11-05-2013, 11:03 AM
It may well the due to the testing procedure. Lenses are tested at a distance of about 51x the focal length. This is because the testing target needs to have a specific size in the resulting image to perform accurate resolution measurements.
Sometimes that gives results that have little to do with real world usage of the lens... Maybe that is the case here too.
I have a lens which also is affected by this testing distance limitation, the Voigtländer 20mm f3.5 SL II. It will have been tested at about 1 meter distance. This lens has very pronounced astigmatism at close focus distances, but performs actually quite good at normal 20mm usage ("infinity"). So the resolution in the testing procedure looks to be worse than one achieves in real world usage.
Maybe that is the case with the XC 16-50mm you have played with, too.
Sometimes that gives results that have little to do with real world usage of the lens... Maybe that is the case here too.
I have a lens which also is affected by this testing distance limitation, the Voigtländer 20mm f3.5 SL II. It will have been tested at about 1 meter distance. This lens has very pronounced astigmatism at close focus distances, but performs actually quite good at normal 20mm usage ("infinity"). So the resolution in the testing procedure looks to be worse than one achieves in real world usage.
Maybe that is the case with the XC 16-50mm you have played with, too.