• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / The Last Word / Resolution and LoCA comparisons with the Coastal 60/4 macro

Resolution and LoCA comparisons with the Coastal 60/4 macro

May 3, 2016 JimK 1 Comment

This is a continuation of testing of  the following macro lenses :

  • Sony 90mm f/2.8 FE Macro
  • Leica 100mm f/2.8 Apo Macro-Elmarit-R
  • Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar ZF
  • Nikon 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor G VR

The test starts here:

Focus shift and LoCA in the Leica-R 100/2.8 Apo Macro

I’m now going to redo the resolution and longitudinal chromatic aberration (LoCA) comparisons I dis a few posts ago, but I’m going to add in the Coastal 60mm f/4 for comparison. The Coastal is an outlier design, with negligible LoCA and modest resolution at the widest two stops, and I think it’s useful to see how it compares with the lenses that are the actual subjects of this test.

Here’s the LoCA comparison:

LoCA 5 macros

As you can see, the Coastal is another category entirely from the other four lenses except at f/11. It is interesting that the LoCA increases monotonically as you stop down.

Now lets see how the resolution compares in each raw channel.

red MTF 5 macros

The red channel is usually the weakest for resolution in lenses with moderate or considerable LoCA, so looking at this channel shows the Coastal at its best. Even so, it is in fourth place at f/4, and fifth at f/5.6. It is the winner at f/8 and f/11. The differences at f/11 are striking, since all the others are bunched tightly together. [Edit: I later found out that my copy of the Coastal 60/4 was about a stop faster than the indicated f-stop when stopped down.)]

The other two channels;

green MTF 5 macros

blue MTF 5 macros

There are some differences, but the same trends apply.

And now, the white-balanced results from MTF Mapper, which I haven’t yet shown for any of the lenses:

WB MTF 5 macros

This shows the Coastal at its best, since all of the raw channels pretty much peak at the same place, which is distinctly not true for the other lenses. Even so, the differences are not huge. The Coastal is fourth at f/4 and f/5.6, and wins at the other two common stops.

Are these differences material to normal photography? Maybe, maybe not. The Sony is a clear winner at f/2.8 and f/4. However, at those stops and macro distances, depth of field is paper thin, so you can only take advantage of the Sony’s superiority by focus stacking or using focus bracketing on a flat subject. Macro lenses are often used stopped down, so the Coastal’s small win at f/8 and clear one at f/11 might make it the most useful lens. It’s low LoCA is icing on the cake.

[below is an addition]

It has come to my atention that my copy of the CO 60 doesn’t stop down in actuality as fast as the ring says it does. So for that lens, the f/8 results should probably replace the f/4 ones above, and the f/11 results the f/8 onces above.

The Last Word

← Yet more infrared hills Internal focusing 100ish macro lenses →

Trackbacks

  1. Coastal 60/4 UV-VIS-IR on Fuji GFX 50S says:
    April 22, 2017 at 5:31 pm

    […] corrected for UR and UV wavelengths as well as visible ones. I’ve tested it several times (here, here, and here), and found that it is pretty sharp, but not astoundingly so. The 120/4 would walk […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • bob lozano on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.