[Leica] 20d/d70/rd1

[leowesson at charter.net (leo)]

you may find this interesting, maybe not.

was having dinner and wine with some friends last night.  one of em,  
adam, had just gotten a 20d and was using a 45pc lens to shoot with.   
we got to looking at some of the images on my laptop and discovered  
that they weren't very sharp. the canon pc lenses have a reputation  
as being very sharp and we were surprised.   got to playing with the  
20d/45pc combination and found that it was really hard to focus  
accurately with it.  like, really, really hard.  one thing led to  
another and soon we had a 20d with a 17-85 is lens and the 45 pc, a  
d70 with a 50 1.4 and an 18 -70 and an rd1 with a 50 summicron on the  
table, shooting some comparisons.

adam was shooting the tests and he is not a leica guy, so, if he has  
a prejudice it would be toward his 20d.  some of adam's comments were:

i can't focus this pc lens, it's hard to see with the 20d finder.   
autofocus is much easier.
the d70 shutter release is easier to release than the canon. (we  
found that with the non is lens there was more camera shake with the  
canon than the nikon)
this rd1 is quiet.  the summicron is sharp.
the zooms are flat.


all shots were shot on a tripod at ei400 and processed with cs2 at  
whatever default settings were in the raw processor: all was set on  
auto whatever.  all zooms were set around 50mm and everything was  
shot pretty much as open as was allowed by the lens. the 1.4 might  
have been stopped down to f/2.   not a scientific comparison, but a  
real life one.

george was the very patient model.


http://homepage.mac.com/leosarv/testing/PhotoAlbum124.html

thanks

leo