Some days ago admiringlight posted a comparison between the XF56 and the Leica 42.5 f/1.2. The winner was pretty clear: it was the Leica. But the battle wasn’t fair. Jordan used a faulty 56mm for the comparison. Now he got a new one and repeated the test and re-evaluated the results here:
“So who wins? We do! If you shoot Fuji, you’ve got an awesome fast telephoto in the 56mm f/1.2, and if you shoot Micro 4/3, the Panasonic Leica is phenomenal. When I first conducted this test with my slightly faulty Fuji 56mm, I ruled that the Panasonic was the slightly more corrected lens. Now with a properly functioning Fuji 56mm, it’s far less clear cut. Close up, where these lenses would be used for portraiture and the like, the Fuji has a slight edge. At a distance, the Panasonic does slightly better.”
Not bad at all for a lens that costs 37% less than the [shoplink 22883]Panasonic Leica 42.5mm f/1.2![/shoplink].
Fuji XF 56mm: [shopcountry 21554]
Panasonic Leica 42.5mm: [shopcountry 22883]
25 Responses
56/1.2 is not 62% cheaper, Panasonic is 60% is more expensive 😉
pf… corrected…. and learned a lesson too: never do maths at 6:15 AM.
is like comparing apples and oranges,, really? MF vs FF vs apsc vs m43 is a no game! it is better if you stay in your tinytiny world
Leica 42.5 is AF lens, for m43.
MF means Medium Format, in some cultures. 😉
just compare the samples taken with the leica at 1.2 and the 56 at 1.8.
it is not the same thing, format is different, dont do the fluffy thing comparing different focal lenghts with magic math. tricks
Better to look at images taken wide open and see which is better … because that is how the lens will be used. The amount of blur will be different … from the conclusion:
“The Leica 42.5mm does have a little smoother bokeh and definitley has higher contrast at wide apertures.”
Which is exactly why they should be compared, because they’re different.
so… lets compare my bicicle with a fuji xt because… they are different .. oh wait! my bicicle work! my xt1 no: is a light-leak box!!
That would be apples and bicycles, not oranges. Clearly you’re out of arguments already.
And how is an average customer supposed to know if they are getting a defective Fuji lens or not?
When you’re not impressed with the results. 😉
you might think the lens is pretty damn good but you never know if quality is consistent throughout
What do you mean, that’s exactly what you do know after trying it out. If it’s consistent and awesome then good, if not then you go back to the store and ask for a different one. If it’s a good store that is, it won’t be a problem.
I’m asking the same question…
I also wonder how Jordan KNEW he had a “defective lens” (and not just one at the low end of sample-to-sample variation.) Did all the complaints convince him to try again? Did he just have Fuji send him a bucketful of 56mm lenses, test them all, take the best one and pronounce it “typical”?
I cover that here: http://admiringlight.com/blog/fuji-56mm-f1-2-vs-leica-42-5mm-f1-2-redux/
The tested lens is my own personal copy. Basically: I didn’t know I had a defective lens optically until I received my replacement for the faulty focus motor I had. The original lens was only slightly softer in one area of the frame, and only at closer focus distances, and only at wide apertures. Performance that would not be out of the ordinary for any f/1.2 lens…and the shots I was getting with it were still outstanding, so I didn’t think anything about it.
I also didn’t know my focus motor had issues until I did some city shooting earlier this week with it, and I saw that while the lens focused just fine with it pointed level or close to level, when I pointed it up significantly, it couldn’t hold the focus point…even in manual focus. Basically, it would go to the focus point and ‘slide’ out of focus…it was rather disturbing to be honest. I was lucky enough to find another copy in stock locally. It was in shooting with this second copy (I returned my first lens) that I noticed that it was actually much more even across the frame than the first lens. At that point, I re-ran the test and noticed a big improvement in the mid-zone area that had some softening with my first lens. Had my focus motor not had a problem, I likely would have never noticed that my first lens had a slightly off optical assembly as well, as it was still very, very good.
