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The Zuiko 35 f/2

The Zuiko 35 f/2
This is a small review of the Zuiko 35 f/2, the black sheep of the Zuiko family. I got this lens relatively cheap as it is in a beaten up cosmetic condition but the glass is in excellent shape and clean so I decided to hand in my hard earned cash and bring it back home with me.

There are a couple more posts I have made about the Zuiko lenses, one can be found here (The Zuiko lenses) and one here (Zuiko Silvernose 50 f/1.4 Vs Zuiko "Made in Japan") - have a look there to see if you find anything interesting regarding this line of lenses.

The Zuiko 35 f/2 has a relatively bad reputation on the internet. It is not that it is a bad lens, it is more the fact that it suffers (according to the reviewers) from artifacts - mostly chromatic aberrations- that are very prominent when you use digital cameras.

The thing with this lens is that it was produced as a lens to use in low light situations. Remember, OM cameras had shutter speeds up to 1/1000 sec (1/2000 in OM-4) - so using this lens wide open in bright conditions was rather unusual. There are people out there who insist in using this lens on their Hi-end 30 Megapixel DSLR and shoot wide open in bright sunshine in order to 'experience the bokeh'. If you are one of those, the chances are that this lens is going to disappoint you. The more I used this lens, the more i came to the conclusion that this lens performs better on film than on digital.

Testing this lens on Digital
I have an OM-to-EOS adapter and i thought i would test this lens against my two very trusted lenses - the Zuiko 50 f/1.4 and the Canon EF 50 f/1.8 to see how it performs.

First of all, the two Zuikos. Here is a picture of the set up.
 
 Here are the results of the center in 100% view
Click for full view
And here are the results regarding the corner.
Click for full view
Overall the Zuiko 50 f/1.4 appears to be sharper between f/2 and f/3.5 but at f/4 the 35 f/2 catches up with it although contrast seems a bit low. Regarding corner resolution, the 50mm is better up until f/5.6 where the 35mm is catching up eventually.

Now, the Zuiko 35mm against the Canon EF 50f/1.8
 
Results for the centre
Click for full view

So this lens performs well on digital, it is quite soft at f/2 but it gets better in the centre by f/2.8 although corners get acceptable by f/5.6. By f/16 diffraction starts kicking in and the picture does not look very nice (see sample picture at the end of the review).

The Zuiko 35 f/2 performs better in low light as there are no glowing highlights. Another test between the Zuiko 35 f/2, the Canon EF 50 f/1.8 and the Zuiko 50 f/1.4

The test setup in low light
Here how they perform

Click for bigger size
The difference in performance is even smaller. The Zuiko 35 f/2 competes very well against the other two lenses in situations that the contrast is low.

For the bokeh connoisseurs, wide open the pictures look like this. Whatever this means to you...
Click for full view
I prefer this lens on film. On Tri-X, it gives nice pictures even from wide open and by f/5.6 or f/8 it is exceptionally sharp. .

Taken at f/4
Crop of the above picture. You can see my daughter's bruised thumb (click for bigger)
At f/2.8 on Kodak T-Max 400 (Rodinal 1:50)

Conclusion
As I said earlier on, this lens got a lot of bad reputation from people who enjoy using vintage glass on high resolution digital cameras. Wide open there is axial chromatic aberration (halation) which makes this lens unsuitable to use wide open in a bright summer afternoon near the beach. Stop down to f/4 and problem is gone.
Putting irony aside, this lens is a good lens but not an exceptional lens. I think this is the biggest drawback of this lens. People buy it expecting to perform better than it does - possibly the Zuiko 28 f/2 is sharper and this makes this lens automatically a lens to avoid. I disagree with that, although i feel that the Zuiko 28 f/2.8 I had was possibly a sharper lens, the 35f/2 lens is a very good lens that i doubt it will disappoint you. I find the 35mm focal length easier to use than the 28mm and that was decisive factor for me. Bad reputation has kept the price of this lens low (almost half the price of the 28 f/2) - so why don't you buy one and try it yourself.

Samples from digital (for some reason Blogger resizes them to 1600 × 1066 pixels):
At f/2.8 - click for bigger size
At f/4 - click for bigger size

At f/4 - click for bigger size
At f/5.6 - click for bigger size
At f/8 - click for bigger size

At f/16 - click for bigger size

Comments

  1.  15 March 2017 at 12:59

    I own the 28mm and the 50mm (1.4SC & 1.8MC) and I've always wondered if this lens were worth the purchase. Thanks for the detailed review.

    ReplyDelete

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