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Status: Long, long time Contax and Yashica user; glad to be here and hope to contribute.
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on Jul 3, 2015 20:51:22 GMT
Posted: Jul 3, 2015 20:51:22 GMT
I finally managed to organise a small selection of lenses covering the 300mm focal length and tried to carry out a basic, visual rather than scientific comparison.
The lenses chosen were: Tamron SP 300 f5.6 Macro, Yashica ML 300, Yashica ML 300 C, Yashica ML 100-300 and the Zeiss Tele-Tessar 300 f4 (German MM version). They were all used at f5.6 and I added a photo taken at 100mm on the 100-300 lens. The initial vista was shot with a ML 21mm but is a little soft as there was a problem with the Metabones adapter - a Fotodiox was used instead for the long lenses. If you look slightly to the right of the centre of the photo, you can see the turret that was the object for the test.
21mm 
Zeiss 300mm
Further images from the other lenses will follow shortly as I've reached the limit for this post.
The overall conclusion is that all the lenses showed good quality but the sharpest image was produced by the Tele-Tessar (stopped down from f4 to f5.6); I would rank them (for sharpness and lack of chroma) as 1. Zeiss, 2. ML 300 C, 3. ML 100-300, 4. ML 300 and 5. Tamron SP. |
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Group: Moderator
Post: 2,040 (562 liked)
Join date: April 2014
Status: Long, long time Contax and Yashica user; glad to be here and hope to contribute.
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on Jul 3, 2015 21:01:08 GMT
Posted: Jul 3, 2015 21:01:08 GMT
Further images of the 300mm lenses follow:
ML 300 C
ML 100-300 @ 300mm
ML 300
Two final images will follow....
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Group: Moderator
Post: 2,040 (562 liked)
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on Jul 3, 2015 21:04:11 GMT
Posted: Jul 3, 2015 21:04:11 GMT
The last shots....
Tamron SP 300 Macro
ML 100-300 @ 100mm
It is noticeable that the ML 100-300 is at least as sharp as the Tele-Tessar at the 100mm setting with good contrast and sharpness.
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on Jul 17, 2015 9:32:33 GMT
Posted: Jul 17, 2015 9:32:33 GMT
Some impressive results!
Can you tell me what exactly are the visual differences between ml 300 and ml 300 c lenses?
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Group: Moderator
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on Jul 17, 2015 14:06:39 GMT
Posted: Jul 17, 2015 14:06:39 GMT
Hello Yashimo,
Thank you for your interest. Do you mean what are the differences in appearance of the two lenses or are you asking about the difference in the images produced by the two lenses? What I find interesting is that although the lenses are very different in appearance (in the group photo, the ML 300 is 2nd from the left and the ML 300 C is 3rd from the left), the quality of the images produced is virtually identical. Although the optical formulas are the same, the optics are quite different due to the changes in geometry caused by the shortening of the body of the C version. I can't spot any significant difference in light transmission, contrast, sharpness or bokeh between them. One can argue that the C version, being smaller, is more portable but that's about it.
Where Yashica changed to compact versions of their telephotos, generally, users state that the C versions of the 200 and 135 are better than the originals (probably true for the 200mm) but the only lens they produced in a more compact form, oddly not marked C, is the final version of ML 500 f8 mirror and that is definitely superior to its previous versions and is reputed to be the best 500 f8 lens of its type ever manufactured; unfortunately, its second hand price reflects that and I've seen the prior ML versions going for very high prices because people don't know the differences to look for.
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on Jul 28, 2018 22:04:19 GMT
Posted: Jul 28, 2018 22:04:19 GMT
Nice test. I'm afraid it seems something went wrong with the focus. It's most apparent if you look at the Zeiss vs. the Tamron. All of these shots are 300mm @f5.6 (seems like the zeiss is closer to 320mm and the others 280mm?), and if you look at the Zeiss it's focused on the building, and the tree on the right is out of focus blurred. But if you look at the Tamron, while the building in the center is blurred, the tree on the right is highly focused, much more than the Zeiss. I think the Tamron is misfocused to the foreground. And I'm sort of thinking the Yashica 300mms might be as well, though not as severely. What's clear is that the Zeiss has the best color rendition and contrast, and the 100-300 is clearly the worst at 300mm. Otherwise I'm not able to draw any certain conclusions from this.
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