Here is a 100% crop of the very worst part of the frame for the first lens, along with my replacement and the PL42.5mm at f/1.2. The top is the first 56mm, the middle is my current 56mm and the bottom is the PL 42.5mm. When I saw this, I decided to update the comparison:
http://www.jordansteele.com/2014/mid_dip12.jpg
Okay, I went over to admiringlight and read his article. Turns out he had gotten a lens with a bum AF system that broke almost immediately, returned the lens for that reason, and discovered the replacement also produced better sharpness, which he infers is due to a misaligned element in the original lens.
That still leaves me wondering: which of his two examples would be statistically typical?
Nobody likes to think about this anymore, but maybe what this is doing is reminding us that a lens with these specs is still fairly difficult to make, and there’s going to be a fair amount of sample-to-sample variation unless the manufacturer is really, really careful (which may be one reason the Panasonic lens costs $1600!)
The Panasonic would also likely have sample variation as well. It’s also worth noting that while I can trace the AF motor failure to being more or less out of the box, since it was an issue with the AF motor CLUTCH, I didn’t actually notice that it was faulty until nearly two weeks after it arrived…the lens still focused fine and quietly (after the initial loud sounds) when shooting almost everything…portraits, details, most everything….it wasn’t until I was out in the city and shooting up at about a 60 degree angle at some statues and tall buildings that I discovered I couldn’t hold focus on anything further than about 7 feet when the lens was pointed upwards. At that point, I exchanged my lens.
I know that opinions run strong about the opinions of Lloyd Chambers, but over at his site (diglloyd.com) he concludes that the Leica+m43 result is more pleasing overall. Most concerning to me was the jangly bokeh in the bike tire on some apertures of the Fuji. Also what seems to me to be a color cast in the window. I have not been particularly happy with the bokeh of my XF35 (background tree limbs double at wide open) and I’m not sure I want to lay out another grand for the same thing on xf56. I would love to see Mr Chambers do his testing on an X-A1 to rule out raw processing artifacts… he loves to point out the false edging that can occur in X-Trans conversions… I’m not taking sides, but I’ve seen this in my Fuji photos as well. I shoot Sigma, Fuji and Ricoh. I’m not particularly loyal but just use whatever I think I’ll be happy with in the situation. Fuji X-T1 is a nimble camera for sure! At the following links you can compare web-size shots without paying his subscription fee:
http://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20140319_3-Fujifilm-56f1_2-aseries-OlympicBar.html
http://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20140315_1-OlympusEM1-Panasonic42_5f1_2-vs-VoigtlanderNokton-OlympicBar.html
Here is an example of what I consider to be distracting bokeh from the 35mm (my own shot in a series where unfortunately most are like this). Mr Chamber’s bokeh result in the bike tire using the 56mm reminds me of it.
I am a big fuji fan myself, but to say that a certain lens is “better for portraits” in a certain context , is basically a politically correct way of saying it is not as sharp, so lets just call things real names. It is clear at this point that 42.5 is a better overall lens, it is sharper and contrastier wide open, autofocuses faster, and has image stabilization. On the other hand, Fuji 56/1.2 has a DOF advantage based on larger sensor coverage and is probably more difficult to build as it requires more glass to cover a larger sensor. Fuji also has a big price advantage, $999 and we know in two months there will be a usual Fuji 200$ rebate so it be more like $799. I doubt we will see a serious discount on Panaleica 42.5 as it is not very typical of Panasonics (Olympus does it all the time but not Panasonic with their lenses).
In conclusion, both systems are terrific. I wish Fuji had something of a 135mm prime on their map, which they don’t have (Olympus has a terrific 75/1.8 which is a bargain at a current $699 discount price). Ultimately, consumers win because there are a lot of choices there!
Not sure if you’re looking at the same pictures as me but the Fuji is noticeably sharper in the corners. They’re both good in the center with an edge for the Fuji again at 1.2 and the pic at 3.5 is just no contest: again noticeably sharper.
There in lies the problem with the Fuji. If you buy one, is it going to work right? At least my Canon L glasses can be sent back for calibration. I’m not so sure about Fuji as Panasonic and Olympus have lousy service.