mm, I picked up on the cheap in fact provided 90% of the performance of the de facto champion, the Rodenstock Sironar-S.

So, with that, I set up my tripod, a Manfrotto 410, Sinar F2 and positioned the combo about 10 feet from the front of the brick oven I built some years back. I leveled the camera and and squared it against the wall as best as possible and set to focusing the Fuji lens. Once I exposed a sheet of HP5+ (it's all I had around today) with the Fuji, I inserted and refocused the Sironar-S and exposed another sheet of film. Both of these were shot at f22 for 21.1 seconds on HP5+ with the Sinar F2 and tripod locked in position. No movement was made between exposures other than double checking focusing on each lens mounting. NO photoshop work (e.g., levels, toning, sharpening, or anything else) has been applied to these images. Other than the jpg conversion and the snipping these 100% crops from the original image, nothing has been done to these images. Have a look the results by clicking on each thumbnail below...

Center - Oven Arch:


Center Lower Left - Oven Landing Crap:


Honestly, I'm pretty surprised.. So much so that I have myself wondering if I goofed up the Fujinon shot. But, thinking back, I focused down pretty carefully and set the aperture at f22 for each of them. Either way, I do intend to retest the pair with a target a little further off in the distance. If that turns up anything obviously different than what I've found here, I'll retest this scenario again.

I'll post more pics in the next post, but if you're interested in reading up more or seeing higher resolution images, you can check out my write up here: http://wp.me/p2PvoS-3h

[jbmia]

More examples...

Lower Left - The Hatchet:


Upper Right - Brick Work


Again, take it for what it is.. Just a side by side comparison. Hope someone finds it useful.
As mentioned above, more details here if interested... http://wp.me/p2PvoS-3h

[Old-N-Feeble]

I'm shocked at the performance of the Fujinon. I'm guessing there's something wrong with it.

[richardman]

I have Fujinon 150, 210, Nikon 75 and 300, SSXL 110, Cooke PS945. I have printed some of the 150mm Fujinon shots 24x30, they are as sharp as anything. I agree with O-n-F

[Tim Meisburger]

Could this be focus shift? Are you focusing wide open then stopping down to f22? If it is focus shift you should not see it if you focus at the taking aperture. If it is focus shift that is creating this, I think I remember reading one time that this can be caused (i.e. focus shift) by reversed elements.

If its not focus shift, be happy, as you got a soft focus lens at a bargain price

[Mick Fagan]

I have two of the 150 Fujinon lenses in question. One is attached to my Razzle camera, which is a converted Polaroid and focus is done with a rangefinder and a cam ground especially for that lens on that camera, it is brilliantly sharp.

The other 150 is used as my standard lens on my Shen Hao and recently after acquiring a Toyo 45G I did some 1:1 stuff using it and in all instances from infinity on one camera through to 1:1 on the other camera, that 150 Fujinon is also very sharp.

Somehow I do think there may just possibly be an issue with your particular Fujinon 150 lens, maybe something simple like a spacer missing?

Mick.

Edit: Oops, I just re-read your stuff, my lenses are both Fujinon W f6.3/150 lenses, sorry.

[Ken Lee]

Please don't consider this a scientific test or conclusive in any way.

1) Focus shift (already mentioned by others) - it happens and ruins lens tests

2) "both of these were shot at f22 for 21.1 seconds" - Why not try a typical shutter speed, less vulnerable to vibration, like 1/60 ?

3) Why not turn off the software setting which detects blown highlights. We don't need to see that.

4) Enlarger ? Scanner ? You don't mention how these images have been acquired.

[jbmia]

Please don't consider this a scientific test or conclusive in any way.

1) Focus shift (already mentioned by others) - it happens and ruins lens tests

2) "both of these were shot at f22 for 21.1 seconds" - Why not try a typical shutter speed, less vulnerable to vibration, like 1/60 ?

3) Why not turn off the software setting which detects blown highlights. We don't need to see that.

4) Enlarger ? Scanner ? You don't mention how these images have been acquired.

Thanks for the reply Ken. Your work has been inspirational to me... Thanks for keeping your site up. Since you asked:

1. I really have no idea.. Any way to verify this?
2. The brick oven facade is under a patio roof and the exposures were made in mid-afternoon with no direct sun. I wanted to shoot at f22 to ensure both lenses were well stopped down. I intended to use Delta 100 for this test, but only had one sheet left. I've plotted curves according to BTZS methods for both of these films and used Expodev and an incident meter to set the exposure. I suspect the long exposure was due to HP5+'s reciprocity.
3. When someone sends me a check for my effort, I'll starting caring what people think about stuff like this. No offense please. In all seriousness, I quickly made the image captures and penned the post during commercial breaks of The Walking Dead season premier... ;-) Whether that setting was on or off has no bearing on the results, which was the only reason for the post.
4. Didn't want to write a book here about it, so indicated in my original post, you can read more here: http://wp.me/p2PvoS-3h Since you asked specifically though. Scanner is an old Epson 2450. Both at 2400 input 48 bit RGB output to 16bit grayscale tiff. Crappy old scanner (I'm waiting on lens adapter so I can move to an LED light table/D800+macro rig), but clearly enough to demonstrate the difference between the two. I went back and re-scanned the Fuji negative and got the same results (just to make sure it wasn't an issue with that pass).

One thing. These snips are 100% crops of 11147 x 8776 image, so what we are looking at is around 93"x73" on a 120dpi monitor.. somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.. I'm not a pixel peeper (well.. err..?!? ).. At least not intentionally.. Anyway, at that unnatural resolution all kind of flaws should be glaringly obvious. Here's a couple side by side 100% crop snips reduced down to 24 x 30 resolution at 120dpi (typical flat panel monitor resolution). The fuji image is from this mornings re-scan.


Fuji, Rodenstock


FWIW, I think I'm going re-shoot the fuji image later today to make sure there wasn't a process error with this test. Could be an error.. Could just be a crappy sample of this lens. If anyone wants to send of another sample, I'd be happy to waste another sheet of film and post. ;-)

[Bob Salomon]

Just to try to simplify a bit.
There really is no difference between a 21.1 second exposure and a 20 second one. And 20 seconds is a hell of a lot easier to time.

[jbmia]

Agreed. Let's not get hung up on little things like that though... That value is just what ExpoDev suggested the film be exposed to, nothing more. The point of the post is not about the method used to calculate exposure or whether I was able to or needed to expose to a 1/10 of second or not . And of course a second or two either way wouldn't really impact the exposure significantly at that point.