Elmarit 28mm ASPH question...Soft on the sides?

[kuad82001]

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HI there!

I noticed some softening on the sides of some of my images. Not all of them but some. Sharp as a tack in the center

but in some images soft of the left and right sides about halfway between the corners. I always use F8 and set it so everything from 

6 feet to infinity is in focus. The times when the middle sides are soft the areas fall into the 6ft to infinity.

Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Grateful,

Dennis 

[a.noctilux]

Not with mine !

...strange behavior of your's never "seen" when lenses are clean.

(I noticed some "flaws" with this one or other lenses when I neglected to clean my "digital traces on first front glass" on them for a while)

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[250swb]

On 2/19/2019 at 2:38 PM, kuad82001 said:

I always use F8 and set it so everything from 

6 feet to infinity is in focus. The times when the middle sides are soft the areas fall into the 6ft to infinity.

 

Lol, aside from any optical characteristics that make it get softer at the edges I'm sorry to tell you that zone focusing is not a way to get everything equally in focus through the frame. All you are doing is setting a random point in the picture as the main point of focus and then focus drops off gradually at first, and then faster and faster as the extremes of the 'zone' are reached. If using zone focusing you need to determine if the falloff at the extremes is still acceptable for the picture you want to make. 

It is also best to underestimate by one stop if you want sharper pictures across the frame and from foreground to background. So use f/11 and not f/8. The ultimate way to focus is decide what is important in the image and focus on that, if possible adjusting the aperture so more or less foreground or background is in focus. But used indiscriminately and without understanding the pitfalls zone focus is just a machine gun approach where some bullets may hit and others go way off into the distance. 

[kuad82001]

7 hours ago, 250swb said:

Lol, aside from any optical characteristics that make it get softer at the edges I'm sorry to tell you that zone focusing is not a way to get everything equally in focus through the frame. All you are doing is setting a random point in the picture as the main point of focus and then focus drops off gradually at first, and then faster and faster as the extremes of the 'zone' are reached. If using zone focusing you need to determine if the falloff at the extremes is still acceptable for the picture you want to make. 

It is also best to underestimate by one stop if you want sharper pictures across the frame and from foreground to background. So use f/11 and not f/8. The ultimate way to focus is decide what is important in the image and focus on that, if possible adjusting the aperture so more or less foreground or background is in focus. But used indiscriminately and without understanding the pitfalls zone focus is just a machine gun approach where some bullets may hit and others go way off into the distance. 

Thank you 250swb

I have been using Zone focusing since the 80's and since I bought the M Monochrom with a Summilux 35 pre-asph without any issues as I compared those images with the Elmarit 28 Asph. Is this an issue with the Elmarit? And if I am shooting landscapes/city scenes how should I approach it?

[kuad82001]

It is hard to see in this image because of the scaling down in order to upload. In any case, on the right of the image where the sign says "secure area" you can see it is a softer and the area behind is not in focus.

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Edited February 21, 2019 by kuad82001
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[Davidthefat]

What's the depth of field of the lens at that aperture and distance you were away from what you were focusing on? Was that shot at f8 too?

Edited February 21, 2019 by Davidthefat

[a.noctilux]

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Dennis,

"SECURE AREA" is in my point of view "normally readable" (maybe not in your "view").

Can you just show only crop right area with "fence X lines and 7 marking " (100% if possible) ?

Had you focus the lens to infinity mark ?