Pretty Surprised

[ArmySoldier777]

Don't know why I decided to do it, but I was playing with my new 430ex and decided to see how well my 55-250mm lens performed with the added light.

For the past couple months, I've shot with nothing but my 50mm 1.8. It's kind of become my normal lens. Well after taking some shots with the 55-250mm, I was kind of blown away. My images were just slightly sharper and had more detail than my 50 was picking up... At first I thought I was just crazy and it ended up being a good picture. So I decided to do some tests. I took some more test shots with my 55-250 at 55mm "I wanted to get as close as possible to the 50mm", and then I threw on the 50 and took some shots with the exact same settings "besides the difference of 5mm between lenses". After comparing multiple shots between both my 55-250 and 50, I came to the realization that my 55-250 "which is usually consider a kit lens" does have slightly better image quality than the nifty fifty does. I was pretty surprised by this, because you always hear people talking about how sharp of a lens it is. It's definitely better than the 18-55 kit lens I've got, I did tests at 50mm when I first got it. But my 55-250 is definitely a better lens when the light allows for it. Of course the lowest aperture I can get is F/4, and the 50 definitely still comes in handy during those really low light situations too. And there's also a pretty big perspective difference when shooting close with both of them too. The 50 doesn't compress as much.

But overall, I was pretty shocked by the results. Don't think this will change the way I shoot lol, because I do like the fact that the 50 makes me think about my composition a lot more. It forces me to move around instead of just zooming in to take a shot. But I won't be as quick to dismiss my 55-250 as just a "kit lens" anymore either.

[doctorjames]

were you shooting with the same aperture?...

f4 is almost always going to look sharper than f1.8

also, did you do ABX testing?...

[ArmySoldier777]

Yep, same aperture, same shutter speed. The only difference between the two was that 5mm in focal length. And what's ABX testing? lol.

[tomservo51]

When was the last time you cleaned your 50? :P

[doctorjames]

ABX testing is a form of 'blinding' to test whether you can see/hear/perceive a difference between two things...

in this instance, you would have a shot with lens A, and the identical shot with lens B , you can look at both freely.

you would then be shown X, which would either be shot A or shot B, and you would have to decide which it was, without of course knowing.

you repeat this several times over, to see if you can actually tell that there is a real difference, as opposed to you being tricked by the placebo effect.

[ArmySoldier777]

Everytime I use it lol . Don't get me wrong, my 50 is insanely sharp. I was just surprised that this 55-250 "kit lens" produced results slightly better. The 50 seems to have a slight lead in contrast though. And sorry to the mods, didn't mean to turn this into a technical/help thread lol. I was just commenting on it

[ArmySoldier777]

Originally Posted by doctorjames

ABX testing is a form of 'blinding' to test whether you can see/hear/perceive a difference between two things...

in this instance, you would have a shot with lens A, and the identical shot with lens B , you can look at both freely.

you would then be shown X, which would either be shot A or shot B, and you would have to decide which it was, without of course knowing.

you repeat this several times over, to see if you can actually tell that there is a real difference, as opposed to you being tricked by the placebo effect.

That makes sense. I did something similar, but not on purpose. When I was separating the test shots between the two, I got the filenames mixed up and forget which was which. At first I didn't think to look at the Exif data, so I just separated them into which of the two categories for each respective lens based on their sharpness. And I ended up being right. I put the sharpest shots into one folder, and the other ones in a separate folder. And it turned out that the ones I placed were correct.